Jan. 21 (UPI) — Antonio Guterres, the director-general of the United Nations, blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday after he twice refused in recent days to accept a two-state solution to the dispute over land claimed by Palestinians and Israelis.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden — who has stated that the U.S.-backed Israel has a right to defend itself in the wake of the October 7 attacks by the Iran-backed militant group Hamas — seemed to indicate that the same promise of security might not be offered to the Palestinian state.
“There are a number of types of two-state solutions,” Biden told reporters after a call with Netanyahu. “There’s a number of countries that are members of the U.N. that are still — don’t have their own military; a number of states that have limitations, and so I think there’s ways in which this can work.”
Hamas has stated that its attack last year came after raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, by Israeli Police and violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers, leading to the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians in a decades-long conflict that has been on-and-off since before the Israeli state existed.
In his remarks, Guterres said that the denial of the right to full statehood for Palestine, which is already recognized as a nation by most countries around the world, is “unacceptable.”
“The right of the Palestinian people to build their own state must be recognized by all,” Guterres said.
But some high-ranking Israeli politicians don’t agree, like Itamar Ben-Gvir — who lives in an illegal Israeli settlement in Palestine’s West Bank.”I do deny a Palestinian state,” Ben-Gvir said on Twitter on Saturday. “Always!” His post was liked by nearly 3,000 people as of Sunday morning.