It looks like Likud won 25% of Knesset seats after Bibi said this:
Under pressure on the eve of a surprisingly close election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Monday doubled down on his appeal to right-wing voters, declaring definitively that if he was returned to office he would never establish a Palestinian state.
[...]
“I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel,” he said in a video interview published on NRG, an Israeli news site that leans to the right. “There is a real threat here that a left-wing government will join the international community and follow its orders.”
-- NYT:
Netanyahu Says No to Statehood for Palestinians
Some will claim (as indeed Bibi might tomorrow) that he is referring to the threat that ISIS or Hamas will set up shop in the West Bank, and that this is hopefully a temporary state of affairs. Except...
Netanyahu was then asked specifically whether he meant that a Palestinian state would not be established if he were reelected prime minister. He answered, “Correct.”
-- WaPo:
Netanyahu says no Palestinian state if he wins
Which is not really news to the Palestinians who have signaled for some time that they consider negotiating with a Netanyahu government on statehood a waste of their time.
By the way, Haaretz noted that:
the NRG website - which is owned by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and tied with the settler newspaper Makor Rishon - were a last-minute attempt to pull right-wing voters away from Habayit Hayehudi.
Netanyahu's statements over the past week have made it very difficult for anyone to propose re-starting bi-lateral negotiations with a straight face. This probably means the Palestinian Authority will continue pushing to elevate it's status in various international organizations to that of a member state.
I wonder whether our State Department can continue to stick with the official line of "We believe the only solution is bi-lateral negotiations within the two-state framework" given Bibi's statements. Though anything's possible within the two-state negotiations industry, after all the US has exhibited toothless opposition to settlements for decades now. Our happy-go-lucky official line was that they could be undone and do not put the Palestinian goal of a state in the West Bank with East Jerusalem as their capital at risk. Oh except the Palestinians have been telling everyone what Bibi confirmed this week:
During a campaign stop in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa, Netanyahu promised to increase construction there, saying it was “a way of stopping Bethlehem from moving toward Jerusalem.”
-- Times of Israel
But that's never stopped us from maintaining our trademark American optimism. Hell, even after Israeli planes had pummeled Gaza to bits (with our ordinance), we suggested the Palestinians join Bibi at the negotiating table. So maybe it isn't that outlandish to demand the PA sit down to negotiate something Israel's leader has publicly said will not happen on his watch.
I suspect Netanyahu is fine with the status quo, and in the short-term this allows his government to shore up support on the right by green-lighting some more settlement expansion in the West Bank without worrying unduly about US/European opinion.
But in the medium to long term, does that mean a one-state solution looks more likely? Perhaps with just the West Bank annexed to make the demographics more palatable?