&w=3840&q=100)
What to expect at UN meeting on Israel-Palestinian two-state solution?
Israel and its close ally the United States are boycotting the two-day meeting, which starts Monday and will be co-chaired by the foreign ministers of France and Saudi Arabia.
Israel's right-wing government opposes a two-state solution, and the United States has called the meeting counterproductive to its efforts to end the war in Gaza. France and Saudi Arabia want the meeting to put a spotlight on the two-state solution, which they view as the only viable road map to peace, and to start addressing the steps to get there.
The meeting was postponed from late June and downgraded from a four-day meeting of world leaders amid surging tensions in the Middle East, including Israel's 12-day war against Iran and the war in Gaza.
It was absolutely necessary to restart a political process, the two-state solution process, that is today threatened, more threatened than it has ever been," French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Sunday on CBS News' Face the Nation." Here's what's useful to know about the upcoming gathering.
Why a two-state solution? The idea of dividing the Holy Land goes back decades.
When the British mandate over Palestine ended, the UN partition plan in 1947 envisioned dividing the territory into Jewish and Arab states. Israel accepted the plan, but upon Israel's declaration of independence the following year, its Arab neighbors declared war and the plan was never implemented. Under a 1949 armistice, Jordan held control over the West Bank and east Jerusalem and Egypt over Gaza.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those lands for a future independent state alongside Israel, and this idea of a two-state solution based on Israel's pre-1967 boundaries has been the basis of peace talks dating back to the 1990s.
The two-state solution has wide international support. The logic behind it is that the population of Israel along with east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza is divided equally between Jews and Palestinians.
The establishment of an independent Palestine would leave Israel as a democratic country with a solid Jewish majority and grant the Palestinians their dream of self-determination.
Why hold a conference now? France and Saudi Arabia have said they want to put a spotlight on the two-state solution as the only viable path to peace in the Middle East and they want to see a road map with specific steps, first ending the war in Gaza.
The co-chairs said in a document sent to U.N. members in May that the primary goal of the meeting is to identify actions by all relevant actors to implement the two-state solution and to urgently mobilize the necessary efforts and resources to achieve this aim, through concrete and time-bound commitments.
Saudi diplomat Manal Radwan, who led the country's delegation to the preparatory conference, said the meeting must chart a course for action, not reflection. It must be anchored in a credible and irreversible political plan that addresses the root cause of the conflict and offers a real path to peace, dignity and mutual security, she said.
French President Emmanuel Macron has pushed for a broader movement toward a two-state solution in parallel with a recognition of Israel's right to defend itself. He announced late Thursday that France will recognize the state of Palestine officially at the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly in late September.
About 145 countries have recognized the state of Palestine. But Macron's announcement, ahead of Monday's meeting and amid increasing global anger over desperately hungry people in Gaza starting to die from starvation, makes France the most important Western power to do so.
What is Israel's view? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects the two-state solution on both nationalistic and security grounds.
Netanyahu's religious and nationalist base views the West Bank as the biblical and historical homeland of the Jewish people, while Israeli Jews overwhelmingly consider Jerusalem their eternal capital. The city's eastern side is home to Judaism's holiest site, along with major Christian and Muslim holy places.
Hard-line Israelis like Netanyahu believe the Palestinians don't want peace, citing the second Palestinian uprising of the early 2000s, and more recently the Hamas takeover of Gaza two years after Israel withdrew from the territory in 2005. The Hamas takeover led to five wars, including the current and ongoing 21-month conflict.
At the same time, Israel also opposes a one-state solution in which Jews could lose their majority. Netanyahu's preference seems to be the status quo, where Israel maintains overall control and Israelis have fuller rights than Palestinians, Israel deepens its control by expanding settlements, and the Palestinian Authority has limited autonomy in pockets of the West Bank.
