European, Arab ministers meet in Riyadh to jump-start two-state solution

European and Arab foreign ministers met in the Saudi capital on Monday (29 April) to discuss how to join forces on advancing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“If we want to move this two-state solution forward it will not happen from the parties. I do not believe that Israel is ready to negotiate at this point, and I do not think that the US is ready to take the necessary leadership,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, one of the organisers of the meeting, told reporters after it concluded.

“So I think an Arab-European leadership is the best we can hope for.”

The meeting took place on the sidelines of a two-day World Economic Forum special meeting in Riyadh that was largely devoted to the grinding war in the Gaza Strip, which was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented 7 October attack on southern Israel.

That attack resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,488 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan is among the leaders who told the WEF meeting that tangible and irreversible steps towards establishing a Palestinian state would be an essential component of any deal for a durable ceasefire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a long-standing opponent of Palestinian statehood.

“The continued rejection of the two-state solution will inevitably undermine the security and stability of the region,” Prince Faisal said at the start of the European-Arab meeting, which was also attended by Turkey’s foreign minister.

Earlier on Monday, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters he would encourage Arab leaders to put forward their proposal for a two-state solution and that he wanted EU member states to invite Arab leaders to Brussels to present it.

“My only hope, my strong will, is to believe that if Arabs put on the table a proposal, Europeans will have to consider overcoming our divisions because it’s not a secret that the Europeans are strongly divided,” he said.

“I will propose to member states to invite the Arabs to come to Brussels and to share with us their plan because we have to try to put together our approaches.”

He also said he expected several European countries to announce their recognition of a Palestinian state within the next month, including Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Slovenia and Malta.

Currently, only eight of the 27 EU members recognise Palestine as a state: Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Sweden and Cyprus. The Eastern European countries recognise Palestine since the time when they were satellites of the former Soviet Union.

French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné  travelled to Riyadh for the latest talks on the Gaza war and “reminded his counterparts that the question of recognition (of a Palestinian state) was not a taboo for France, but must be useful in a global strategy for the two-state political solution”, a source close to Séjourné told AFP.

(Edited by Georgi Gotev)

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