Delayed UN meeting to discuss two-state solution begins

A delayed conference to promote the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine has opened at the United Nations in New York.

The high-level three-day event, attended by dozens of government ministers and co-chaired by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, is being boycotted by Israel and the US.

A spokesperson for the US State Department called the event "counterproductive".

Speaking at the opening session this morning, Mr Barrot said the presence of member states in large numbers "demonstrates the consensus and the mobilisation of the international community around the appeal for the end of the war in Gaza".

He said: "This New York conference must be a turning point and a transformational juncture for the implementation of the two-state solution.

"We must work on the ways and means to go from the end of the war in Gaza to the end of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, at a time when this war is jeopardizing the stability and security of the entire region".

The conference comes after French President Emmanuel Macron announced France would recognise the State of Palestine at the UN General Assembly in September - the first G7 country to do so.

The move is expected to reinvigorate the case for Palestinian recognition as the conference begins today.

Ireland is co-chair, alongside Türkiye, of the one of the conference's seven working groups.

Addressing the conference, Minister of State for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation Emer Higgins said recognition of Palestine had been a recurring theme in consultations with member states ahead of today's meeting.

"We must now seize this opportunity to end the devastating cycles of violence and make good on our commitments to implement….the two-state solution in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians," she said.

Former president of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robison told delegates that occupation and violence had reached new depth of inhumanity.

She said: "From the horrific Hamas attacks of the seventh of October 2023 and the taking of Israeli hostages to Israel's collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza, including indiscriminate bombardments repeated mass displacement and the use of starvation as a weapon of war, international norms and standards are being abandoned and openly scorned."

She said the conference must be a turning point towards a different future.

Ms Robinson said recognition of Palestine by UN member states was necessary because the "dehumanising of the Palestinians, by the extremist government of Israel has reached a critical point".

Noting that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had telephoned the Pope to apologise for the injury of Father Gabriel Romanelli, Ms Robinson said that the Israeli leader had "not apologised for the more than 17,000 children killed in Gaza or the many more children left without limbs and without family members".

Read more: Silence on Gaza will be 'moral failure', says President

He had not apologised, she said, for all the children of Gaza "who have been traumatised by this totally disproportionate war and are now hungry, to the point of starvation".

"No apology has been deemed necessary because the children of Gaza have become dehumanised by this Israeli government," she said.

She also called on member states to strengthen sanctions against Israel over settlement expansion.

In a statement, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said the conference "does not promote a solution but rather deepens the illusion".

Instead of demanding the release of hostages and working to dismantle Hamas’s reign of terror, the conference organisers are engaging in discussions and plenaries that are disconnected from reality".