Netanyahu condemned Macron's announcement of Palestinian recognition, saying it rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became." What is the Palestinian view? The Palestinians, who label the current arrangement apartheid, accuse Israel of undermining repeated peace initiatives by deepening settlement construction in the West Bank and threatening annexation. That would harm the prospect of a contiguous Palestinian state and their prospects for independence.
Ahmed Majdalani, a member of the PLO Executive Committee and close associate of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the meeting will serve as preparation for a presidential summit expected in September. It will take place either in France or at the U.N. on the sidelines of the high-level meeting, U.N. diplomats said.
Majdalani said the Palestinians have several goals, first a serious international political process leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The Palestinians also want additional international recognition of their state by major countries including Britain. But expect that to happen in September, not at Monday's meeting, Majdalani said. And he said they want economic and financial support for the Palestinian Authority and international support for the reconstruction and recovery of the Gaza Strip.
What will happen and won't happen at the meeting? All 193 UN member nations have been invited to attend the meeting and a French diplomat said about 40 ministers are expected. The United States and Israel are the only countries who are boycotting.
The co-chairs have circulated an outcome document which could be adopted, and there could be some announcements of intentions to recognize a Palestinian state. But with Israel and the United States boycotting, there is no prospect of a breakthrough and the resumption of long-stalled negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on an end to their conflict.
Secretary-General Antnio Guterres urged participants after the meeting was announced to keep the two-state solution alive. And he said the international community must not only support a solution where independent states of Palestine and Israel live side-by-side in peace but materialize the conditions to make it happen.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
14 minutes ago
- Time of India
Indians Boycott Turkey: Tourism Falls 37% Over Ankara's Support To Pakistan During Operation Sindoor
Indians are speaking with their wallets. Following Turkey's open support to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor, and confirmed use of Turkish-made drones against Indian forces, Indian tourism to Turkey has dropped by a staggering 37% in June 2025, the peak travel season. Official Turkish data shows just 24,250 Indian tourists visited this June, down from 38,307 last year. Travel portals like MakeMyTrip and EaseMyTrip have stopped promoting Turkish packages. PM Modi highlighted Turkey's alignment with Pakistan and China at the UN and OIC. Now, with Lt Gen Yasar Kadioglu's military visits to Pakistan and public praise from Field Marshal Munir and Shehbaz Sharif for Erdoğan, India is not taking it lightly. This video breaks down the fallout, India's diplomatic pushback, and the massive economic impact of India's global influence. Watch the full report.#indiaturkeyrelations #operationsindoor #turkeytourismdrop #indiantravellers #turkeypakistanties #songardrones #pakistanturkeyaxis #indianbacklash #tourismnews #easemytip #makemytrip #turkeyboycott #foreignpolicyindia #pmmodi #shehbazsharif #asimmunir #receptayyiperdogan #breakingnews #trending #bharat #toi #toibharat #indianews
Mint
44 minutes ago
- Mint
Why isn't enough food getting into Gaza?
