US President Donald Trump recently referred the answer to a question about the two-state solution to Benjamin Netanyahu, who in turn did not close the doors but left them a little ambiguing, and carried several interpretations.
He said: “I believe that the Palestinians have to govern themselves, and they cannot threaten us, so the issue of security will always remain in our hands, and I believe that we can reach peace with the entire Middle East under the leadership of President Trump, and by working together we can achieve a broad peace that includes all our neighbors.”
The fact that this statement was issued by Benjamin Netanyahu in the presence of President Trump and the pillars of his administration, it has a different tone from his repeated literature on the Palestinian state, which he worked to legislate from the Knesset to prohibit.
If the long experience with Netanyahu makes us not rely on his words, as if they were an expression of a new policy towards the Palestinian state, what is worth paying attention to is that raising the issue in the form of a question and referring Trump to Netanyahu's answer indicates that the matter of the Palestinian state is on the question in the most influential places about it positively and negative.
Netanyahu is the owner of a specific principle in the solution with the Palestinians, his summary... Excessive autonomy, an incomplete state, and the Palestinians can call what they get a state or even an empire.
What Netanyahu said indicates that talking about the Palestinian state is not on the principle of its establishment, but on its specifications and the area of its sovereignty, but what has been cut in an unbearable way is the issue of security, which should remain in the hands of Israel in all cases and forever. What deserves attention is what Netanyahu said about reaching peace with the Middle East and a peace that includes all our neighbors. This means that the regional solution has priority, and this may suit what Trump thinks, about the generalization of the Abraham Accords, which he sees as the effective recipe for the new Middle East peace.
Here there must be a third party between the American and the Israeli, the Arab-Islamic-European side, which has serious potential to transfer the status of the Palestinian state from Netanyahu's characterization of it to the status of a real state that has the tools to build it, and at the same time has the legitimacy and ability to fulfill its obligations, including towards Israel.
The world will inevitably reach the point where the establishment of a Palestinian state is inevitable as a magic key to calm and lasting stability in the Middle East.
The world is very close to the universal recognition of this fact, and then we need a great effort to evolve from recognition to actuality.
Yousef Ramadan is Ambassador of Palestine to Bangladesh
