It’s heartening to hear Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong talk about Palestinian statehood in the context of building momentum towards a two-state solution with Israel.
Heartening to know that the Australian government is in lockstep with much of the international community in recognising that such a solution is the only hope of breaking the “endless cycle of violence between the two people”.
“The simple truth,” Wong said on Tuesday night at an ANU National Security College Conference, “is that a secure and prosperous future for both Israelis and Palestinians will only come with a two-state solution – recognition of each other’s right to exist.”
Wong’s comments echoed those of her British counterpart David Cameron, who said in February that Britain could officially recognise a Palestinian state without having to wait for the outcome of talks between Israelis and Palestinians on a two-state solution.
In the midst of Gaza’s endless horrors, the “two-state solution” appears to be now a three-word refrain on the lips of political leaders around the world. US President Joe Biden and his top national security officials have reasserted their belief in such a solution – i.e. two states for two peoples (Israel for the Jewish people; Palestine for the Palestinian people) living side by side – as the only way to secure an enduring peace. This has been echoed by the EU, Canada, much of the Arab world, China, Russia, India and the United Nations.
In other words, as Martin Indyk, the Australian-born former US Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, wrote recently in an essay for Foreign Affairs magazine, reports of the death of the two-state solution have been grossly exaggerated.
“The reason for this revival is not complicated,” he wrote. “There are, after all, only a few possible alternatives to the two-state solution. There is Hamas’s solution, which is the destruction of Israel. There is the Israeli ultra-right’s solution, which is the Israeli annexation of the West Bank, the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the deportation of Palestinians to other countries.
“There is the ‘conflict management’ approach pursued for the last decade or so by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which aimed to maintain the status quo indefinitely – and the world has seen how that worked out. And there is the idea of a binational state in which Jews would become a minority, thus ending Israel’s status as a Jewish state.
It’s great to hear talk of a two-state solution. Shame it’s fanciful
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11.04.2024
It’s heartening to hear Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong talk about Palestinian statehood in the context of building momentum towards a two-state solution with Israel.
Heartening to know that the Australian government is in lockstep with much of the international community in recognising that such a solution is the only hope of breaking the “endless cycle of violence between the two people”.
“The simple truth,” Wong said on Tuesday night at an ANU National Security College Conference, “is that a secure and prosperous future for both Israelis and Palestinians will only come with a two-state solution –........
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