It is not time for Ireland to abandon the push for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite a lack of progress towards peace, Tánaiste Micheál Martin said on Thursday as his visit to the region concluded.
Mr Martin spent much of the three-day visit attempting to find a way to renew progress towards a settlement which would involve Israel and Palestine existing as two independent, equal states.
This has been the preferred approach of Ireland, the European Union and the United States for years but many observers now believe it an extremely remote possibility. Israel shows no sign of giving up control of occupied Palestinian territories or devolving power to the Palestinian authorities.
The country’s current far-right government has all but abandoned any pretence of working towards a two-state solution and is facilitating increasing numbers of illegal settlements on Palestinian land. This has resulted in a dramatic rise in violence between the two sides.
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Reflecting on his visit, Mr Martin did not appear hopeful of any progress in the near future, despite what he said had been a constructive meeting with Israeli president Isaac Herzog on Thursday.
Mr Herzog is the son of former Israeli president Chaim Herzog, an Irish-born lawyer who emigrated to Palestine in 1935 and who was himself the son of Ireland’s chief rabbi, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog. Mr Herzog is seen as more moderate than prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, whom the Tánaiste met on Tuesday, although his role as president is largely ceremonial.
Mr Martin said the two discussed the president’s family links to Ireland as well as the conflict and the prospect of restoring diplomatic relations with neighbouring Arab countries, a move which may offer a path to peace with Palestine.
After crossing by road into Jordan, the Tánaiste met King Abdullah II and the country’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, and visited a refugee camp hosting some of the millions of refugees who fled to Jordan from Syria and Palestine. Refugees comprise 40 per cent of Jordan’s population and half of those are under 15, he was told.
Mr Martin said Ireland had recently increased funding to help Jordan support refugees at a time when many other countries had cut funds due to the war in Ukraine.
On the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Mr Martin said Jordan was an extremely valuable and sensible partner. But the process was “in one of its most challenging phases and it is getting into more difficult terrain in terms of the settler violence and violence in Israel”.
Speaking after meeting the winners of the Jordanian Young Scientist Competition, a programme modelled on the Irish event, Mr Martin said there was an urgent need to reduce tensions.
The scale of the problem was highlighted by an incident the previous evening when a Palestinian teenager stabbed two people near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, hours before the Tánaiste was due to visit in a personal capacity.
Mr Martin said he had been “quite pessimistic for the last while” about peace as “people weren’t talking, people weren’t engaging”.
However, he said it was “not time to abandon the two-state solution”. In recent years, proposals for a single-state solution, where Israelis and Palestinians would enjoy equal rights and status in a single country, has gained popularity, although it has come with many of its own obstacles. Mr Martin called it an interesting proposal.
“Palestinians are not getting access to basic human rights and they’re not being treated the same as others in the context of international law. And that’s a concern to us,” he said.
But they also desired self-determination, he said. “We believe it is important to pursue that agenda.”