JERUSALEM—About 10 miles stand between truckloads of food and flour and the more than two million hungry Palestinians who need it. Yet only a trickle is reaching them. The biggest obstacle right now between stockpiles of food just beyond the border and Gaza's most vulnerable people—starving children, women, elderly and injured—is a breakdown of law and order. Chaotic mobs ransack every food-bearing truck that enters, aid workers say. The masses are largely made up of desperate civilians, armed criminals looking to sell it on the black market—or a dangerous mix of both. Officials and aid groups have no control over where it goes from there. Antoine Renard, a United Nations official in Gaza, recalls how a wave of gaunt-faced men converged on his armored vehicle and the convoy of aid trucks following him as they tried to reach the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah on Tuesday. He said the vehicle rocked from side to side as the men swarmed, jostling over the cargo. 'I've never seen anything even a little bit like this," said Renard, who has worked with the U.N.'s food agency, the World Food Program, for more than 20 years and now heads its operations in the Palestinian territories. 'I have never, ever seen this level of despair." Israel and the U.N. have traded blame for the worsening hunger crisis that experts warn is now tipping into famine. Israel says the U.N. has failed to distribute the food that it allowed in. The U.N. says Israel created impossible conditions that put staff and civilians at risk, while impeding their work with delays and restrictions on movement. At the core of the crisis is extreme and widespread food scarcity. Israel banned all aid and commercial goods from entering Gaza in early March in what it said was an effort to pressure Hamas. Israel says the group steals aid to fund its war effort, which Hamas denies. Aid groups say they have seen no evidence of systematic diversion. Israel started letting in much smaller volumes of aid in late May as food supplies dwindled, but it hasn't been nearly enough. The World Food Program says almost 95% of its trucks entering the Gaza Strip are looted before they reach their destination. It says the only solution is to flood the enclave with food until scarcity no longer drives civilians to risk their lives for a bag of flour, or provides an opportunity for militants and criminals to exploit their desperation. Under growing international pressure, Israel took steps recently to ease the flow of aid. It started with airdrops, then announced a pause in fighting in some parts of the strip and the creation of humanitarian corridors. Israeli officials say the country isn't blocking aid and is doing more to facilitate it. 'The bottleneck, regarding food reaching the people of Gaza, is the U.N. agencies not distributing the aid, not picking it up and not distributing it," a senior Israeli military official told The Wall Street Journal. Until Israel recently eased some restrictions, the U.N. also had difficulty getting aid in at all. Part of the problem stemmed from the overall unworkable conditions of destroyed roads, chronic fuel shortages and frequent fighting along what few routes were available, despite deconfliction efforts. Medical workers say they are now battling the worst hunger crisis to grip the enclave since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparked the war in Gaza. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, a group of experts set up to study hunger crises around the world, said Tuesday that the 'worst-case scenario of famine" is currently unfolding in Gaza. Since a cease-fire collapsed in March, Israel has taken control of roughly 70% of Gaza, Israeli officials say, pushing the population into a small area along the coast and creating a large civilian-free zone all around them occupied by soldiers. To reach population centers, aid must traverse this territory. Aid can enter Gaza through one of four border crossings, a senior Israeli military official told the Journal, but the lion's share comes through just two—Zikim in the north and Kerem Shalom in the south. The most perilous part of the journey is when an aid convoy crosses out of Israeli-held territory, as crowds must come close to Israeli military positions to be first to grab the supplies. They frequently overtake the aid convoys, swarming the trucks and taking everything they can carry, at times drawing deadly fire from Israeli soldiers. In the north, Palestinians often go deep inside Israeli-held territory, which the military refers to as a dangerous combat zone and warns them not to enter, to intercept aid convoys a mile or two from the border, according to the WFP. And in the south, Egyptian officials told the Journal that almost all aid coming from the country is ambushed by criminal gangs almost immediately after it enters through the Kerem Shalom border crossing. Some of it is sold for exorbitant prices at markets, they said. Most is completely unaccounted for. 'Some aid makes it in, yeah…but thieves steal 90% of it and sell it for insane prices," said Mohammed Al-Saafin, a 25-year-old Gazan sheltering in Deir al-Balah. 'Total robbery, but we have no choice," he said. Currently, there are two distribution channels for aid. One is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, a controversial new initiative backed by Israel and run by private American contractors. The other is a U.N.