Ya’alon said the creation of a Palestinian state would lead to war "at some stage" because Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas insists on the “right of return” of refugees to their former homes in Israel. Ya’alon said that is equivalent to the destruction of the Jewish state. He described the Palestinian Authority as a group of "armed gangs pretending to be a democracy," and said a Palestinian state "will be a state that will try to undermine Israel." Ya’alon also questioned whether Israel will survive. "A combination of terrorism and demography, with question marks among us about the rightness of our way, are a recipe for a situation in which there will not be a Jewish state here in the end," he said.