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SARTABA: Israel's prime minister declared Tuesday that his country must retain a strategic section of the West Bank under any future peace deal, a position unlikely to win Palestinians over to his reported plan to offer them a temporary state.
In a rare visit to the occupied territory, Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters that Israel's security depends on maintaining a military presence in the Jordan Valley, a strip of West Bank land along the border with Jordan.
Without troops there, Israel fears militants could smuggle weapons into the West Bank.
''The Jordan Valley is Israel's line of defense,'' Netanyahu said atop a rocky hilltop overlooking the valley.
''There is no alternative. It will remain that way in any future situation and any future deal. The military must remain here along the Jordan border.''
Netanyahu has made similar comments in the past. But the location and the timing, just as officials say he is working on a new diplomatic initiative, were notable, signaling that any new plan would fall far short of Palestinian demands.
The Palestinians seek all of the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, for a future state. Israel captured all three areas in 1967, then withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Hamas militants overran Gaza two years later.
Netanyahu's comments could be intended to appease hardline members of his coalition who have been unnerved by reports that he intends to offer Palestinians a state within smaller, temporary borders as a way to break a peacemaking deadlock.
Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the Palestinians would not compromise on their demand for a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. He also rejected the idea of establishing a Palestinian state in interim borders.
