DAVOS: The only way to solve the ongoing crisis in Palestine is through the implementation of the two-state solution, the former director of the Palestine Investment Fund said on Wednesday.
Speaking on a panel about potential peace between Israel and Palestine, Samer Khoury -- now chairman of the Consolidated Contractors Company -- said it was unlikely to come to fruition while the current Israeli administration was in power.
“After what happened (on Oct. 7), I think all Israelis have to realize the only way to have peace in the region is to give Palestinians their state,” Khoury said.
Agreeing with Khoury’s statement, British businessman Martin Sorrell added that peace could only be achieved with strong leadership on both sides, especially in Israel, and expressed optimism about the role regional countries could play.
“The one piece of good news over the past few weeks I see is the position of Saudi Arabia,” he said. “The Arab communities, not just Saudi Arabia, need to play a key role in the negotiation of this settlement.”
Mohammed Al-Ghanim, a Kuwaiti CEO, said the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 were the result of Palestinians being denied the right to self-determination for nearly 80 years.
“You have a path-dependent approach to the Palestinians, who have been saying for 75 years, ‘We have not had our right to self-determination, we are not able to announce ourselves as a nation,’” he said.
“(The Abraham Accords have) exacerbated the Israeli-Palestinian problem much more than we believe because from the Palestinian perspective, they believe the core issue of ‘Palestine’ is being relegated and becoming secondary,” he added.
Eric Cantor, a former US congressman, agreed that strong leadership was required to enable a shift away from conflict toward peace and said that Washington’s position was in favor of a change at the top of the Palestinian side.
“I fully agree we need leadership and partners for peace,” he said. “Over the decades, the issue has been (that) the Israeli government has taken a stance it won’t (negotiate) with the Palestinian Authority, it won’t negotiate with Hamas, and look what has happened.
“The Biden administration has said the Palestinian leadership needs to be revamped and revitalized, Hamas has to go,” he added.
But Janahi was unequivocal in his response to Cantor, saying Israel was the clear aggressor in the situation
“How can you have a war in an occupied country? There is an occupier and an occupied, one side is clearly an aggressor,” he said.
“For so many years, the one side that was supposedly bringing peace is only working for one side only,” Janahi said.
Janahi went on to call the US a “client of Israel, and the rest of Europe are poodles of the US so they have no perspective of being able to work on both sides and working for humanity.”
“They are only working for Israel,” he added.
