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two-state solution
Senate Dems, Sanders Call for US Recognition of Palestinian Statehood
"The goal of a Palestinian state can’t be put off any longer if we want the next generation to avoid suffering from the same insecurity and affliction," said Sen. Jeff Merkley.
Sep 19, 2025
As some of the United States' closest allies join most of the world's nations in officially recognizing Palestinian statehood amid Israel's worsening genocide and famine in Gaza, US Sen. Jeff Merkley and seven colleagues on Thursday urged President Donald Trump to follow suit.
The senators introduced a nonbinding resolution calling on the president "to recognize a demilitarized state of Palestine, as consistent with international law and the principles of a two-state solution, alongside a secure state of Israel."
The resolution—which is cosponsored by Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii)—repeatedly mentions Hamas "terrorism" while ignoring the alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes for which fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court.
The resolution's demands are "first, an immediate ceasefire, return of all hostages, and influx of aid. But then, a foundation for peace and prosperity for the future—and the only viable path for that is two states for two peoples," said Merkley, who was the first senator to back a Gaza ceasefire.
"The goal of a Palestinian state can’t be put off any longer if we want the next generation to avoid suffering from the same insecurity and affliction," Merkley added.
I’m leading the first-ever Senate resolution in support of Palestinian statehood. There is only one pathway that builds security, peace, and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians. That path is two states for two peoples.
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— Senator Jeff Merkley (@merkley.senate.gov) September 18, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Van Hollen—who has been one of the Senate's strongest critics of US complicity in Israel's obliteration of Gaza and even tried to visit the strip with Merkley last month—said, "The most viable way to create some light at the end of the very dark tunnel in the Middle East, and assure security and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians alike, is a two-state solution."
"Given that the Netanyahu government has obstructed that goal and the Trump administration has abandoned it, the Congress must make its position clear," he added.
Kaine said: "The US supported a historic United Nations resolution in 1947 to establish two states—Israel and Palestine. After nearly 80 years, the world has only kept one of those two promises and the lack of progress toward Palestinian autonomy has been a source of continuing tension in the region."
"Since July 2024 when the Israeli Knesset voted to deny a path to Palestinian statehood and made clear that Israel would not accept Palestinian autonomy, I have believed the US should no longer condition recognition on Israeli assent but rather on Palestinian willingness to live in peace with its neighbors," he added.
Approximately 150 of the UN’s 193 member states have officially recognized Palestine. Since October 2023, countries including Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, and Spain have either recognized Palestine or announced their intent to do so.
Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have openly boasted about thwarting Palestinian statehood. The prime minister has made clear his intention for Israel to control "from the river to the sea"—meaning all of Palestine—as envisioned in the founding platform of his Likud party.
Last month, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—who, like many of his far-right compatriots, denies the very existence of the Palestinian people—proposed another expansion of Israel's illegal settler colonization of the occupied West Bank, asserting that the construction of thousands of new apartheid homes "buries the idea of a Palestinian state."
Netanyahu signed the proposal last week, declaring that "there will be no Palestinian state"—a position shared by all 15 Likud ministers, who want the prime minister to annex the entire West Bank by year's end.
Smotrich is also among the Israeli officials who favor annexing Gaza, ethnically cleansing its Palestinian population, and opening the strip for Israeli colonization. Trump, meanwhile, has proposed US control of Gaza and transformation of its Mediterranean coast into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
Lawmakers in Israel's Knesset, or Parliament, have also worked to block progress toward a two-state solution. In July, they hosted a conference titled "The Gaza Riviera–From Vision to Reality" advocating the conquest of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in order to make the strip what Smotrich called "an inseparable part of Israel."
Critics allege that the ultimate goal of some Israeli leaders is the realization of a so-called "Greater Israel" stretching from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq.
The senators' resolution comes as more and more congressional Democrats accuse Israel of genocide, and reflects the wishes of a majority of Americans, according to recent polling.
On Wednesday, Sanders became the first upper chamber lawmaker to say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza following the publication of a United Nations commission report that reached the same conclusion. Israel is currently facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice launched by South Africa and backed by around two dozen countries.
However, on the whole, the US government—which provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic support—continues to back Israel. On Thursday, the US for the sixth time vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate Gaza ceasefire and release of all hostages held by Hamas.
This, as Israeli forces intensified their bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza City during Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign of conquest, occupation, and ethnic cleansing that aims to leave Israel fully in control of the strip.
Israeli forces killed dozens more Palestinians on Friday, the 714th day of a genocide that's left more than 240,000 Gazans dead, maimed, or missing and hundreds of thousands more starving, with no end in sight.
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'Just Tell Us What You Believe': Buttigieg Torched Over Non-Answer on Israel-Palestine
One critic said Buttigieg's description of Israel's genocide in Gaza as "complicated" is "disqualifying... both as a politician and a human being."
