“It’s not a peace conference,” Bob Rae, Canada’s Ambassador to the UN, told UN News ahead of the event, mandated by the General Assembly, in which his country will play a leading role.
“It’s a way of trying to maintain the debate and get beyond the sticking points to the solutions. We hope there’ll be some listening, and we hope there’ll be some learning on the basis of what we hear.”
Mr. Rae’s caution reflects the high levels of uncertainty and concern surrounding the two-State solution. Neither one of the two parties to the conflict will be taking part, and the United States, a strong backer of Israel, is not expected to participate.
In an address to the Security Council in April, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the process is “at risk of vanishing altogether.” Political will to achieve the goal, he said, “feels more distant than ever.”
However, in an exchange with the press on 5 June Mr. Guterres also said, “And for those that doubt about the two-state solution, I ask: What is the alternative? Is it a one-State solution in which either the Palestinians are expelled, or the Palestinians will be forced to live in their land without rights?”
He reminded that it was “the duty of the international community to keep the two-state solution alive and then to materialize the conditions to make it happen.”
The Canadian Ambassador said that, whilst the organisers of the event continue to urge Israel and Palestine to engage with the conference, they understand the difficult situation they both find themselves in. “Many citizens [of Israel] are still being held as hostages by Hamas. They’ve suffered this tremendous attack, the worst attack on the Jewish population anywhere in the world since 1940. And now we’re having to deal with the outcome of that which has been the war in Gaza, which is hugely traumatic for the Palestinians and for many members of the Arab community.”
Making a difference on the ground
The conference, held in the Trusteeship Council at UN Headquarters in New York, was convened as a result of the adoption of a General Assembly Resolution (Resolution ES-10/22) in 2024. In a concept note released ahead of the event, the two nations declared that international consensus on the two-State solution “still enjoys near-universal support,” and that it is “clearly the only way to satisfy the legitimate aspirations, in accordance with international law, of both Israelis and Palestinians…and create the conditions for regional peace and stability.”
In a swipe at the failure of previous efforts to bring about peace, the statement declares that “the aim of this international conference would not be to ‘revive’ or to ‘relaunch’ another endless process, but to implement, once and for all, the two-State solution.”
In a preparatory meeting for the conference held at the UN in May, Anne-Claire Legendre, Middle East and North Africa advisor to French President Emmanuel Macron, said that “ the prospects of a Palestinian State must be maintained. Irreversible steps and concrete measures for the implementation thereof are necessary,” and called for a lasting ceasefire, an immediate influx of humanitarian aid and the release of hostages.
Her counterpart, Manal bint Hassan Radwan, head of the Saudi Arabian negotiating team, added that efforts to end fighting and secure release of hostages and detainees must be “anchored in a credible and irreversible political plan that addresses the root cause of the conflict and offers a real path to peace, dignity and mutual security.”
“There has to be the basis for a broader political solution. It’s not just about saying there’s going to be a ceasefire and that will solve the problem. How do we reconstruct Gaza? How do we change the governance of Gaza? How do we approach the West Bank? How do we deal with issues which have long been the source of a lack of agreement between the parties? Let’s not forget that there has been one really successful negotiation, which was based on the 1993 Oslo Accords, and since that time we have not had a lot of substantive agreements. We’ve got to try to find a way to create a framework for actual discussion.”
