ShareOSLO: The international community will have to maintain pressure on the Zionist entity after an hoped-for ceasefire in Gaza so it accepts the creation of a Palestinian state, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa said on Wednesday. A ceasefire agreement appears close following a recent round of indirect talks between the Zionist entity and Hamas, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying late Tuesday that a deal to end the 15-month war was “on the brink”.
“The ceasefire we’re talking about ... came about primarily because of international pressure. So pressure does pay off,” Mustafa said before a conference in Oslo. The Zionist entity must “be shown what’s right and what’s wrong, and that the veto power on peace and statehood for Palestinians will not be accepted and tolerated any longer,” he told reporters.
He was speaking at the start of the third meeting of the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution to the Zionist-Palestinian Conflict, gathering representatives from some 80 states and organizations in Oslo. Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, the host of the meeting, said a “ceasefire is the prerequisite for peace, but it is not peace”. “We need to move forward now towards a two-state solution. And since one of the two states exists, which is (the Zionist entity), we need to build the other state, which is Palestine,” he added.
According to analysts, the two-state solution appears more remote than ever. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, firmly supported by US President-elect Donald Trump, is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state. The Zionist entity is not represented at the Oslo meeting. Norway angered the Zionist entity when it recognized the Palestinian state, together with Spain and Ireland, last May, a move later followed by Slovenia.
In a nod to history, Wednesday’s meeting was held in the Oslo City Hall, where Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. The then-head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Zionist prime minister and his foreign minister were honored for signing the Oslo accords a year earlier, which laid the foundation for Palestinian autonomy with the goal of an independent state.
Meanwhile, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA will continue to distribute aid in the Palestinian territories despite a Zionist ban due to be implemented by the end of January, its director said Wednesday. Despite serious international concerns, Zionist lawmakers have passed laws to bar UNRWA from operating in the Zionist entity and east Jerusalem.
“We will ... stay and deliver,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told a conference in Oslo on Wednesday. “UNRWA’s local staff will remain and continue to provide emergency assistance and where possible, education and primary health care,” he said. Lazzarini said the absence of communication between UNRWA and the Zionist authorities that will result from the ban will make the agency’s work even more dangerous in the Gaza Strip. The Zionist army has been carrying out military operations there for 15 months.
With no visas, UNRWA’s non-Palestinian employees will not be able to enter Gaza and those there now will have to leave, he explained. “Continuing to work will come at considerable personal risk for our Palestinian colleagues,” he said. “This is due to the exceptionally hostile operating environment created by (the Zionist entity’s) disregard for international law and fierce disinformation campaign against the agency,” he added.
UNRWA is considered the backbone of humanitarian operations for Palestinians. It provides aid to some six million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. The Zionist campaign in Gaza has killed 46,707 people, mostly civilians. The Zionist entity claims that a dozen UNRWA employees were involved in the Oct 7, 2023 assault. A series of probes, including one led by France’s former foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found some “neutrality-related issues” at UNRWA but stressed that the Zionist entity had not provided evidence for its chief allegations. — AFP