Aug 12, 2025
Pete Buttigieg, one of the top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, is facing a bevy of criticism, including from his supporters, after he gave a largely incoherent answer about his preferred policy towards Israel and Palestine.
Over the past several weeks, the genocidal nature of Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip has become undeniable to much of the world. Israeli leaders have openly discussed the goal of clearing the strip of Palestinians and, to that end, have inflicted a punishing blockade that has resulted in mass starvation.
Though official estimates from the Gaza Health Ministry put the death count around 60,000, many expert analyses have found that it will have likely eclipsed 100,000 or potentially 200,000 once all indirect deaths from disease and starvation are accounted for.
In an interview on Pod Save America, the former South Bend mayor and Biden transportation secretary was asked if he would support efforts backed by a majority of Senate Democrats to halt weapons sales to Israel.
Buttigieg began by acknowledging that taxpayer money should not be going to "things that shock the conscience," adding that "we see images every day that shock the conscience" out of Gaza.
"So much of this is complicated," he continued. "But what's not complicated is that if a child is starving because of a choice made by a government, that is unconscionable."
After this brief acknowledgment, however, Buttigieg proceeded to give an answer that Gal Debored of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft called "a beautiful example of sounding like you care about genocide while actually saying nothing at all."
Buttigieg spent the bulk of his time discussing how Israelis were being affected.
He discussed the necessity of "including the voices of those who care about Israel, who believe in Israel's right to exist, who have stood with Israel in response to the unbelievable cruelty and terrorism of October 7th."
He said what was happening in Gaza was a "catastrophe for Israel in the long run," before describing the United States as "Israel's strongest ally and friend."
"You put your arm around your friend when there's something like this going on," he said, "and talk about what we're prepared to do together."
William Lafi Youmans, a professor at the George Washington School of Media and Public Affairs, described this as rhetorically identical to former U.S. President Joe Biden's approach to Israel.
"Biden wanted to 'bear hug' Israel to constrain it via friendship," he said, noting that it "ended in genocide."
When asked whether he'd support recognizing a Palestinian state, Buttigieg said it was "a profound question that arouses a lot of the biggest problems that have happened with Israel's survival."
Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan responded: "Answer the fricking question."
Buttigieg later seemed to contradict his previous statement, saying he'd support a "two-state solution" to end the conflict.
J.P. Hill, the author of the Substack newsletter New Means, called out Buttigieg's unwillingness to take a clear stance.
"Pete Buttigieg talking about Palestine," Hill said, "is what happens when someone who wants to perfectly triangulate a middle position on every issue runs into an issue where [there] is no middle ground for him to hide in."
Even Ben Rhodes, a foreign policy official for former President Barack Obama and a co-host on the Democrat-friendly network that produces Pod Save America, was left bewildered.
"Pete is a smart guy and I admire a lot of what he's done," Rhodes said on X. "But I have absolutely no idea what he thinks based on these answers. Just tell us what you believe."
These outraged comments reflect a now overwhelming dissatisfaction among Democratic voters with the party's near-unwavering devotion to Israel. In a July Gallup poll, just 33% of them described themselves as having a favorable view of Israel.
While Buttigieg continues to find himself on the wrong side of that increasingly yawning chasm of public opinion, other Democrats have become much more willing to call for swift action to be taken to constrain Israel.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), another potential 2028 candidate who introduced a resolution calling for the U.S. to recognize Palestinian statehood and urged his fellow Democrats to support a bill that would block weapons to Israel, also denounced Buttigieg's feckless response.
"I respect Pete. But we need moral clarity," Khanna wrote on X. "[President Donald] Trump AND Biden disastrously failed on Gaza, and we need a new human rights-centered vision."
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Open Letter to Israel Foreign Minister Sa’ar
The great threat to Israel’s survival is not the Arab nations, the Palestinians, or Iran, but the policies of Israel’s extremist government.
Aug 11, 2025
H.E. Gideon Sa’ar
Foreign Minister
Government of Israel
August 9, 2025
Dear Mr. Minister,
I write to you following your speech at the United Nations Security Council on August 5. I attended the session but did not have the chance to speak with you following the session. I want to share my reflections on your speech.
In your speech your failed to recognize why almost the entire world, including many Jews such as myself, are aghast at your government’s behavior. In the view of most of the world, with which I concur, Israel is engaged in mass murder and starvation; you would not have known it from your speech. You failed to acknowledge that Israel has caused the deaths to date of some 18,500 Palestinian children, whose names were recently listed by The Washington Post. You blamed all the mass murder of civilians by Israeli forces on Hamas, even as the world watches video clips every day of Israeli forces killing starving civilians in cold blood as they approach food distribution points. You lamented the starvation of 20 hostages but failed to mention Israel’s starvation of 2 million Palestinians. You failed to mention that your own prime minister worked actively over the years to fund Hamas, as The Times of Israel has documented.
