from the AP
The U.N. General Assembly is bringing high-level officials together this week to promote a two-state solution to the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict that would place their peoples side by side, living in peace in independent nations.
Israel and its close ally the United States are boycotting the two-day meeting, which starts Monday and will be co-chaired by the foreign ministers of France and Saudi Arabia. Israel’s right-wing government opposes a two-state solution, and the United States has called the meeting “counterproductive” to its efforts to end the war in Gaza. France and Saudi Arabia want the meeting to put a spotlight on the two-state solution, which they view as the only viable road map to peace, and to start addressing the steps to get there.
The meeting was postponed from late June and downgraded from a four-day meeting of world leaders amid surging tensions in the Middle East, including Israel’s 12-day war against Iran and the war in Gaza.
“It was absolutely necessary to restart a political process, the two-state solution process, that is today threatened, more threatened than it has ever been,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
Here’s what’s useful to know about the upcoming gathering...
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