Israel controls the lives of all Palestinians, without equal rights or equal representation: this is an entrenched one-state reality
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ext week, the United Nations is convening a high-level conference to discuss the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine. One might assume that, in the face of Israel’s ongoing starvation and carnage in Gaza, states are gathering to mount a decisive, coordinated response to force Israel to cease fire and allow aid into the strip. They are not. Instead, the global community is assembling to revive the tired framework of the two-state solution, with some states perhaps opting for the mostly symbolic gesture of recognizing a Palestinian state.
Co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, the convening parties reaffirm the idea that the two-state solution is “the only viable path to just, lasting and comprehensive peace”. But France itself has reportedly backed away from its plan to recognize a Palestinian state even before the conference began. The two-state solution has become little more than a diplomatic theater, an incantation repeated with no intention, even according to its most passionate supporters.
As Palestinians are undergoing a genocide in Gaza – a characterization now in near consensus among legal and genocide experts – the revival of the two-state language reads like a smokescreen.
