The US president's comments were a message for the Palestinians, said Alan Dershowitz, who will be a speaker at The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on May 7.

Nonetheless, the prime minister says it is vital for Israel to "retain security control" in the West Bank.

Contrary to what the Israeli Right and Left's spin doctors are saying, nothing much actually happened in Washington during the joint press conference.

"To me it seemed like the opposite happened: Wednesday night did not mark the death of the Palestinian state. It was more like the resurrection of one."

The ADL released a statement calling Trump's response to questions about the rise of antisemitism in the US "mind-boggling."

On Thursday Liberman turned to the Palestinian leadership to urge Hamas to lay down its arms in order to set the stage to facilitate direct negotiations and compromises between the two sides.

The two-state model is widely viewed as the formula for Middle East peace. But the fact of the matter is that it makes peace impossible to achieve, by holding normal relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors hostage to grandiose peace deals.

Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi will hold the communications portfolio on an interim basis.