Hamas’s chief negotiator said Thursday the group is prepared to enter a new round of talks aimed at securing a permanent cease-fire with Israel in the Gaza Strip.
"We reaffirm that we are ready for a new, serious round of negotiations aimed at reaching a permanent cease-fire agreement," lead Hamas negotiator Khalil al-Hayya said in a televised speech marking the start of the Muslim Eid al-Adha festivities.
Hayya added that contacts with mediators in the war were under way, as he revisited point by point Hamas's main current objectives.
The United Nations chief on Thursday urged world leaders and officials attending an upcoming U.N. conference on ending the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict "to keep the two-state solution alive."
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters that the international community must not only support a solution where independent states of Palestine and Israel live side-by-side in peace but "materialize the conditions to make it happen."
France and Saudi Arabia are co-chairing the conference, which the U.N. General Assembly is holding from June 17 to June 20 in New York. French President Emmanuel Macron will attend and other leaders are expected, but Israel will not be there.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the creation of a Palestinian state, a position that was overwhelmingly adopted by Israel's parliament in a vote last year.
Netanyahu has also opposed a one-state solution, which would reduce Israel's Jewish majority with the West Bank and Gaza's Palestinian populations. Instead, he has advocated for annexing large parts of the West Bank, without including Palestinians.
Guterres said the current violence makes a two-state solution all the more necessary.
"My message to world leaders and delegations is that 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," Guterres said.
"And for those that doubt about the two-state solution, I ask: What is the alternative?" the secretary-general said. "Is it a one-state solution in which either the Palestinians are expelled or the Palestinians will be forced to live in their land without rights? That would be totally unacceptable."
At a May 23 preparatory meeting, both co-chairs called for action, not more words.
Anne-Claire Legendre, Middle East adviser to Macron, said that while the international community must support efforts to end the war in Gaza and release the hostages, it must also urgently put a political solution "front of mind."
Manal Radwan, an adviser to Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry, said action is critical because the conference is taking place "at a moment of historic urgency" and "unimaginable suffering" in Gaza.
