Guterres: Two-State Solution Support Must Move Past 'Words'

(MENAFN) UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday that international backing for a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians cannot remain a matter of rhetoric alone, as Israeli settlement expansion and related policies in the occupied Palestinian territories continue to accelerate.

"For Palestinians and all those who care about peace in the Middle East, support for two states must go beyond words," Guterres told attendees at a high-level ministerial event on the Two-State Solution and the Comprehensive Peace Plan for Gaza, held on the sidelines of the 81st UN General Assembly.

While diplomatic endorsements of the two-state framework have grown, Guterres cautioned that facts on the ground across the occupied West Bank and Gaza are steadily eroding its viability. "The conditions for an independent, democratic, contiguous, viable and sovereign Palestinian State are being systematically erased," he said, pointing to aggressive Israeli measures and attacks by Israeli occupiers in the West Bank.

The Secretary-General identified continued occupation expansion as a clear breach of international law, singling out planned construction in the strategic E1 corridor of the occupied West Bank as especially alarming. Advancing those projects, he warned, "would deal a deathblow to the prospect of a contiguous and viable Palestinian State."

Guterres reiterated that lasting peace hinges on two states coexisting within internationally recognized borders based on pre-1967 lines, with Jerusalem functioning as a shared capital for both. "There is simply no alternative, and time is running out," he said, framing the issue as central to wider regional stability.

European Council President Antonio Costa, also speaking at the meeting, echoed the urgency, noting that despite broad international consensus, concrete progress has stalled entirely.

Costa pointed back to a wave of optimism sparked when 142 nations endorsed the New York Declaration on the Two-State Solution alongside UN Security Council Resolution 2803 — momentum that he said has largely failed to translate into changed realities on the ground over the past year.

He called for immediate implementation of the international roadmap for Gaza, warning that the framework faces daily threats across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Safeguarding the path to peace, Costa said, demands urgent, collective action to establish an independent, sovereign Palestinian state living securely alongside Israel.

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