‘Two-state solution is dying,’ say Euro MPs

Members of the European Parliament said on Wednesday that the situation in the Middle East is “disappointing” and the two-state solution is “dying” due to ongoing Israeli settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories, Anadolu has reported.

Elmar Brok MEP, of the European People’s Party Group, visited the Palestinian territories last month. “Hopes for the two-state solution in the Middle East have started to diminish,” he said. He made his comments during a meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs held in Brussels to discuss the results of the visit made by a number of MEPs to occupied Palestine. Brok warned of “new apartheid” in the Middle East in the light of the growing Palestinian population.

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“The Palestinian Authority does not have real control of the Gaza Strip,” he explained. “Nor is it able to impose its sovereignty over the others parts of its land.” The German MEP noted that the PA has already started to lose hope of having an independent state based on the two-state solution.

According to Gilles Pargneaux MEP, who also took part in the visit to the Palestinian territories, “The two-state solution is gradually dying and fading due to Israel’s continuous settlement policy.”

Nevertheless, he stressed, the two-state solution remains the only solution that the EU has adopted as a means to reach a sustainable peace in the Middle East.