Delegates discuss preparations for the high-level conference at UN Headquarters in New York. May 2025. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 2025 – The United States, a longstanding and unyielding Israeli ally, is threatening UN member states urging them to keep off an upcoming high-level meeting aimed at recognizing a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
The meeting, to be co-chaired by France, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and Saudi Arabia, a strong political ally of the US, is scheduled to take place June 17-20.
According to the London Guardian, the Trump administration is discouraging governments around the world from attending the conference.
The diplomatic demarche, sent out last week, says countries that take “anti-Israel actions” following the conference will be viewed as acting in opposition to US foreign policy interests and could face diplomatic consequences from Washington.
“The United States opposes the implied support of the conference for potential actions including boycotts and sanctions on Israel as well as other punitive measures,” the cable read.
The United States also opposes “any steps that would unilaterally recognise a conjectural Palestinian state, which adds significant legal and political obstacles to the eventual resolution of the conflict and could coerce Israel during a war, thereby supporting its enemies,” according to the cable cited by the Jerusalem Post.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and former director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, told IPS
the international community should reject the Trump administration’s naked bullying to stop them from attending a conference on Palestinian statehood.
She said the international community has a legal and moral duty to help end Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid rule.
“The United States finds itself more and more isolated from the rest of the world because of its destructive obeisance to Israeli diktat,” Whitson declared.
“It is absolutely essential to keep alive the two-State solution perspective with all the terrible things we are witnessing in Gaza and the West Bank,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters last week.
“And for those that doubt about the two-State solution, I ask: What is the alternative? Is it a one-state solution in which either the Palestinians are expelled or forced to live in their land without rights?”
Meanwhile, the longtime pro-Israeli Western alliance seems to be on the verge of gradually crumbling?
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) last week warmly welcomed the decision jointly made by five Western nations – the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Norway–in imposing sanctions on two extremist ministers in the Israeli government.
The move was considered “an important step toward upholding justice and accountability and ending impunity enjoyed by the Israeli officials involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity, incitement to violence, organized terrorism, and genocide. “
The OIC said it “strongly condemned National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s storming, once again, of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, under the protection of the Israeli occupation forces”.
It cited it as a further provocation to the feelings of all Muslims and a dangerous escalation of the Israeli occupation’s plots aiming to change the historical and legal situation of the holy sites in Jerusalem, especially the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.
As outlined in General Assembly resolution 79/81, next week’s Conference will produce an action-oriented outcome document entitled “Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine and implementation of the two-State solution”.
Meanwhile, two European countries –Spain and Ireland– have recognized Palestine as a sovereign nation state.
Dr. Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, and coordinator of the program in Middle Eastern Studies, told IPS rather than recognizing how Israeli security and Palestinian rights are mutually dependent on each other, the Trump administration, echoing the far right in Israel, is insisting that it is a zero-sum game.
In their view, he pointed out, any talk of a two-state solution—even a mini-state on just 22% of historic Palestine—is “anti-Israel.”
“The fact that, rather than simply boycotting the conference, the administration is threatening diplomatic consequences towards nations that attend in indicative of the extreme measures they are willing to take in support of Israeli expansionism,” he said.
Democratic foreign policy has not been much different, however.
While claiming to support a two-state solution, Dr Zunes pointed out, successive Democratic administrations and Congressional leaders have refused to recognize the State of Palestine.
Along with Israel, they have vetoed UN resolutions allowing Palestine to join as a member, have even withdrawn from UN entities which include Palestine, and have opposed pressuring Israel to allow for the emergence of a Palestinian state while categorically ruled out supporting Palestinian statehood outside of Israeli terms—even as the Israeli government has categorically ruled it out.
In practice, then, little has changed in regard to U.S. policy, declared Dr Zunes.
Asked for a UN response to the US warning against participation in next week’s conference, UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters Wednesday: “I believe that all the Member States of the system will make their own decisions, according to what their own interests are”
“But we expect that there will be widespread attendance at this meeting. And the Secretary-General in his stakeout appearance last week explained exactly the importance of keeping the two-state solution alive.
With the lack of support from United States, how much of the possibility is still there for a two-state solution?
“I think the Secretary-General has been very clear and very straightforward about what the challenges are that the two-state solution faces. And he’s also been clear, as he told you last Friday, what are the alternatives to it?
“We need to have a solution where the people of Israel and the people of Palestine can live side by side in peace and security. This is the one solution that the international community has embraced and has been able to try to push forward over the years.”
“Obviously, there are challenges facing it, and they’re extremely clear at this moment. But this is the way forward that we have, and we have to embrace it”, said Haq.
IPS UN Bureau Report
