How the growing push for a 2-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could backfire

 France and Saudi Arabia hope to use this year's gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly and the increasingly horrific war in the Gaza Strip to inject new urgency into the quest for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Those efforts include a new road map for eventual Palestinian statehood in territories Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war, and moves by several Western countries to join a global majority in recognizing such a state before it has been established.

Britain, Canada and Australia formally recognized a Palestinian state on Sunday, joining nearly 150 countries that have already done so, and France is expected to follow suit at this week's General Assembly.

But the efforts to push a two-state solution face major obstacles, beginning with vehement opposition from the United States and Israel. The U.S. has blocked Palestinian officials from even attending the General Assembly. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is opposed to Palestinian statehood, has threatened to take unilateral action in response — possibly including the annexation of parts of the West Bank.

That would put the Palestinians' dream of independence even further out of reach.

Prospects have never been dimmer

The creation of a Palestinian state in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza has long been seen internationally as the only way to resolve the conflict, which began more than a century before Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.

Proponents say this would allow Israel to exist as a democracy with a Jewish majority. The alternative, they say, is the status quo in which Jewish Israelis have full rights and Palestinians live under varying degrees of Israeli control, something major rights groups say amounts to apartheid.

"Israel must understand that the one state solution, with the subjugation of the Palestinian people without rights -- that is absolutely intolerable,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said last week. “Without a two-state solution, there will be no peace in the Middle East."

Peace talks launched in the early 1990s repeatedly faltered amid violence and the expansion of Israeli settlements aimed at preventing a Palestinian state. No substantive negotiations have been held since Netanyahu returned to office in 2009.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem, considers it part of its capital, and has long encouraged the growth of Jewish settlements in and around Palestinian neighborhoods.

The occupied West Bank is home to over 500,000 settlers with Israeli citizenship and some 3 million Palestinians who live under Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority exercising limited autonomy in scattered enclaves.

In Gaza, Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, displaced some 90% of the population of 2 million, left much of the territory uninhabitable and pushed some areas into famine. A new offensive threatens to empty and flatten the largest Palestinian city.

Netanyahu's government and most of Israel's political class were opposed to Palestinian statehood even before the war. The Trump administration has shown no interest in reviving peace talks, instead calling for the relocation of much of Gaza's population to other countries, a plan Israel has eagerly adopted even as critics say it would amount to ethnic cleansing.