Biden insists on two-state solution
President Joe Biden on Friday pledged to help organise efforts to rebuild Gaza and said creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel is the ‘only answer’...
www.newagebd.net
Biden insists on two-state solution
Life slowly resumes in Gaza after ceasefire
Agence France-Presse . Washington | Published: 00:32, May 23,2021
A Palestinian woman walks past a destroyed building in the al-Rimal commercial district in Gaza City on Saturday, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Israeli-blockaded enclave. — AFP photo
President Joe Biden on Friday pledged to help organise efforts to rebuild Gaza and said creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel is the ‘only answer’ to the conflict.
Biden also said he had told the Israelis to stop ‘intercommunal fighting’ in the flashpoint city of Jerusale never he stressed ‘there is no shift in my commitment, commitment to the security of Israel’ and added that until the region ‘unequivocally’ acknowledges Israel’s existence ‘there will be no peace.’
The idea of a two-state solution — with a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel and Jerusalem as their shared capital — has been the cornerstone of decades of international diplomacy aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
US policy under Donald Trump was criticized as being blatantly pro-Israel and ignoring the Palestinians.
A Mideast peace plan devised by Trump’s adviser and son in law Jared Kushner was billed as providing for a two-state solution. But that blueprint envisioned a Palestinian state with only limited sovereignty and Israel maintaining security over that state.
The plan was rejected out of hand by Palestinian leaders.
Biden on Friday insisted on a full-blown two state remedy.
‘There is no shift in my commitment to the security of Israel, period, no shift, not at all,’ he said.
‘But I tell you what there is a shift in. The shift is that we still need a two-state solution. It is the only answer, the only answer,’ Biden stated.
Cafes reopened, fishermen set out to sea and shopkeepers dusted off shelves Saturday as Gazans slowly resumed their daily lives after a deadly 11-day conflict between Hamas and Israel.
Aid trickled into the Gaza Strip, the blockaded enclave controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, as the focus turned to rebuilding the devastated territory a day after a ceasefire took hold.
The Egypt-brokered truce halted Israeli air strikes on the crowded Palestinian territory and rockets fired by Palestinian armed groups at Israel since May 10. Rescue workers searched for bodies or survivors in mounds of rubble after what Gazans referred to in the street as the latest ‘war’ or ‘escalation’ with the Jewish state.
In Gaza City’s port, Rami Abu Amira and a dozen other fisherman prepared their nets before heading out to sea for the first time in two weeks. ‘We need to eat,’ he said after the Gaza coastguard allowed fishing again, though adding he would stick close to the coastline to stay safe. ‘We, fishermen, are scared the Israeli navy will shoot at us. It’s up to everyone to decide whether to go or not.’
The latest round of bombardment killed 248 people in Gaza, including 66 children, and wounded more than 1,900 since May 10, the Hamas-run health ministry says.
The United Nations says more than half of those killed, the overwhelming majority in Israeli air strikes, were civilians.
Israel says it has killed ‘more than 200 terrorists’, including 25 commanders.
During the same period, rockets fired by Palestinian armed groups killed 12 people in Israel including one child, a teenager, an Israeli soldier, one Indian and two Thai nationals, the police say. Some 357 people in Israel were injured.
On Friday evening in Gaza, Palestinian families had rushed to seaside cafes to breathe fresh air or smoke shisha.
In a clothes store near the ruins of a ravaged tower block in the upscale neighbourhood of Rimal in Gaza City, mannequins still wore the latest 2021 trends, but they were now caked in dust.
Bilal Mansur, 29, said all his merchandise had been ruined.
‘There’s dust everywhere, dust from the Israeli bombs clinging to the clothes. We won’t be able to sell them,’ he said.
Nearby store-owner Wael Amin al-Sharafa said he had stocked up his shop with new clothes to sell during the usually busy season of Eid al-Fitr at the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
‘But now it’s all lost,’ he said. ‘Who will pay for all this? I have no idea.’