What to know ahead of the UN summit on the Question of Palestine

What's being discussed

• The idea of establishing one nation each for Jewish and Palestinian populations, living alongside each other in peace, predates the UN's founding in 1945. Drafted and redrafted since then, the concept appears in dozens of UN Security Council resolutions, multiple peace talks and in the General Assembly's recently resumed tenth emergency special session.
• In 1947, Great Britain relinquished its mandate over Palestine and brought the "Palestinian Question" to the United Nations, which accepted the responsibility of finding a just solution for the Palestine issue. The United Nations proposed the partitioning of Palestine into two independent states, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalised, acting as a framework for the two-State solution.
• A Peace conference was convened in Madrid in 1991, with the aim of achieving a peaceful settlement through direct negotiations along two tracks: between Israel and the Arab States and between Israel and the Palestinians, based on Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973).
• In 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accord, which outlined principles for further negotiations and laid the foundation for a Palestinian interim self-government in the West Bank and Gaza.
• The 1993 Oslo Accord deferred certain issues to subsequent permanent status negotiations, which were held in 2000 at Camp David and in 2001 in Taba, but proved inconclusive.
• Three decades on from the Oslo Accord, the overarching goal of the United Nations remains supporting Palestinians and Israelis to resolve the conflict and end the occupation in line with relevant UN resolutions, international law and bilateral agreements in pursuit of achieving the vision of two States - Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous, viable and sovereign Palestinian State - living side by side in peace and security within secure and recognised borders, on the basis of the pre-1967 lines, with Jerusalem as the capital of both States.

Learn more about the origins of the two-State solution and key issues at stake here or check out a timeline here.

What to expect from the September 22 summit

Held on the opening day of the UN General Assembly's high-level week - the annual September gathering of world leaders - the initiative comes amid a deeply worrying regional backdrop: intensified Israeli military operations that have killed more than 60,000 people in Gaza since October 7, 2023; the determination of famine in northern Gaza on August 22; Israel's strikes against Hamas officials in Qatar on September 9; and accelerating settlement expansion in the West Bank.

Despite the volatile regional context, the two-state solution is regaining diplomatic traction.

On September 12, the General Assembly adopted by a wide margin the "New York Declaration," following a July conference also co-hosted by France and Saudi Arabia. It called for "just and lasting peace grounded in international law and based on the two-state solution."

To end the war, it urged Hamas to "end its role in Gaza, and handover its weapons to the Palestinian Authority." The United States and Israel, which had boycotted the July conference, voted against the text.

The September 22 summit will likely build on that momentum: French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to announce France's recognition of the State of Palestine, and several other Western countries, including the UK, Canada, Belgium, and Australia, are reportedly considering following suit.

In short: the summit's impact could inject new momentum into efforts to establish a UN roadmap towards two states.