Two-state solution: Biden’s fresh push to solve the Israel-Gaza conflict

Palestinians wait to receive food amid a shortage, in Rafah, Gaza Strip, 17 January 2024. Photograph: Mohammed Salem/Reuters

The United States has for decades formally supported a two-state solution to the conflict in the Middle East. But through many failed rounds of talks, dashed hopes, political volatility and violence in the region, talk of establishing Palestine and Israel as neighbors in a secure peace has looked, to many, increasingly like lip service. But in recent weeks, there have been signs of a shift in messaging from the Biden administration. Here’s what’s happening:

What is the current US position?

Just weeks before Hamas launched its 7 October surprise attacks on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage, the US had been trying to broker a historic deal to normalize relations between longtime adversaries Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The Biden administration, gunning for a major foreign policy achievement before the 2024 presidential elections, had hoped to strike an agreement in which Saudi Arabia would establish formal relations with the Jewish state in return for a defense pact with the US. Saudi Arabia was also seeking Washington’s aid in developing a civilian nuclear program and progress toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Talks were shelved by Riyadh in October over Israel’s war in Gaza, which has so far killed more than 27,000 Palestinians. They have since resumed but Saudi Arabia now insists Israel must first end the war in Gaza and put Palestinians on a path toward statehood.

The US, UK and Israel, unlike nearly 140 other UN member states, have not formally recognized Palestine. The US has long stressed that Palestinian statehood should be achieved through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which oversees parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, while Hamas controls Gaza. Earlier this month, however, the state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, told reporters that the US was “actively pursuing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state” after the war in Gaza.

His remarks came amid reports that the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has asked the state department to conduct a review and present policy options on possible future recognition of a Palestinian state.

But Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said he doubted the US would actually invest a lot of manpower or resources in that goal on its own. “They’re more interested in stabilizing and rebuilding Gaza but also Saudi-Israel normalization,” he said. “That’s the big prize that they’re chasing. For them to achieve that, they have to look more serious about a Palestinian state.”

Blinken is on his fifth visit to the Middle East since 7 October

The US secretary of state returned to Israel on Wednesday. At the top of his agenda is advancing a new ceasefire and hostage-release deal between Israel and Hamas, while at the same time pushing for a larger postwar settlement in which Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel in return for a “clear, credible, time-bound path to the establishment of a Palestinian state”.

Blinken has said that Washington would use any pause in fighting to build out plans for the reconstruction and future governance of Gaza, as well as a wider regional peace agreement.

What are the main obstacles?

Netanyahu has dismissed US calls for a path to a Palestinian state, insisting that he would not “compromise on full Israeli security control over all territory west of the Jordan River”. The Israeli prime minster, who has boasted that he was instrumental in preventing Palestinian statehood, is trying to cling to power and elude the threat of prison by appeasing the far-right members of his coalition government.

Shortly after meeting Blinken on Wednesday, Netanyahu rejected the latest Gaza ceasefire terms proposed by Hamas, and rebuffed US pressure to move more quickly towards a mediated settlement to the war, insisting again that “total victory” against Hamas was the only solution.

Biden continued to maintain that the creation of an independent state for Palestinians was still possible, claiming that Netanyahu was not opposed to all forms of a two-state solution.

Other countries are vital to a two-state process

The US is certain to lead any fresh negotiations. Saudi Arabia has told the US that it would not open diplomatic relations with Israel unless it recognizes an independent Palestinian state on 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem, which Israel has unilaterally annexed, as its capital. Israel’s coalition government includes far-right parties who are adamantly opposed to a Palestinian state, and Netanyahu himself blocked progress on the issue for many years.

Britain’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, has floated the idea of the UK recognizing a Palestinian state in combination with allies as a means to make the process of negotiating a two-state solution “irreversible”. “It could be something that we consider as this process, as this advance to a solution, becomes more real,” Cameron said during a visit last week to Lebanon.

What hope is there?

Aaron David Miller, who served six US secretaries of state as an adviser on Arab-Israeli peace talks, believes the chances of the US unilaterally recognizing the state of Palestine are slim to none, but that talks on establishing Palestinian statehood form part of a “grand bargain” with Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi-Israeli normalization deal faces many obstacles, Miller says, but “it’s a serious proposal from the administration, and they’ve actively working on it.” He noted, though, how unlikely Israel was to agree to what Blinken on Tuesday called for: a “time-bound, irreversible” path to a Palestinian state.