Israel's opposition party leader Tzipi Livni says that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not really believe in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Netanyahu doesn't really believe that two states, a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, even a demilitarized one, is an Israeli interest," Livni said on Monday, while addressing lawmakers at the Knesset (Israeli Parliament).

"But the prime minister was surprised to encounter the outside world and placed Israel, to my great sorrow, in the position of the party that is rejecting peace and then he understood that at this stage he needs to utter the words 'two states'," the Kadima leader also underlined.

In an address at Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv on June 14, Netanyahu noted that any future Palestinian state would have to be demilitarized.

His endorsement of a severely restricted Palestinian state -- which would not have control of its own air space or even armed forces -- was, however, rejected by the Palestinians who said his conditions will not lead to peace.

The former Israeli foreign minister, meanwhile, blamed the incumbent premier for being a hypocrite. "The prime minister still does not really believe that this is the right path for Israel but he understands that this is the right thing to say," Livni said.

Under the 2002 Roadmap for Peace plan brokered by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia, Israel has to 'dismantle settlement outposts erected since 2001 and also freeze all settlement activity'.

MP/SME/MMN