The US renewed its call on Friday to continue efforts to establish a Palestinian state, amid criticism of Washington’s support for Israeli retaliation for the Hamas group’s attack.
The United States’ position has undergone a subtle change in tone in recent days, with several officials in President Joe Biden’s administration emphasizing the need to minimize the conflict’s impact on Palestinian civilians.
Friday, during a new trip to Israel, the head of US diplomacy said Anthony Blinken called for the imposition of humanitarian pauses to allow the delivery of international aid.
The US Secretary of State admitted that the two-state solution was “the best path, perhaps even the only one.”
“This is the only way to guarantee continued security (…) the only way to guarantee that Palestinians realize their legitimate aspirations for statehood,” Blinken argued.
Thirty years ago, the Oslo Accords had already tried to implement this solution, but in vain.
The Palestinian Authority enjoys only limited autonomy in parts of the West Bank, the Israeli-occupied territory, and has been weakened since the Islamist group Hamas took power in Gaza in 2007.
In Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a staunch opponent of the idea of a Palestinian state and led a coalition government with several figures who share his position.
A few weeks before the Hamas attacks, Benjamin Netanyahu argued before the UN that the idea of a two-state solution was a thing of the past, while the future was the normalization of Israel’s relations with the Arab states.
A poll earlier this year by the Pew Research Center found that 35 percent of Israelis believed their country could coexist peacefully with an independent Palestinian state, a decline of 15 percentage points from a decade ago.
A similar drop in values was recorded among Palestinians.
At least 1,400 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in Israel since the war began, following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7.
In the Gaza Strip, incessant Israeli bombardments in retaliation for the attack caused more than 9,227 deaths, including 3,826 children, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.
Source: DN
