The Palestinian state will no longer be a topic when US president-elect Donald Trump takes office next month, a top right-wing Israeli minister told the Ynet news portal on Thursday.
"Palestine will be taken off the agenda" come January 20, said Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who also vowed to advance initiatives that would annex large parts of the West Bank.
The Jewish Home party leader criticized the speech on Wednesday by US Secretary of State John Kerry as "totally out of touch with reality."
Kerry used one his last speeches as secretary of state to scold Israel for expanding its settlements, warning that it was putting the two-state solution in "serious jeopardy."
Though he did not explicitly name Bennett, Kerry quoted him several times in the speech while warning that "the settler agenda is defining the future of Israel."
Bennett has been a leading supporter of a bill, which recently passed its first reading, that would legalize several settlements.
Trump's pick of David Friedman for ambassador to Israel, who has said that he does not think Israeli settlement activity is illegal, has heartened those in the pro-settlement camp.
The US-Israeli relationship has turned especially turbulent since the passing of a UN Security Council resolution last week that condemns Israeli settlement activity.
