On September 13, the United Nations General Assembly “endorsed” a resolution that calls for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict with establishment of an “independent, sovereign and democratic Palestine State”.
The resolution is not binding. It lays out a “single roadmap to deliver the two-State solution”. It also includes immediate ceasefire in Gaza and release of all hostages. While 142 countries voted in favour of the resolution, 10 countries, including Israel and the United States, opposed it and 12 other countries abstained.
The very fact that the resolution is not binding, leaves hardly any doubt about its fate. Except for the token “solidarity” with the people of Gaza, it does not guarantee anything, not even an immediate ceasefire. While there is no doubt about the intentions of France and Saudi Arabia which were behind moving this resolution, to expect anything magical would amount to exaggerated optimism.
Two-state solution has been an accepted and acknowledged way out for a long time. There is nothing new about it except that more and more countries are now acknowledging that the Palestinians deserve a sovereign state of their own and rightly so. As long as the United States remains unambiguously committed to Israel’s cause, it will be naïve to expect something miraculous like “two-state” solution becoming a reality.
Implement ceasefire first
What Gaza needs right now is an immediate end to the war, if it can be called so. Because war always has two parties fighting against each other. It is mighty and aggressive Israel on one side and helpless and unarmed Gaza civilian people on the other side. It is not an uneven war. It is an “unjust war” which must be brought to an end.
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Yes, Israel did have a reason for retribution against Hamas. The macabre way the Hamas terrorists butchered about 1,250 innocent people on October 7, 2023 does deserve extreme attribution. But targeting the non-combatant unarmed innocent civilians, including children and patients in hospitals has no justification ever. It deserves all-round condemnation.
Coupled with the brutal non-stop attack that has left over 60,000 people dead in Gaza, is the “enforced hunger”, as Israel has practically stopped all humanitarian aid from reaching the helpless and hungry people in Gaza. It is undoubtedly true that the majority of people in Gaza have always been staunch supporters of Hamas and may in all likelihood have even supported the October 7 terror attack, even that does not justify Israel’s brutal and extreme retribution.
Israel needs to be pragmatic
Israel apparently wants to set an example of ruthless retribution for what happened on October 7 so that anyone intending to do so in future thinks twice before repeating it. That was indeed the most horrible act of terror that Hamas unleashed on Israel, apparently without realising or anticipating the repercussions and retribution.
Israel has already conveyed the message that any incident of terror will be retaliated with extreme and ruthless reaction. It has finished the Hamas leadership and almost finished the network completely and deservingly so. Terror networks, no matter how justified they claim their cause to be, have no right to survival. They deserve to be annihilated the way Israel did.
But a line has to be drawn. Yes, the majority of people in Gaza have been the supporters of Hamas and obviously its terror actions as well. The people in Gaza do feel that the world in general and Israel in particular has been unjust and unfair to them. They have been denied their rightful due of sovereign statehood. No matter how genuine their grievances are, acts of terror like October 7 have no justification and these deserve to be met with the same retribution. That was precisely the fatal and suicidal thing Hamas committed and it met with a well-deserved fate.
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In fact, Israel should learn from Hamas’ fate. Not just Hamas, the entire population of Palestinians lost all the sympathies they had across the world. Even the Arab countries, which have always supported them, though in a token way only, could not come to their support as the Hamas had crossed the proverbial redline.
Israel is precisely doing the same thing, by crossing the redline, rather in a more brutal and ruthless manner. In the process, it has started paying a heavy price. Except for the United States, no other country stands by it in its current campaign against Gaza. Its traditional friends in the West like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada to name just a few, are already alienated with it and have already endorsed the “two-state” solution. And Israel has itself to blame for it.
There is still time for Israel to rethink and retreat. While it has succeeded to annihilate Hamas, at the same time it has given a fresh lease of life to what Hamas stood for. Hamas’ terror attack of October 7 placed the entire world against it. For some time, people lost all sympathies for the common Palestinians also. But the Israeli retribution has turned the tables against it. Now a stage has come where 142 of the 193 member states in the United Nations have endorsed the “two-state” formula. What Hamas could not achieve through its acts of terror, Israel has done by default with its brutal retribution.
The ‘New York Declaration’ needs to be taken forward. It is also in the interest of Israel to reach a permanent solution. Yes, it will have a perennially hostile State next door. May be that State will be better to live with than Hamas-controlled territory that has kept Israel at war in any way and even subjected it to brutal and ruthless terror attacks from time to time.
It is an irony that when the whole world, not just the Nazis, chased the Jews turning them homeless, it was the State of Palestine that provided them shelter. Today the same Palestinians are themselves homeless, being chased out by Israel. Palestinians deserve a better deal.
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