Israel will not allow the creation of a Palestinian state, since its true purpose is the destruction of “the one and only Jewish state,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said.

Netanyahu made the remarks on Sunday in Jerusalem during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. While Merz reaffirmed Berlin’s commitment to the creation of an independent Palestinian state, Netanyahu openly disagreed with him, claiming that such an entity would be “committed to our destruction at our doorstep.”

“They already had a state in Gaza, a de facto state, and it was used to try to destroy the one and only Jewish state,” Netanyahu stated, referring to the Palestinian enclave that has been effectively run by the militant group Hamas.

Israel believes that there’s “a path to advance a broader peace with the Arab states” and to “establish a workable peace with our Palestinian neighbors” that does not involve the creation of an independent entity, he added.

Israel’s prime minister has repeatedly rejected the two-state solution proposed by the UN Security Council. The scheme entails the creation of a Palestinian state within the armistice lines that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The original UN plan for partition in 1947 envisioned separate Jewish and Arab states, but a series of subsequent wars allowed Israel to seize most of the land which had been allocated to the Palestinians.

Netanyahu noted that the occupation of the West Bank, considered to be illegal under international law, remains a subject of discussion, yet signaled that the status quo is expected to remain in place for the foreseeable future.