Two-state solution is the only way forward
A peace plan between Palestine and Israel is welcome — as long as it’s committed to true peace
By the end of the year, United States President Donald Trump plans to release details of his Middle East peace plan for settling the seven-decade-old conflict between Palestine and Israel. While in New York, at the General Assembly meetings of the United Nations, Trump used a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to offer the most specific details yet on his efforts to bring about a lasting peace in Palestine, and drop a hint of the basis on which he wants to potentially negotiate that agreement.
“I like the two-state solution,” Trump told reporters, adding: “That what I think works best.” And yes, President Trump, that is indeed what has been agreed by a series of peace negotiations these past 70 years, and it has taken a great deal of diplomatic efforts and resolve by the international community to get this far in what is inarguably a difficult and tortuous journey. What’s more is that any two-state solution must be based on the respect for the rights of the Palestinian people — and these rights include the right of return for all lost to the corners of the Middle East and beyond in a desperate diaspora and dispersal from Israeli aggression. In a viable two-state solution, the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines (armistice lines that existed before the Six-Day War).
That two-state solution too includes the equal rights and recognition for Palestinian people, placing them on the same legal footing — and with the same legal rights — as their Israeli interlopers. That means, for example, that when innocents are gunned down on the streets or at the wires and walls that separate families and fields, there will be proper holding to account of those who pulled the trigger. A two-state solution too will recognise that the lands and holdings of Palestinians and their families are indeed legitimate — as they have been for generations.
A two-state solution too recognises that Muslims and Jews are equal in the eyes of the law, that no more will there be an effective apartheid system in place, where public transport, public services, access to health and education are blind to creed. A two-state solution too means that occupied Jerusalem is held in equal footing by Palestinians and Israelis alike. That means that it is not the capital of Israel alone — as Trump recognised earlier this year, a move that disenchanted and further alienated the Palestinians.
So, a two-state solution, as Trump called for at the UN, is indeed the way forward. It is what the international community accepts, and the Palestinian people hopes for. There must be no deviation from this two-state plan.