Riad Malki the Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister has called upon the international community to pressure Israel to return to the pre-1967 boundaries.
The Palestinian Foreign Minister said the two state solution will not work and the world should prepare to eulogize about it.
“There is urgency because this conflict has a solution that may still be available today and that will no longer be viable tomorrow,” Malki told the UN Security Council during its monthly meeting on the conflict.
“The two-State solution… does not need you by its bedside to share comforting words. It needs you to save it. Absent this sense of urgency, prepare yourself to attend the funeral of this solution with all the consequences of such a death for the lives of millions of people, Palestinians and others,” said Malki.
Malki spoke in the midst of a prolonged absence of any peace process to resolve the conflict.
Malki told the UNSC that it was a mistake to wait to take any action, as if time would allow for the issue to resolve itself.
“Can anyone seriously argue that we should wait for Israel to be ready to end its occupation on its own, to wake up one day wiser and decide to redeem itself?” he asked.
“Is there anyone around this table who believes this is a rational or winning strategy?”
Israelis and Palestinians did not attend the Madrid Conference in 1991 because they wanted to, Malki explained, they went because they felt like they had no choice.
If former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir had his druthers, the conference would never have occurred, Malki said.
Thirty years later, that same kind of pressure must be applied to force Israel to engage in an internationalized peace process, he said.
