TheAltWorld Rendering the two-state paradigm obsolete required international complicity with colonialism
The two-state paradigm is already obsolete. Therefore, when the Board of Peace’s High Representative Nickolay Mladenov gives yet another reason why the two-state will become obsolete, the warning does nothing but repeat the absurdity of the international community’s futile attempts to promote solutions without addressing colonialism, colonial violence and, since October 2023, genocide.
Speaking at the Hili Forum in Abu Dhabi this month, Mladenov stated, “I would say that if Gaza continues the way it is not, or does not move into implementing … the plan that we have under the comprehensive plan, the two-state solution will become practically impossible.”
In July 2016, the Middle East Quartet report issued a similar warning: “While the majority of people on both sides and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Mahmoud Abbas express their support for the goal of two States living side by side in peace and security, the Quartet remains seriously concerned that continuing on the current course will make this prospect increasingly remote.”
Much has changed since 2016, notably Netanyahu’s more recent explicit opposition to the two-state which shouldn’t have come as a surprise, given that colonial settlement expansion increases forced displacement and therefore erodes even the hypothesis of the paradigm.
However, the international community has been sounding repeated warnings, without linking one to another. Instead of looking at Israel’s international law violations as intentional and consequential, it presents each violation as being the reason why the two-state might not be implemented. The warning sounds new, but it isn’t.
In 2016 in his role as UN Middle East Envoy, Mladenov had told the UN Security Council, “These negative trends can and must be urgently reversed in order to advance the two-state solution on the ground,” with reference to the Quartet’s report.
As the High Representative for the Board of Peace, Mladenov has been associated with actions that encourage Israeli colonialism, notably with giving Israel the green light to military occupation in Gaza unless Hamas disarms.
In the current situation, Mladenov is sounding the alarm while aiding Israel in its colonial expansion, this time in Gaza. If the burden of complying is placed entirely upon Palestinians, who have faced genocide, while Israel gets to dictate the terms and the Board of Peace acquiesces, colonial expansion will of course continue and the two-state will remain as obsolete as it has been for many years.
Contrary to 2016, Netanyahu has repeatedly stated there will be no Palestinian state. Mladenov is warning that the two-state will not materialise if the plan for Gaza is not implemented. What Mladenov says, considering the entire colonial genocidal framework, is rendered irrelevant. If the Board of Peace works with Israel for colonisation, Netanyahu’s statements refuting a Palestinian state are given more weight, especially when considering that even before Israel’s genocide in Gaza, a two-state was already considered obsolete. Mladenov should have been clearer – Netanyahu’s rejection of a Palestinian state is the culmination of decades of colonialism, uttered at a time when Israel knows it has a complicit international community on its side.
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