Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
Let med first thank our co-chairs, HH Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud and HE Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot of Kingdom of Saudia Arabia and France, for bringing us together.
Let me thank you in particular, prince Faisal, for the very close cooperation that we have established, KSA and Norway together with the EU, establishing the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution. And let me also commend the bold move of President Emmanuel Macron in announcing his upcoming recognition of Palestine.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The carnage must stop. The situation in Gaza is dystopic. It is horrific. It is unbearable. And it is unacceptable. It is frankly a disgrace to humanity.
The fact that children, women, and men are dying from bombs, from bullets, from burns, from starvation, from disease, cannot continue. This war must end.
Humanitarian support must come in. Hostages must be released. We have to get out of this total horrific man-made catastrophe immediately. We need to end the war.
But ending the war in Gaza is not enough. We need to look beyond that. Look beyond the immediate. We also need to end the conflict. The conflict is decades old. It has been with us since the very young United Nations was deciding on how to divide the British mandate territory of Palestine into what was supposed to be a Jewish state of Israel and a state for the Palestinian people.
One of the states is there. We recognised Israel in 1949. We were happy that Israel was established as the expression of the long dream of establishing a Jewish homeland. But the other state never came around.
Working to end the conflict is also about fulfilling this promise that was never completed, never fulfilled, which is an integral part of the history of the world, and the history of our United Nations.
It’s an obligation that we share. And it’s an obligation to which we now have to deliver.
As the Secretary General said, it’s about the right to self-determination which applies also to the Palestinian people – as it does to other peoples of the planet.
And as the highest court in the world, the ICJ, has clearly established; Israel’s occupation is illegal. It has to come to an end. And the recent call supported by the Israeli Knesset to annex part of the Israeli-occupied territory, a blatant violation of international law.
International law and rules are only rules if they apply to all people, all the time. If they only apply to some people some of the time, it is rather a menu from which we choose our arguments to punish our adversaries - but they are not rules.
A very integral part of Norway’s approach to this, and to so many other conflicts, is that international law and international human rights law, international humanitarian law apply to all people in all circumstances all the time. Otherwise, we do not have a world community of principles. These principles are frankly being made a mockery of, in what is happening in Gaza at this time.
We also have an obligation to prevent genocide. And while the ICJ has not expressed a final conclusion in the ‘Genocide case’, it has advised Israel very clearly. According to article 2 of the Convention to Prevent Genocide, Israel has obligations to avoid anything that could lead in that direction. But also the rest of us have obligations to ensure that we are in no way contributing to anything that could lead to such an outcome. We take it seriously. Norway has no arms’ sales to Israel. We have targeted sanctions that we have established with like-minded countries on specific ministers in the Israeli government. We are moving from strong warnings against trade, to outlawing trade with settler activity and the occupied territories. And we are also working with colleagues to take all the measures to underline these principles.
We also work very intensively on the issue of humanitarian delivery. The current model simply does not work. It is both a violation of key humanitarian principles of separation between military and political targets in the delivery of aid. And on top of this, it frankly does not work.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I come from Norway. I come from Oslo. Oslo is also associated with the Oslo accords. There were many good things about the Oslo accords of 1993, which followed the Madrid conference in 1991. At a time of hope. Time of opportunity in the international community.
The idea was to build the Palestinian state bottom up
To try to establish the institutions, build the apparatus of a state, as we were solving solving the outstanding issues. And then eventually come to the place where we could recognize a pal state.
All these years, we were aiming for recognition. But as an outcome of the process- rather than contribution to a process.
There was one flaw. And I say that someone who comes from Oslo and hence have been involved in this for many years. One big flaw – a serious flaw - there were no sanctions or consequences for non-action.
We basically stalled a system in which – if that party that at any given time wanted to see least change, least progress or no change to simply by not turning up to meetings, by not engaging in the process, could simply stall it.
When we, together with Spain, Irland and Slovenia, decided to recognise Palestine as a state in May last year, it was the conclusion of a long reflection on the fact that there was no process to wait for. There were no real talks that could agree to an agreed settlement. We need to change the paradigm. And I’m very happy we did that. And I very much appreciate that more countries are following.
And frankly it does not feel very lonely. Right now, 149 of the 193 of the UN member states have recognised the state of Palestine. With France it makes 150. It is not a lonely club – it is the majority of countries. But it would be really, really good if we saw more announcements as we come to the General Assembly. And what I hear from meetings today, it is likely to happen.
We now know very well that recognising the state of Palestine does not magically establish a state in practice. We have known this all the time. But it’s part of a broader process. We need universal recognition. We need to invest, to support, to help build, and reform and develop the institutions of the Palestinian governance.
We work very concretely on that – including in the working group on the economy of Palestine that we have been co-chairing in this conference together with Japan.
We also welcome the willingness of many of the Arab states – led again by Saudi Arabia of normalising relations with Israel when time is ripe.
And we welcome the statement of many counties in the region that they want to contribute to security guarantees for Israel and Palestine alike.
This is a broad package, and this is the strategy of how we can go from statements to real action. So I encourage further development of this thinking.
But I also want to come with a warning. The Palestinian institutions that were established more than 30 years ago are being eroded as we speak. By settler activities, settler violence, a lot of Israeli activity in the West Bank that is undermining their capacity to deliver. But also by serious economic shortage.
In my meeting with prime minister Mustafa this morning, I announced an additional USD 20 mill in budget support. And I encourage everyone to do the same. But I also very strongly encourage Israel to deliver the clearance revenues that they are obliged to do towards Palestine.
This is a significant part of the income of the Palestinian government in Ramallah. And the ability to pay salaries to teachers, doctors and nurses, and the people that are necessary to run the PA.
At the very end, Chair, just as much as my country is a friend of Palestina, we are also a friend of Israel and the people of Israel. We disagree with many of the steps that are taken by the current government, but we want peace for the Israeli people.
But we think that Isreal has to reflect on the existential question; how can you assure that you remain a state with a Jewish majority while also being a democratic state?
My view is that the only way to ensure that in the long term is to accept is that there must be a Palestinian state living beside it. I think that the process of non-negotiation, the assumption that there was a process, has postponed this reckoning. But this reckoning has to happen. We are willing to support both peoples as they move towards what can be real peace.
So I hope that this conference can lead to at least two things:
First, a very clear statement of what is the majority view: We need to speed up the path to a Two-state solution - and we need to do it now.
Second, that we can deliver on practical and pragmatic solutions that can help the Palestinian authority to survive, to improve, to thrive and to be ready to be charge of the whole Palestinian territory (Gaza, The West Bank and the relevant part of Jerusalem) when the time is right. That’s good for the region. That’s good for the world. And that means that we deliver on the promise that we, or our predecessors rather, were committing to in the very first years of our United Nations.
Thank you for your attention.