WASHINGTON — As the 3-week-old Israel-Hamas war enters what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says could be a “long and difficult” new stage, President Joe Biden is calling on Israeli and Arab leaders to think hard about their eventual postwar reality.
It’s one, he argues, where finally finding agreement on a long-sought two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict should be a priority.
“There’s no going back to the status quo as it stood on Oct. 6,” Biden told reporters, referring to the day before Hamas militants attacked Israel and set off the latest war. The White House says Biden conveyed the same message directly to Netanyahu during a telephone call this past week.
“It also means that when this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next, and in our view it has to be a two-state solution,” Biden said.
The push for a two-state solution — one in which Israel would co-exist with an independent Palestinian state — has eluded U.S. presidents and Middle East diplomats for decades. It’s been put on the back burner since the last American-led effort at peace talks collapsed in 2014 amid disagreements on Israeli settlements, the release of Palestinian prisoners and other issues.
Palestinian statehood is something that Biden rarely addressed in the early going of his administration. During his visit to the West Bank last year, Biden said the “ground is not ripe” for new attempts to reach a permanent peace even as he reiterated to Palestinians the long-held U.S. support for statehood.
Now, at a moment of heightened concern that the Israel-Hamas war could spiral into a broader regional conflict, Biden has begun to emphasize that once the bombing and shooting stop, working toward a Palestinian state should no longer be ignored.
Until recently, Biden had put far more emphasis on what his administration saw as the achievable ambition of normalizing relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors than on restarting peace talks.
Even his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, in a lengthy essay that was written shortly before the Oct. 7 attack and described Biden’s global foreign policy efforts made no mention of Palestinian statehood. In an updated version of the Foreign Affairs essay posted online, Sullivan wrote that the administration was “committed to a two-state solution.” White House officials also say the normalization talks have always included significant proposals to benefit the Palestinians.
There is no shortage of obstacles in the way of Biden’s postwar vision. An independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza is viewed as a nonstarter by Israel’s far-right government. An ineffectual Palestinian Authority controls parts of the West Bank and has little credibility with the population it governs. Meantime, a looming U.S. presidential election could make Biden a less-than-ideal mediator in 2024.
Aaron David Miller, who served as an adviser on Middle East issues to Democratic and Republican administrations, said Biden’s recent emphasis on a two-state solution was an “aspirational talking point.”
“The odds are very, very low,” he said. “It’s essentially mission impossible.”
Still, Biden in recent days has been raising the issue in his conversations with fellow leaders. Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi during a Sunday phone call discussed setting the conditions “for a durable and sustainable peace in the Middle East to include the establishment of a Palestinian state,” according to the White House.
