The NY Declaration On The Two-State Solution – A Futile Attempt to Save the Settler-Colonial Project

On 12 September 2025, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the New York Declaration, a renewed push for the two-state solution in Palestine.

By
Prof Mohd Nazari Ismail
Director
Hashim Sani Centre for Palestine Studies
Universiti Malaya

On 12 September 2025, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) overwhelmingly voted to endorse the New York Declaration, which was issued in July after an international conference hosted by Saudi Arabia and France.

The most important aspect of the declaration is the so-called Two-State Solution Roadmap. The sponsors claim that the declaration lays out a single roadmap toward a viable and sovereign State of Palestine co-existing with Israel, with a focus on tangible, time-bound, and irreversible steps. They also called on the international community to make progress on statehood, governance, security, and recognition of Palestine in a phased and monitored manner.

The UN General Assembly votes on whether to back the “New York Declaration,” a resolution that seeks to breathe new life into the two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians. Image: United Nations | Loey Felipe

What is glaring from the declaration is the lack of details on how to ensure a ceasefire can be achieved in Gaza if Israel refuses to stop its murderous and barbaric actions there. Moreover, there is also no explanation on how to stop Jewish illegal settlers in the West Bank from attacking Palestinians and seizing their lands which are all done under the complete cover of the Israeli military.

Predictably, both Israel and the US have rejected the declaration. Since the US holds veto power at the UN Security Council, the UNGA vote to endorse the declaration is now meaningless. The fact of the matter is the two-state solution will never come to fruition because Israel has already stated that it will never allow the state of Palestine to be formed, and the US will never force it to change its stance.

Pro-Palestinian students protest outside the Department for Education on March 22 in London. Image: Mark Kerrison via Getty Images

The ugly truth the international community must realise is that Israel will not allow the two-state solution to be achieved because it is anathema to the very objective of Zionism set by its early founders and adherents when they decided to set up a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. They were very clear from the beginning that their project in Palestine was not merely a colonial project but a settler-colonial project.

The project, therefore, requires the demographics of the state to be such that the population is entirely or predominantly Jewish. As a result, the Zionist leaders had always perceived the indigenous Palestinian population to be a significant obstacle to the project. They were seen as `aliens’ who must eventually be removed from the land.

Jewish immigrants arriving in Port Haifa, 1947.

It has to be borne in mind that in 1947, Jews constituted only one-third of the population of Palestine. Moreover, most of them were Europeans who had arrived in Palestine only three years prior. The relatively smaller number of Jews compared to Palestinians, therefore, was a problem that needed to be solved.

The Western powers colluded with the project by using the United Nations, which came up with a partition plan where 55 per cent of the area was allocated to the Jewish newcomers and 42 per cent to the indigenous Arabs. The plan’s objective was obviously to ensure that Jews were still in control, even though they constituted only one-third of the population. It also served to protect the image of the Jews as being interested in implementing a democratic system of governance there. The Arabs, understandably, rejected the plan. This led to the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, during which Zionist paramilitary gangs attacked Palestinian villages, killing thousands and driving the rest, about 750,000, out to become refugees. When the war ended, the Zionists managed to control 80 per cent of the land.

The UN Partition Plan of 1947 (UN General Assembly Resolution 181) proposed to divide British-ruled Mandatory Palestine into two independent states, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem under international control.

But the Zionists were very clear that their project to set up the Zionist state, which stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, was not yet complete. Hence, the premeditated attack on the Arab armies in 1967, which led to another war resulting in the Zionists controlling Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, that is, 100 per cent of Palestine, in addition to the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula.

But it created another obstacle for the settler-colonial project because the large number of Arabs who did not flee their land has now re-created the `demographic’ problem. The Zionists wanted the land but not the people, and they could not possibly expel them immediately from the land.

The solution was to keep the Arabs under continuous occupation. In this way, Palestinians can never obtain their rights as citizens of Israel, thereby preserving the favourable demographics. For the Zionists, Arabs are allowed to exist, but their existence in the West Bank and Gaza is in the form of a lesser human being, confined to some Bantustans or enclaves.

In the meantime, Israel continues to expand the number of settlements in the West Bank, which has been the policy of all the governments of Israel, whether they were left-leaning or nationalist. The fact is that every single Israeli government since 1967 has built new settlements in the occupied land, which they always term as `Judea and Samaria’ and consider to be an essential part of `Eretz Israel’.

Even the government of Yitzhak Rabin, the left-leaning prime minister and architect of the Oslo peace plan, while proposing a two-state solution, also accelerated the number of settlements. In fact, the number of settlements tripled during his leadership, despite this being in violation of international law.

Left to right: Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin, US president Bill Clinton, and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, in the Oslo accords signing ceremony, in the white house lawn, 1993. Image: Wikimedia Commons

The Rabin government also, in 1995, spent US$600 million on paved roads to connect settlements in the West Bank and the roads, predictably, were not accessible to Palestinians. If Rabin was serious about letting Palestinians control the West Bank under the so-called two-state solution, why the heck did he bother to spend so much money on the new roads?

The fact of the matter is, after the Oslo Accords, Israel has not made any serious offer that the Palestinians can agree to. The `Palestinian state’, which was offered to them, does not possess contiguous lands. Moreover, under the terms of the offer, Israel was supposed to be able to keep all the settlements intact in the West Bank, which encircled East Jerusalem, cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank. Moreover, these settlements are located on water aquifers, thereby denying the Palestinians control over the water resources on the land that was supposed to be their state. In addition, Israel also insisted on total control of the Jordan Valley and that the Palestinian state be demilitarised entirely. Finally, Israel wanted complete control over the new state’s airspace and borders.

In the meantime, the international community has not taken any significant action over the last five decades to make the two-state option a reality, not even after the Oslo Accord was signed in 1993. Even now, the international community has not put any pressure on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank. In short, ever since the two-state solution was proposed in 1991 during the Madrid conference and included in the Oslo Accords of 1993, the likelihood of its happening becomes bleaker by the day.

So why are France, Britain and some other countries so enthusiastic talking about the two-state solution and recognition of the state of Palestine now? The most plausible reason is that they are worried that more ordinary people around the world are rejecting Israel entirely because of the genocidal crime it is committing in Gaza. Ordinary people around the world are horrified by the extent of brutalities that the Zionists are willing to engage in to wipe out the Palestinian identity from the occupied land. The disgust is possibly strongest in the US because the ordinary people there know that their tax dollars are being used to finance the bombings of innocent women and children in Gaza. They also believe that Palestinians are human beings and deserve freedom, equality and justice. If these rights are given to Palestinians, then there is no possibility for the Zionist settler-colonialist project to succeed. In other words, the European powers, the original planners of the project, are attempting to salvage their initiative before it becomes doomed due to the excesses being committed by the Netanyahu government.

Destruction in Rafah following Israeli forces’ invasion. Image: Doctors Without Borders

Unfortunately, many leaders of Muslim countries are ignorant of the historical roots of the ongoing injustice against the Palestinians and, as a result, have made a gross error in strongly supporting the two-state solution. Nonetheless, circumstances are now beyond the control of the planners. Netanyahu, possibly the last leader of the Zionist ethno-state, the last settler-colonial project in the modern era, in his attempt to save himself from being imprisoned for his crime of corruption and to remain as prime minister, is dragging Israel down the path of self-implosion and destruction. The New York Declaration and the UNGA vote will soon be consigned to the dustbin of history, along with the meaningless two-state solution that they attempted to revive.

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