Qatari PM says Israel must be held to a mandatory path to a two-state solution

Qatar’s prime minister calls for Israel to be held to a mandatory path to a two-state solution at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“It needs to be time-bound, it needs to be irreversible,” says Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, who also serves as the emirate’s foreign minister.

Al-Thani says Palestinian political division also must be addressed to achieve a two-state solution.

Hamas, he says, is part of the Palestinian political system, and “the Palestinians are the only ones who have a choice to have them as part of a resolution or not.”

On the war in Gaza, Al-Thani says that “we need to address how to end the war as soon as possible, how to get the hostages released and also the Palestinian prisoners, to address the issue in the West Bank,” and that another ceasefire-for-hostages deal is “going through a lot of difficulty.”

Qatar has been a key mediator between Israel and Hamas.

Al-Thani accuses Israel’s “extremist government” of calling for genocide of the Palestinians, and of carpet bombing, saying “Gaza is not there anymore.”

Turning to normalization, Al-Thani says that further normalization will not happen without a two-state solution: “All of us, we are showing our willingness to extend our hands, to have a peace agreement with Israel, if they are willing to engage genuinely in a process that will make the Palestinians have their state at the end.”