Nick Clegg has described the Israeli prime minister’s pledge that he will not agree to the creation of an independent Palestinian state as alarming, saying it may lead a future British government to formally recognise Palestinian sovereignty.

Binyamin Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud party surged to victory in Tuesday’s national election in Israel, after he abandoned a prior commitment to an independent Palestinian state and warned the electorate that Arab citizens would vote “in droves”, apparently to attract last-minute support among conservatives.

While David Cameron tweeted his congratulations to the Israeli prime minister, Barack Obama expressed concern about Netanyahu’s divisive rhetoric.

“I actually share president Obama’s views much more than David Cameron’s,” Clegg said during his weekly radio phone-in show on LBC. “It is extremely worrying – it cannot be more alarming – to have seen Binyamin Netanyahu do something which no leading Israeli politician has ever done – to rule out the prospect of a two-state solution.”

Clegg said he hoped Netanyahu’s comments had been “breathless rhetoric which he is now going to row back from”, but that if the Israeli prime minister continued to rule out a two-state solution and expand illegal settlements “the world, including the British parliament, would have no option, inevitably, but to recognise a Palestinian state”.

He said a formal move to recognise a Palestinian state would be in response to “extreme provocation from Netanyahu”. In October 2014, parliament voted 274 to 12 in favour of a non-binding backbench motion to recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel. Twenty-eight of the Liberal Democrats’ 56 MPs voted in favour and one (Sir Alan Beith) voted against.

Clegg said: “It cannot be right, given that this is a crucible of so much violence and division across so many communities, that one man – in what I assume was a desperate attempt to curry some votes – should basically tear up the basic tram lines on which a peace deal is likely to occur.”

PM: Congratulations to @netanyahu on election result. As one of #Israel’s firmest friends, UK looks forward to working with new government. — UK Prime Minister (@Number10gov) March 18, 2015

Earlier this year the Israeli ambassador to Britain wrote to Nick Clegg to express his abhorrence at “offensive and shocking” comments made by Liberal Democrat MP David Ward regarding the presence of Netanyahu at the solidarity march in Paris after the terrorist attacks on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

During the march, which followed the attacks that left 17 people dead, the MP for Bradford East tweeted: “#Netanyahu in Paris march – what!!! Makes me feel sick” and “Je suis #Palestinian.”

In the letter, ambassador Daniel Taub wrote: “At a time when leaders were united in condemnation of extremist atrocities, Mr Ward’s statement is a disgraceful attempt to politicise suffering, delegitimise Israel, and justify acts of terror”.

Taub said that “more shocking still is the continued impunity that [Ward] seems to enjoy from his party”.



A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said the MP did not speak for the party: “[David Ward] has well-known and strongly held views on this issue but this tweet was clearly in bad taste.”

Ward has a record of causing controversy with his remarks on Israel. In 2013, he was reprimanded by his party for “use of language” after he compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Holocaust. Later that year, he was suspended by the Lib Dems and had the whip withdrawn for two months for tweeting: “Am I wrong or am I right? At long last the Zionists are losing the battle – how long can the apartheid State of Israel last?”

In July last year, the Lib Dems threatened Ward with disciplinary action and he was forced to issue an apology after he said he would probably fire a rocket into Israel if he lived in Gaza.