United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres. AFP
Speaking at the High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine in New York, co-organized by France and Saudi Arabia, Guterres said: “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has endured for generations, defying hopes, diplomacy, countless resolutions, and international law. But its persistence is not inevitable. It can be resolved.”
However, he added, “We are at a breaking point. The two-state solution is farther than ever before.”
Guterres levelled his sharpest criticism at Israel, accusing it of inflicting collective punishment on Palestinians in Gaza and undermining the viability of a future Palestinian state through its actions in the occupied West Bank — including settlement expansion, settler violence, and open declarations of annexation.
“Nothing justifies the obliteration of Gaza that has unfolded before the eyes of the world,” he said. “Nothing justifies the starvation of Gaza’s population, the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, the fragmentation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the expansion of Israeli settlements, the rising settler violence, the demolition of Palestinian homes and forced displacement, the demographic changes on the ground… and the open support, including from a recent Knesset declaration, for annexing the West Bank.”
He described these developments not as isolated incidents, but as part of a broader Israeli strategy that is “dismantling the building blocks of peace in the Middle East.”
Guterres was direct: “The creeping annexation of the occupied West Bank is illegal. It must stop. The wholesale destruction of Gaza is intolerable. It must stop.”
He called for “bold and principled leadership” from Israel, the Palestinians, and the international community to prevent the collapse of any remaining diplomatic horizon.
Guterres urged leaders not to allow the conference to become “another exercise in well-meaning rhetoric,” but rather a “decisive turning point — one that catalyzes irreversible progress toward ending the occupation and realizing our shared aspiration for a viable two-state solution.”
Reaffirming the UN’s long-standing position, he reiterated that the only credible solution remains two sovereign, democratic, and contiguous states — Israel and Palestine — living side by side within pre-1967 borders, with Jerusalem as the capital of both.
At least 147 of the 193 UN member states now recognize the Palestinian state proclaimed by the Palestinian leadership in exile in 1988.
Israel and the United States were not taking part in the meeting, amid growing international pressure on Israel to end nearly two years of genocidal war on Gaza.
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