Whether your oversights are the result of obtuseness or prevarication, they would be a tragedy for Israel alone were it not for the fact that you attempted to rope me and millions of other Jews into your government’s crimes against humanity. You declared at the U.N. session that Israel is “The sovereign state of the Jewish people.” This is false. Israel is the sovereign state of its citizens. I am a Jew, and a citizen of the United States. Israel is not my state and never will be.
Your language about Jews in your speech betrayed the gulf between us. You referred to Judaism as a nationality. This is indeed the Zionist construct, but it runs counter to 2,000 years of Jewish belief and Jewish life. It is an idea that I and millions of other Jews reject. Judaism for me and for countless others outside of Israel is a life of ethics, culture, tradition, law, and belief that has nothing to do with nationality. For 2,000 years, Jews lived in all parts of the world in countless nations.
The great Rabbinic sages of the Babylonian Talmud in fact explicitly proscribed a mass return of the Jewish people to Jerusalem, telling the Jewish people to live in their own homelands (Ketubot 111a). Sadly, the Zionists undertook massive campaigns including financial subsidies and scare tactics to induce Jewish communities to leave their own homelands, languages, local cultures, and relations with their fellow inhabitants to draw them to Israel. I have traveled throughout the world visiting nearly empty synagogues and vacated Jewish communities, with only a few elderly Jews remaining, and where these few remaining Jews insisted that their communities once lived in peace and harmony with the non-Jewish majorities. Zionism has weakened or put an end to countless vibrant communities of our co-religionists around the world.
The Jewish Prophets taught again and again that unjust states do not long survive.
It is an ironic fact that when Zionists convinced the British Government in 1917 to issue the Balfour Declaration, the one Jew in the Cabinet, Sir Edwin Montagu, strenuously objected, stating that he was a British citizen who happened to be Jewish, not the member of a Jewish nation: “I assert that there is not a Jewish nation. The members of my family, for instance, who have been in this country for generations, have no sort or kind of community of view or of desire with any Jewish family in any other country beyond the fact that they profess to a greater or less degree the same religion.”
In this context, it’s also worth recalling that the Balfour Declaration states clearly and unequivocally that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” Zionism has failed that test.
Your government is committed to the permanent occupation of all of Palestine and stands in violent, unrelenting opposition to a sovereign State of Palestine. The founding platform of Likud in 1977 hides nothing in this regard, declaring openly that “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” To accomplish this, Israel demonizes the Palestinian people and crushes them physically, through mass starvation, murder, ethnic cleansing, administrative detention, torture, land seizures, and other forms of brutal repression. You yourself shamefully declared that “all Palestinian factions” support terrorism.
Your counterpart at the U.N. Security Council session, Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour, declared just the opposite. He stated clearly: “The solution is ending this illegal occupation and ending this disastrous conflict; it is the realization of the independence and sovereignty of the Palestinian state, not its destruction; it is the fulfillment of our rights, not their continued denial; it is respect for international law, not its trampling; it is the implementation of the two-state solution, not a one state reality with Palestinians condemned to genocide, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid.”
Israel stands against almost the entire world in its endeavor to block the two-state solution. Already, 147 countries recognize the State of Palestine, and many more will soon do so. One-hundred and seventy U.N. member states recently voted in support of the right of the Palestinian people to political self-determination, with only six opposed (Argentina, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Paraguay, United States).
Your presentation utterly neglected the powerful “New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State solution,” issued by the world community at the High-Level International Conference on Implementing the Two-State Solution held on July 29, 2025, just one week before your own speech at the U.N. Security Council. Saudi Arabia and France co-chaired that high-level conference. Arab and Islamic nations all over the world called for peace and normalization of relations with Israel when Israel abides by international law and decency in line with the two-state solution. Your government rejects peace, because it aims for domination over all of Palestine instead.
Israel holds on to its extremist position by a slenderest of threads, backed (until now) by the United States but by no other major power. We also should acknowledge a major reason for the U,S. backing until now: Christian Evangelical Protestants who believe that the gathering of the Jews in Israel is the prelude to the annihilation of the Jews and the end of the world. Those are your government’s allies. As for overall American public opinion, disapproval of Israel’s actions now stands at 60%, with only 32% approving.
Mr. Minister, the global revulsion you cited is against the actions of your government, not against Jews. Israel is threatened from within by zealotry and extremism that in turn bring worldwide disapprobation of Israel by Jews and non-Jews alike. The great threat to Israel’s survival is not the Arab nations, the Palestinians, or Iran, but the policies of Israel’s extremist government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich, and Itamar Ben-Gvir.
The two-state solution is the path—and the only path—to Israel’s survival. You may believe that nuclear weapons and the U.S. government are your salvation, but brute power will be evanescent if Israel’s grave injustice toward the Palestinian people continues. The Jewish Prophets taught again and again that unjust states do not long survive.
Sincerely yours,
Jeffrey D. Sachs
New York City
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