Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was publicly scolded Sunday by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres after he twice refused to accept the imposition of a two-state solution as a path to ending the ongoing crisis in Gaza.
In his remarks, UPI reports Guterres said the rejection of “the right to full statehood for Palestine” is “unacceptable.”
“The right of the Palestinian people to build their own state must be recognized by all,” Guterres warned the Israeli leader.
The two-state solution, largely seen as a staple of foreign policy by U.S. administrations prior to President Donald Trump, has been lambasted by many critics – inside Israel and beyond.
It proposes Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited through a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority (PA).
President Biden posted a message declaring his continued determination for the move in November despite the lack of a viable peace partner.
“A two-state solution is the only way to guarantee the long-term security of both the Israeli and the Palestinian people,” Biden said, as Breitbart News reported.
“To make sure Israelis and Palestinians alike can live in equal measures of freedom and dignity.”
“We will not give up on working toward this goal,” he added.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks outside the gate of the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip in the east of North Sinai province on October 20, 2023 during a visit to oversee preparations for the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave. (KEROLOS SALAH/AFP via Getty)
Netanyahu emphatically rejected that idea.
“In Gaza, after the destruction of Hamas, and for a long time thereafter, there will not be a regime that encourages terror, that teaches terror, that funds terror — that also indoctrinates about the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews — this will not be,” Netanyahu vowed last November, as Joe Pollak of Breitbart News reported from Jerusalem.
He was alluding to the PA’s record of encouraging terror, including the practice of “pay-to-slay,” in which it provides stipends to terrorists in Israeli prisons, and pensions to the families of terrorists killed by Israel.
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