These Last Days News - February 5, 2026It is hard to believe that, more than two years after Palestinians invaded Israel, murdering, torturing, wounding, and kidnapping thousands of Israelis and foreign nationals, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is still pushing for the establishment of a Palestinian terror state next to Israel. There are only three ways to read Guterres's position: he is completely clueless; he wants to see Israel eradicated; or he is happy to oblige his constituents at the UN who would apparently like to see Israel eradicated.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) alone consists of 57 UN member states out of a total of 192. At the UN, 26 member states -- including Qatar, US President Donald J. Trump's "neutral" peace negotiator and member of his "Board of Peace," as well as other "Board of Peace" affiliates such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Indonesia -- do not even "formally" recognize Israel: Algeria, Comoros, Djibouti, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Niger, Pakistan, and Cuba.
"The two-State solution with Israelis & Palestinians living side by side in peace & security is the only viable path to a just & lasting peace," Guterres wrote this week "The occupation must end. The inalienable rights of the Palestinian people must be realized. International law must be respected."
The UN secretary general seems to have forgotten that the two-state solution was finally laid to rest on October 7, 2023, when Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists, accompanied by thousands of "ordinary Palestinians" from the Gaza Strip, attacked Israel's southern communities, murdering more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and wounding thousands. On just one day, more than 250 Israelis and national foreigners, including women, children and the elderly, were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip as hostages.
When Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel took place, there was no "occupation" in the Gaza Strip. The "occupation," in fact, ended in the summer of 2005, when Israel withdrew from Gaza after evacuating 9,000 Jews and destroying 21 Jewish communities.
On October 7, 2023, Israel had no security or civilian presence inside the Gaza Strip. In 2005, every Jew left Gaza; it then became a de facto independent Palestinian state.
After the Israeli withdrawal, the Palestinians could have turned the Gaza Strip into the "Singapore of the Middle East." Instead, most Palestinians in 2006 voted for Hamas, whose stated goal is the destruction of Israel. Hamas, with the help of Iran, Qatar, and Turkey, turned the Gaza Strip into one of the largest bases for jihad (holy war) and terrorism in the Middle East. Hamas, recruiting tens of thousands of soldiers, built its own army.
This period was not used to build prosperity, institutions, or peaceful coexistence. Instead, it was used to arm Palestinians, radicalize them and prepare for war.
On October 7, 2023 the "State of Gaza" declared war on the State of Israel by firing more than 2,000 rockets into the country, roughly the size of New Jersey (approximately 22,000 sq.km.), while thousands of Palestinians poured over the border, many videotaping their atrocities.
The Israeli communities targeted by the Palestinian terrorists are not "disputed territories" or "illegal settlements." They are towns and cities located inside Israel's internationally recognized borders. Even Guterres's UN does not dispute that fact. Additionally, Israeli citizens living near the border with the Gaza Strip are not, according to the UN and international law, "illegal settlers."
The Palestinians, incidentally, do not distinguish between a Jew living over the Green Line and a Jew living in Tel Aviv or any other city inside Israel. For most Palestinians, all Jews there are "illegal settlers," and Israel just "one big settlement" that has no place in the Middle East.
Although the "occupation" of the Gaza Strip ended more than two decades ago, the Palestinians' dream of eliminating Israel has not disappeared. In fact, conversely, Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip increased their appetite to pursue their jihad to replace Israel with a Palestinian Islamist state. Many Palestinians viewed the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as a retreat in the face of terrorism. In their eyes, if Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip as a result of terrorism, all that is needed for the rest of Israel to leave is more terrorism.
The Palestinians and their Arab brothers have already voted against a two-state solution many times, starting in November 1947. The UN had offered a partition plan dividing then Mandatory Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states with Jerusalem as an international city. Rather than accept the offer, the Arabs attacked Jewish civilians and looted Jewish shops, setting them on fire -- with the apparent aim of terrorizing Jews in order to prevent a Jewish state in any part of the land.
Since then, Palestinian leaders have rejected all Israeli peace offers that would have given them a state.
In 2000, US President Bill Clinton hosted Israeli and Palestinian leaders at a summit in Camp David with the hope of reaching a comprehensive peace agreement between the two sides. Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat walked away from the summit after turning down an Israeli offer that would have given the Palestinians control of nearly all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as large parts of east Jerusalem.
Clinton said:
"It was historic: an Israeli government had said that to get peace, there would be a Palestinian state in roughly 97% of the West Bank, counting the swap, and all of Gaza where Israel also had settlements. The ball was in Arafat's court.
"I was calling other Arab leaders daily to urge them to pressure Arafat to say yes. They were all impressed with Israel's acceptance and told me they believed Arafat should take the deal. I have no way of knowing what they told him, though the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, later told me he and Crown Price Abdullah had the distinct impression Arafat was going to accept the parameters.
"On the twenty-ninth, [US envoy] Dennis Ross met with [Palestinian negotiator] Abu Ala, whom we all respected, to make sure Arafat understood the consequences of rejection. I would be gone. Ross would be gone. [Then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak would lose the upcoming election to [Ariel] Sharon....
"I still didn't believe Arafat would make such a colossal mistake."
By continuing to call for a Palestinian state, Guterres is clearly seeking to reward Hamas for its October 7 massacre – and doing a great service to Hamas.
The Palestinians' repeated rejection of the two-state solution shows that their leaders have repeatedly chosen to sacrifice their own people to achieve their goal of destroying Israel.
The UN has done nothing but prolong the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the great historian Bernard Lewis noted nearly 50 years ago, the UN does not resolve war, it conserves war. Trump, who managed to contain several wars in six months, has shown the world as much.
Guterres and his UN staff, if they were honest, would tell the Palestinians in no uncertain terms that they will never "return" to Israel – even after Trump and Netanyahu are long gone -- and that, in their own best interests, they would be wise to abandon 78 years of failed attempts to eliminate Israel. If Palestinians could be taught -- and learn -- coexistence, their lives could be so magnificent. This change, however, can never take place while the UN and its scores of Arab and European camp-followers enable impossible fantasies.
Finally, Guterres might listen to what the majority of the Palestinians are unmistakably saying: NO to a two-state solution. Palestinians polled two years ago by AWRAD, a Palestinian research group, unequivocally said that they did not want a "two-state solution" -- 75% rejected any solution other than a Palestinian state "from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea" – meaning over all of Israel.
Guterres is right. International law must be respected. It is the Palestinians, however, who must respect international law by recognizing Israel's right to exist and ending their jihad to destroy it. Unfortunately, there are no signs that the Palestinians are coming around.
As Guterres must know full well, the establishment of a Palestinian state will not lead the Palestinians to abandon their determination to eliminate Israel. Quite the opposite. A Palestinian state will make them more determined than ever to continue their efforts to obliterate Israel. October 7 did not happen because Palestinians were denied a state. It happened because they were given one.
