Mladenov: Gaza deadlock, West Bank escalation making two-state solution ‘impossible’

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — A top official within the US-backed Board of Peace said on Monday that a failure to move forward in Gaza paired with rising violence in the West Bank are making a two-state solution “impossible.”

Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for the Strip under the body tasked with implementing an October 2025 ceasefire plan, was speaking at the Hili Forum in Abu Dhabi.

“I would say that if Gaza continues the way it is now, or does not move into implementing… the plan that we have under the comprehensive plan, the two-state solution will become practically impossible,” he said.

“Because, with everything that is happening in the West Bank, and with more than 50 percent of Gaza now under the control of the Israeli army and less than 50% under the control of Hamas, there is no credible pathway forward to a political resolution of the conflict,” he added.

“The only way that we can build back to that is if we have transitional governance, if we have decommissioning of weapons, if we have [Israeli] withdrawal in Gaza,” he said.

A roadmap agreed by Hamas on July 30 said that the decommissioning of weapons would be supervised by the International Stabilization Force, the nascent unit that aims to deploy to Gaza if the situation calms. It is led by US Major General Jasper Jeffers.

Hamas had pledged to hand over its weapons to a new Palestinian governing body, an arrangement that brought skepticism from Netanyahu but which Trump hailed as a breakthrough. The plan called for a phased disarmament by the terror group and a phased withdrawal by the IDF, but Israel has resisted pulling back until all Hamas’s weapons are taken out of commission.

Violence in the West Bank has also escalated sharply in recent months, mostly involving settler attacks on Palestinians, though there have also been several attacks by Palestinian assailants on Israelis, including a stabbing at a farming outpost on Monday.

Critics have accused the IDF and Netanyahu’s government of condoning or even encouraging the violence by Israelis against Palestinians.

On Sunday, Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a US envoy, told a press briefing in Kyiv that the upcoming Israeli elections were making Israeli leaders “a little irrational” on Gaza.

“We agree with them on the end state,” Kushner said, referring to Israel. “They just have a crazy election and that makes them a little irrational in certain regards but we’re very determined and we’re working through these things.”

“You can’t go in if there’s guns,” he said, adding: “We’re now starting to understand the scope of the militarization of Gaza. It is beyond your comprehension. And so demilitarizing it is not going to be easy.”