Israel Katz (Israel's Defense Minister; senior Likud) — statement at the re-established Sa-Nur settlement, 30 May 2025 (Times of Israel), rebuking Macron's Palestinian-state recognition: "They will recognize a Palestinian state on paper — and we will build the Jewish-Israeli state on the ground… thrown in the trash can of history," announcing 21 new West Bank settlements. The mainstream secular-nationalist Likud right.

They will recognize a Palestinian state on paper — and we will build the Jewish-Israeli state on the ground. The paper will be thrown in the trash can of history and the State of Israel will flourish and prosper.

I promised then that we would return and today we have returned here, with the decision to re-establish the settlement, along with the establishment of 21 additional new settlements in Judea and Samaria.

[RE-SOURCED RESUBMISSION: an earlier version of this Katz document (doc df2f3696) was auditor-rejected for citing Wikipedia as the source_url; this version cites the primary news report (The Times of Israel liveblog) of the same statement and adds the concrete settlement-expansion line. Source is English (ToI, 30 May 2025, reporting his remarks at the Sa-Nur settlement; ToI's English rendering of his Hebrew remarks); tier-2; confirmed verbatim against the fetched page (spaced em-dash preserved; ToI closes the first quote with a comma before "Katz said," rendered here as a period).] Declared positions of Israel Katz — a veteran senior Likud figure and one of Israel's most powerful politicians: Minister of Defense (from November 2024), and previously Foreign Minister, Transportation and Finance Minister. Speaking at the re-established Sa-Nur settlement in the northern West Bank — hours after French President Macron called recognising a Palestinian state a "moral duty" — Katz rejected Palestinian statehood and answered it with settlement expansion: "They will recognize a Palestinian state on paper — and we will build the Jewish-Israeli state on the ground. The paper will be thrown in the trash can of history and the State of Israel will flourish and prosper," announcing the re-establishment of Sa-Nur "along with the establishment of 21 additional new settlements in Judea and Samaria," and warning Europe not to "threaten us with sanctions… The State of Israel will not bow its head." This is the ISRAELI MAINSTREAM SECULAR-NATIONALIST RIGHT (LIKUD) pole — rejection of a Palestinian state and the two-state framework, "facts on the ground" (settlement expansion) over diplomacy, security-hawkishness, and defiance of European pressure — the largest party's establishment, distinct from the messianic-religious settler right (Orit Strock), the judicial-overhaul right (Simcha Rothman) and the religious social-conservatives (Avi Maoz), and the direct CONTESTED-CELL COUNTER to Ehud Olmert's two-state position. [Axes: Israel-Palestine (against a Palestinian state and two-states; settlement expansion / de facto annexation as the answer; "21 new settlements"), security (hawkish; deterrence; "absolute victory"), nationalism / identity (secular Jewish nationalism; a strong Jewish-Israeli state), foreign-policy (defiance of European recognition pressure and sanctions threats).]