Israel tabled Palestine state in Sinai in 2014: Haaretz

JERUSALEM (AA) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2014 asked then U.S. President Barack Obama to consider a plan for a "two-state solution" in which Israel would annex its West Bank settlements while the Palestinians would receive land in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Israeli daily Haaretz reported Thursday.

The newspaper quoted four unnamed former U.S. officials as saying that Netanyahu had raised the issue with Obama -- and then U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry -- on more than one occasion.

According to Haaretz, Netanyahu had told Obama and Kerry that he believed it was possible to persuade Egyptian President Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi to accept the plan.

"The Obama administration heard directly from Egypt that it would not accept the idea and had come to the conclusion that neither would the Palestinians," the newspaper reported.

According to the unnamed U.S. officials, Netanyahu's plan did not call for a Palestinian state in Sinai per se, but rather for the creation of a Palestinian state "in some parts of West Bank" with the Palestinians being compensated for Israel's annexation of West Bank land with territory in the Sinai Peninsula.

Netanyahu's office, for its part, dismissed the newspaper's claims as "not accurate".

Notably, Egyptian state daily Al-Ahram quoted al-Sisi in 2014 as saying he would never allow the establishment of a Palestinian state in the strategic peninsula.