President Biden on Wednesday called for a “concentrated effort” on the part of world leaders to work toward a two-state solution to the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, as Israel’s war with Hamas looks to reshape the region and leaves open questions to the future for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Biden, since entering office, had held off on launching U.S.-mediated negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to achieve a two-state solution. Instead, his administration had focused on a strategy of managing the conflict by supporting security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and restarting U.S. assistance to Palestinian civil society that was cut by the Trump administration.
Biden on Wednesday said there is no returning to the “status quo” in place before Hamas’s unprecedented attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, when the U.S.-designated terrorist group broke through Israel’s barrier with Gaza to brutally massacre more than 1,000 civilians and kidnap more than 200 hostages.
“That means ensuring Hamas can no longer terrorize Israel and use Palestinian civilians as human shields,” Biden said in remarks ahead of a press conference with Australia’s prime minister at the White House.
“It also means that when this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next … It means a concentrated effort for all the parties, Israelis, Palestinians, regional partners, global leaders, to put us on a path toward peace.”
Israel has vowed to eliminate Hamas, but there is little understanding of who, or what entity, will administer the Gaza Strip, which is home to more than 2 million Palestinians. Hamas took complete control of the Strip in 2007, after ousting the Palestinian Authority in a bloody coup.
Biden reiterated U.S. support for an independent Palestinian state next to a secure Israel — the so-called two-state solution — and said he had spoken with leaders of Jordan and Egypt, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on “making sure there’s real hope in the region for a better future.”
Biden on Wednesday said that his “instinct” is that Hamas launched its attacks against Israel — which might have been months, if not years in the making — to disrupt normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“I’m convinced one of the reasons Hamas attacked when they did — I have no proof of this, just my instinct tells me — is because of the progress we’re making towards regional integration for Israel, and regional integration overall, and we can’t leave that work behind,” the president said.
Biden earlier said that work toward integrating Israel in the region must occur “while insisting that the aspirations of the Palestinian people will be part of that future as well.”
He has sought to build on the Trump-era Abraham Accords of breaking through relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which were expected to include a component addressing Palestinian rights. But the accords raised concern among skeptics that such talk fell entirely short of establishing an independent Palestinian state.
At least 20 Democratic Senators wrote a letter to Biden on Oct. 4 — three days before Hamas’s terrorist attack — about what they wanted to see out of Israeli and Saudi normalization, and that included key commitments towards the Palestinians.
“I do believe this may be the last chance to salvage the possibility of a two-state solution,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a signatory to the letter, told reporters at the time.