CAIRO, June 17. /TASS/. Mohammed Mashnaoui, an Egypt-based international law expert, said the administration of US President Joe Biden, will soon abandon the idea of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the two-state solution as US officials unconditionally support Israel and the presidential campaign will be over.
"The American president and his entourage have been asserting for the past few months that the US goal is to achieve a settlement of the conflict based on the principle of establishing two states that would guarantee their peaceful coexistence," he said. But, he said Washington will "reject this approach in the near future, along with the very idea of creating a Palestinian state."
"If the US intentions were sincere, it would have already acted toward this end. For example, they would have supported the decisions on this issue by international organizations, including the Security Council and the UN General Assembly, rather than blocking them at all levels," Mashnaoui continued.
"Current US policy is not aimed, contrary to statements in Washington, at resolving the issue of establishing two states," he said.
As evidence, the analyst said the Biden administration "does not exert any effective pressure on the Israeli authorities to get [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's cabinet to change its approach to ending the war in Gaza, let alone its position on the existence or creation of a Palestinian state."
Palestine’s independence and US election
The US is using the idea of creating two independent states to resolve the conflict in the Middle East as a temporary slogan in Biden's election campaign to draw some voters of Arab origin and members of the Muslim community, the analyst said.
"The American president and a group of his closest advisers believed that the Israeli military operation, which began last October, would barely last a few weeks and be over by 2024, before the start of campaign-related events in the US," he said.
According to Mashnaoui, the White House "was taken aback by the reaction of potential Arab and Muslim voters, namely their rejection of the position taken by the Biden administration, which unconditionally supported Israel's actions in Gaza."
"Biden is most concerned about the possible refusal of these cohorts of American citizens to vote for the re-election of the incumbent US president because of his reaction to the conflict in the Palestinian strip," he said.
"Israeli aggression in Gaza is going on for the ninth month with no signs of an imminent end," the analyst said. "Until the US makes it absolutely clear to Israel that Washington will no longer supply it with weapons, protect it and support it in international organizations, including the Security Council and the International Court of Justice, the real situation in Gaza and around the sector will not change drastically."
The situation in the Middle East sharply escalated following an incursion of Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip into Israel on October 7, accompanied by killings of residents of Israeli settlements near the border and taking more than 200 hostages. Israel responded with a military operation in Gaza aiming to wipe out the political and military organization of Hamas and free all hostages. In late November 2023, there was a temporary humanitarian truce brokered by Egypt and Qatar, which lasted a week. During that time 110 hostages were released, according to Israel. On December 1, the ceasefire was broken, fighting resumed and continues to this day.