How push for 2-state solution in Mideast may backfire

France and Saudi Arabia hope to use this week’s annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly and the increasingly horrific war in the Gaza Strip to inject new urgency into the quest for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

- BY JOSEPH KRAUSS

SAUDI Prince Faisal bin Farhan and French leader Emmanuel Macron at U.N.

(YUKI IWAMURA Associated Press)

Those efforts include a new road map for eventual Palestinian statehood in territories Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East War and moves by several Western countries to join a global majority in recognizing such a state before it has been established.

Britain, Canada and Australia formally recognized a Palestinian state Sunday, joining nearly 150 countries that have done so, and France is expected to follow suit at this week’s U.N. gathering.

But the efforts to push a two-state solution face major obstacles, beginning with vehement opposition from the United States and Israel. The U.S. has blocked Palestinian officials from even attending the General Assembly — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will address the meeting by video.

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is adamantly opposed to Palestinian statehood, has threatened to take unilateral action in response possibly including the annexation of parts of the West Bank. That would put the Palestinians’ dream of independence even further out of reach.

Dimmer prospects

The creation of a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has long been seen internationally as the only way to resolve the conflict, which began more than a century before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.

Proponents say this would allow Israel to exist as a democracy with a Jewish majority. The alternative, they say, is the status quo in which Jewish Israelis have full rights and Palestinians live under varying degrees of Israeli control, something major rights groups say amounts to apartheid.