NEW YORK: An international conference organized and co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France to discuss Palestinian statehood that was postponed last month has been rescheduled for later this month.
“The two-state solution ministerial conference will resume on July 28 and 29; details will be shared shortly,” diplomats confirmed to Arab News on Friday.
Originally scheduled for June 17-20, the event, officially titled the High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, was postponed after Israel launched its 12-day military operation against Iran on June 13.
The event, convened by the UN General Assembly, will take place at the UN headquarters in New York. The aim is the urgent adoption of concrete measures that will lead to the implementation of a two-state solution and end decades of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
At the time of the postponement last month, French President Emmanuel Macron said the conference was being put back for logistical and security reasons but insisted it would be held “as soon as possible.”
The delay did not “call into question our determination to move forward with the implementation of the two-state solution,” he added
Macron is expected to officially announce French recognition of a Palestinian state during the event. This week, he urged UK authorities to do the same.
Palestine is officially recognized by 147 of the UN’s 193 member states. It holds observer status within the organization but is denied full membership.
Speaking during a preparatory UN meeting in May, Manal Radwan, a counselor at the Saudi Foreign Ministry, said the conference comes at a moment of “historic urgency” in which Gaza was “enduring unimaginable suffering.”
She said Saudi Arabia was honored to stand with the other nations committed to diplomatic efforts to bring “real, irreversible and transformative change, to ensure, once and for all, the peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine.”
