Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be convinced to accept a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, especially in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt said Sunday.
"Think about how ludicrous this is," Holt told Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "You have a vicious, nasty attack. "It's unprecedented, the savagery we saw on Oct. 7. Netanyahu says we're going to get after this, we're gonna erase Hamas, and that's the military objective, [but] then we don't stand by them."
On Thursday, Netanyahu appeared to reject the idea of the creation of a Palestinian state, but when he spoke with President Joe Biden Friday, he reportedly said he is not ruling out a Palestinian state in any form.
Holt commented that the United States is providing the "minimum support" that it can, but "we certainly don't do it with our words."
The United States is not only pushing Israel to end its war, but wants to "award their enemy with the state, an option that their enemy has turned down on three separate occasions in peace talks," said Holt.
That raises questions about what kind of message is being sent to America's allies and partners, he added.
"What we need to do is stand by the Israelis and say, How is the campaign going? How can we help? Is there an option for us to rescue hostages here?" said Holt. "That's where we need to start as we start to build a comprehensive strategy for the region, which seems to be absent."
Retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, the president of Project Sentinel, also appearing on Sunday's show, said that a two-state solution will not resolve the root cause behind the strife between Israel and the Palestinians.
"The Biden proposal right now is literally like when you have the best cancer surgeon in the world remove all the cancer, and then some knucklehead comes in and says, Oh, we need to put it back in," said Shaffer. "The Iranians are out to continue to foster and support radicalization militant Islam. Political Islam is the issue … for Biden to put this back on the table is meant to put everybody back into the same conditions that were right before Oct. 7."
Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency is saying Iran now has enough highly enriched uranium to build several nuclear warheads, and Holt said it's vital to recognize that Iran "is the progenitor of all of these problems in the Middle East."
"We need to stop the bleeding by stopping the cash going and shutting down that oil economy," he said. "We had sanctions on the books. But they're now fighting wars and creating aggression on every single one of their borders and our administration is nothing but a friend to them, looking the other way on the nuclear development."
The United States is also not acknowledging that Iran "is the enemy at the core of this, and where it's got to start is just direct honesty with ourselves."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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