Former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana defends that any solution in the Middle East goes through the two states for Israel and Palestine. However, the also former head of European diplomacy sees it as “very difficult” to reach this scenario with Beniamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister of Israel, because “he is doing everything possible” so that it does not exist. “I would prefer that the Israeli people decide to change their ruler”, admitted Solana yesterday in Barcelona, ??where he participated in a colloquium at the Cercle del Liceu organized jointly with the International Relations Forum and presented by Xavier Mas de Xaxàs, a journalist from The Vanguard.
For Solana, president of EsadeGeo, it is better for Israel to have a State as a neighbor, even if it is a terrorist State, than to have to deal with a terrorist group. And, in addition, he remarked that if “Israel has to kill an entire people to eliminate that terrorist group, the international community will not allow it”. The former socialist minister believes that Israel’s war in Gaza can be put to an end “with a lot of love, care and hours of negotiation”. Nonchalant tone aside, Solana considered that in order for the two parties to sit down to dialogue, the Palestinian National Authority must be strengthened, which, in his opinion, “is very demoralized, without a strong leader and without hope that he can to have a future for the Palestinian people”. Whereas “the one who imposes [that is, Israel] must accept that he cannot impose everything and must lower his position” of dominance. “Continuing settlements is objective nonsense”, he emphasized. At least 700,000 settlers live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem with the authorization of the Israeli Government.
Solana – witness to all the peace agreements between Israel and Palestine, in addition to the Madrid summit in 1991, which “brought together for the first time” the two parties – stressed that “Israel has failed” in all the treaties, but he admitted that the West has also failed in its obligation to enforce them.
Beyond the Middle East, the man who led the Atlantic Alliance while Bill Clinton ruled the United States acknowledged that there is “great concern” about a possible victory for Donald Trump in November. “It will not be good for the world”, he warned and, specifically, for the war in Ukraine, about which the former president has said that “he is able to solve it in 24 hours, and that means that will make an agreement with Vladimir Putin”, emphasized Solana, author of Testigo de un tiempo incierto (Espasa, 2023).
