A world in which a sovereign state of Palestine and Israel co-exist peacefully seems a distant prospect, particularly in light of the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas on Israel, and the subsequent Israeli bombardment of Gaza. A high-level UN conference opening on 28 July will, nevertheless, serve as the latest UN-backed attempt to find a way to end the conflict.
"It's not a peace conference," Bob Rae, Canada's Ambassador to the UN, told UN News ahead of the event, mandated by the General Assembly, in which his country will play a leading role. "It's a way of trying to maintain the debate and get beyond the sticking points to the solutions. We hope there'll be some listening, and we hope there'll be some learning on the basis of what we hear."
Mr. Rae's caution reflects the high levels of uncertainty and concern surrounding the two-State solution. Neither one of the two parties to the conflict will be taking part, and the United States, a strong backer of Israel, is not expected to participate.
In an address to the Security Council in April, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the process is "at risk of vanishing altogether." Political will to achieve the goal, he said, "feels more distant than ever."
However, Mr. Guterres in an exchange with the press on 5 June also said, "And for those that doubt about the two-state solution, I ask: What is the alternative? Is it a one-state solution in which either the Palestinians are expelled, or the Palestinians will be forced to live in their land without rights?"
He reminded that it was "the duty of the international community to keep the two-state solution alive and then to materialize the conditions to make it happen."
The Canadian Ambassador said that, whilst the organisers of the event continue to urge Israel and Palestine to engage with the conference, they understand the difficult situation they both find themselves in. "Many citizens [of Israel] are still being held as hostages by Hamas. They've suffered this tremendous attack, the worst attack on the Jewish population anywhere in the world since 1940. And now we're having to deal with the outcome of that which has been the war in Gaza, which is hugely traumatic for the Palestinians and for many members of the Arab community."
Making a difference on the ground
The four-day conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, was convened as a result of the adoption of a General Assembly Resolution ( Resolution ES-10/22 ) in 2024. In a concept note released ahead of the event, the two nations declared that international consensus on the two-State solution "still enjoys near-universal support," and that it is "clearly the only way to satisfy the legitimate aspirations, in accordance with international law, of both Israelis and Palestinians…and create the conditions for regional peace and stability."
In a swipe at the failure of previous efforts to bring about peace, the statement declares that "the aim of this international conference would not be to 'revive' or to 'relaunch' another endless process, but to implement, once and for all, the two-State solution."
In a preparatory meeting for the conference held at the UN in May, Anne-Claire Legendre, Middle East and North Africa advisor to French President Emmanuel Macron, said that " the prospects of a Palestinian State must be maintained. Irreversible steps and concrete measures for the implementation thereof are necessary," and called for a lasting ceasefire, an immediate influx of humanitarian aid and the release of hostages.
Her counterpart, Manal bint Hassan Radwan, head of the Saudi Arabian negotiating team, added that efforts to end fighting and secure release of hostages and detainees 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."
"There has to be the basis for a broader political solution. It's not just about saying there's going to be a ceasefire and that will solve the problem. How do we reconstruct Gaza? How do we change the governance of Gaza? How do we approach the West Bank? How do we deal with issues which have long been the source of a lack of agreement between the parties? Let's not forget that there has been one really successful negotiation, which was based on the 1993 Oslo Accords, and since that time we have not had a lot of substantive agreements. We've got to try to find a way to create a framework for actual discussion."
What is the two-State solution?
- The idea of establishing one nation each for Jewish and Palestinian populations, living alongside each other in peace, predates the UN's founding in 1945. Drafted and redrafted since then, the concept appears in dozens of UN Security Council resolutions, multiple peace talks and in the General Assembly's recently resumed tenth emergency special session.
- In 1947, Great Britain relinquished its mandate over Palestine and brought the " Palestinian Question " to the United Nations, which accepted the responsibility of finding a just solution for the Palestine issue. The United Nations proposed the partitioning of Palestine into two independent states, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalised, acting as a framework for the two-State solution.
- A Peace Conference was convened in Madrid in 1991, with the aim of achieving a peaceful settlement through direct negotiations along 2 tracks: between Israel and the Arab States, and between Israel and the Palestinians, based on Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973).
- In 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accord, which outlined principles for further negotiations and laid the foundation for a Palestinian interim self-government in the West Bank and Gaza.
- The 1993 Oslo Accord deferred certain issues to subsequent permanent status negotiations, which were held in 2000 at Camp David and in 2001 in Taba, but proved inconclusive.
Three decades on from the Oslo Accord, the overarching goal of the United Nations remains supporting Palestinians and Israelis to resolve the conflict and end the occupation in line with relevant United Nations resolutions, international law, and bilateral agreements in pursuit of achieving the vision of two States-Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous, viable, and sovereign Palestinian State-living side by side in peace and security within secure and recognized borders, on the basis of the pre-1967 lines, with Jerusalem as the capital of both States.
Learn more about the history and origins of the two-State solution here or check out a timeline here .
