WASHINGTON, May 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — President Joe Biden pledged to help organize efforts to “rebuild Gaza” and said creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel is the “only answer” to the conflict.
Biden also said he had told the Israelis to stop “intercommunal fighting” in the flashpoint city of Jerusalem.
However he stressed “there is no shift in my commitment, commitment to the security of Israel” and added that until the region “unequivocally” acknowledges Israel’s existence “there will be no peace.”
The idea of a two-state solution — with a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel and Jerusalem as their shared capital — has been the cornerstone of decades of international diplomacy aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
US policy under Donald Trump was criticized as being blatantly pro-Israel and ignoring the Palestinians.
A Mideast peace plan devised by Trump’s adviser and son in law Jared Kushner was billed as providing for a two-state solution. But that blueprint envisioned a Palestinian state with only limited sovereignty and Israel maintaining security over that state.
The plan was rejected out of hand by Palestinian leaders.
Biden on Friday insisted on a full-blown two state remedy.
“There is no shift in my commitment to the security of Israel, period, no shift, not at all,” he said.
“But I tell you what there is a shift in. The shift is that we still need a two-state solution. It is the only answer, the only answer,” Biden stated
Meanwhile, in PALESTINE a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement which controls the Gaza Strip, appeared to hold after 12 days of deadly fighting that pounded the Palestinian enclave and forced countless Israelis to seek shelter from rockets.
Gaza City was quiet under a cover of fluffy clouds, with only a thin column of smoke wafting into the skies after Israeli air strikes came to a halt.
Celebrations were heard on Gaza streets in the minutes after the truce began as cars honked their horns and some guns were fired in the air, while in the occupied West Bank, joyful crowds also took to the streets.
With no alerts sounding in Israel to warn of incoming Hamas rockets, calm reigned across much of the Jewish state.
Residents on both sides of the conflict voiced relief that a ceasefire had taken effect.
“It’s a good decision to be honest with you because people from both sides are done with what’s going on,” said Amwrah Dana, a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem.
In Tel Aviv, Avital Fast said he wanted to be optimistic about the ceasefire. “I really hope that it will remain because the only thing that we want here is to live our life without any alarms or fire.”
The truce brokered by Egypt, that also included Gaza’s second-most powerful armed group, Islamic Jihad, was agreed following mounting international pressure to stem the bloodshed which erupted on May 10. — NNN-AGENCIES