-led system it was meant to replace. Israel allowed both to start bringing aid into Gaza in late May. Both have been completely overwhelmed, as hunger was already widespread by then. Palestinians carrying aid in the central Gaza Strip on Friday. GHF has four distribution points, three of them in the south, all within areas under Israeli control. That meant Gazans largely have to travel by foot or donkey cart through a militarized zone to get there. Large crowds drawn to the sites have at times come under fire by Israeli soldiers when they were perceived to pose a threat. Before the blockade, the U.N. had a network of more than 200 distribution sites throughout the Gaza Strip. It has warehouses peppered around dense areas like Deir al-Balah and Gaza City, which it kept regularly stocked with food from its stockpiles kept in Israel's Port of Ashdod, as well as in Jordan and Egypt. From there, partner organizations would load up and take it to community kitchens or pickup points closer to where people live. Since the U.N. was allowed to resume aid distribution on May 21, almost none of World Food Program's trucks have reached the warehouses, and its distribution network has collapsed, according to U.N. officials. Part of the problem is that even when Israel technically allowed the U.N. to start delivering aid again, the military frequently denied its movements. This meant that from May 21, when aid resumed, to July 26, the day before Israel started easing restrictions, there was very little aid entering the Strip and people were largely relying on food stored during the cease-fire. The U.N. uses a standard protocol in many of the war zones where it operates around the world called the Humanitarian Notification System, according to U.N. officials. In noncombat zones, it notifies armed actors of movements by its agencies and partners so they can avoid harming aid workers. In battle zones, it coordinates with the warring parties to ensure a safe route. In the period from May 21 and July 26, 53% of U.N. requests to coordinate movements were either denied or impeded by Israeli authorities, according to data provided by the U.N.'s humanitarian agency, OCHA. During that time, the U.N. said 271 movements were facilitated, which means they were approved and accomplished, while 288 were denied by Israel. Another 99 were canceled by the U.N. or its partners, either because they determined it wasn't safe, were routed on roads known to be impassable or for other prohibitive reasons, OCHA said. An Israeli military vehicle near the Gaza border recently. A further 119 movements were in some way impeded by Israel, OCHA said. That could mean that the military caused long delays, detained their staff, changed their route with little notice or hindered them in other ways that kept them from being fully accomplished. The Israeli military unit charged with humanitarian coordination, called COGAT, didn't respond to a request for comment on the figures. A senior Israeli military official told the Journal recently that delays and denials are made out of necessity to avoid potential conflicts. Since Sunday, the proportion of requests that are approved has markedly increased, raising questions by aid groups about how Israel is able to facilitate more movements now than it could before, even though conditions on the ground have deteriorated further. 'Aid doesn't reach people because of the chaos," said Nahid Shuhiber, who runs a transportation company that provides trucks for aid agencies inside Gaza. Israel, he said, 'is not interested in creating order." Write to Feliz Solomon at
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
44 minutes ago
- Business Standard
UAE, Jordan lead Gaza aid airdrop with France, Germany, Italy, and Spain
Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, conducted a phone call with Ayman Safadi, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The two sides discussed the latest developments of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, and ways to enhance joint coordination in relief efforts. During the phone call, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan commended the ongoing humanitarian endeavours undertaken by Jordan to support the Palestinian people in Gaza, praising the close bilateral cooperation between the two countries in this vital field. Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan affirmed that under the directives of Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE President, the UAE continues to lead global initiatives to provide urgent humanitarian support through comprehensive efforts via land, air, and sea to the brotherly Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, who are experiencing extremely challenging humanitarian conditions. Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan emphasised that the 59th airdrop operation of humanitarian aid was implemented today, led by the UAE and Jordan, alongside seven aircraft from France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. These efforts are part of the "Operation Chivalrous Knight 3", which aims to deliver food and relief supplies to the most affected areas in the Strip. Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan highlighted that this operation represents an efficient model for international cooperation in providing a humanitarian response, reflecting a steadfast commitment to the principle of solidarity with impacted nations. Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan reaffirmed that the UAE remains one of the leading countries supporting the brotherly Palestinian people, whether through direct relief efforts or continuous political and diplomatic action. Furthermore, he highlighted the UAE's commitment to this unwavering humanitarian approach, in cooperation with its regional and international partners, to support civilians in Gaza and alleviate their suffering. These efforts reflect the steadfast principles adopted by the UAE to provide humanitarian support and urgent relief to nations during times of crisis, particularly the brotherly Palestinian people.
