US President Joe Biden is calling on Israeli and world leaders to find agreement on a long-sought two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Biden also said there is no going back to the status quo before October 7, which means that when the crisis is over, there must be a view of what comes next.
“There’s no going back to the status quo as it stood on October 6,” Biden told reporters, referring to the day of Hamas surprise attack on Israel sparking the latest war. Biden has also conveyed the message directly to Netanyahu during a telephone call last week.
The decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is rooted in competing claims to territory and includes border disputes and several wars. Several countries including the US have long sought a solution to the conflict that results in two states.
What is a Two-state Solution?
The two-state solution calls for establishing an independent state for Palestinians alongside that of Israel. The push for a two-state solution, one where Israel would co-exist with an independent Palestinian state, has eluded US presidents and Middle East diplomats for decades.
It’s been put on the back burner since the last American-led effort at peace talks collapsed in 2014 amid disagreements on Israeli settlements, the release of Palestinian prisoners and other issues.
The two-state solution, first proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937, proposed the solution of Israel and Palestine becoming two separate states and coexisting in harmony. However, the proposal has not materialised over the decades despite support from world leaders including US President Joe Biden, China’s Xi Jinping and Saudi Arabia.
Earlier, this year Chinese President Xi Jinping called for granting Palestine “full membership in the United Nations” and said China “supports the two-state solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
The two-state solution is backed in the international community as the most feasible of all solutions, as other alternatives simply don’t work in the seven-decades-long controversy.
What are 1967 Borders
While referring to the two-state solution, most countries put forward the two-state solution favouring Israel’s reverting to a version of its pre-1967 borders.
There have been several wars ever since the creation of Israel on May 14, 1948, including the first Arab-Israeli War in 1947-49 and several successive wars in 1967, 1987 and 2000.
However, a major turning point was the 1967 Six-Day War, also known as the Six-Day War, where Israel attacked Egyptian and Syrian air forces and gained territory four times its original size. In the 1967 war, Israel managed to occupy Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights.
The territories, since then, have been a major point of contention and peace negotiations. Despite the UN issuing a resolution in 1967 calling for Israeli troops to withdraw from areas it captured in the war in exchange for peace, the resolution’s meaning has been disputed.
Prior to 1967, the Gaza Strip was under Egypt’s control and the West Bank was under Jordan’s control. Therefore, 1967 refers to the line where Israeli, Jordanian, Egyptian and Syrian military forces were deployed on the eve of the Six-Day War.
Though the resolution lacked details, but it became the basis for future diplomacy to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. Many countries have proposed a two-state solution that favours Israel’s reverting to a version of its pre-1967 borders.
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