By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
TEHRAN/JERUSALEM/RIYADH (Worthy News) – Saudi Arabia has hosted the first high-level gathering of a new global coalition to press for a Palestinian state after Iran urged the world to stand up against Israel.
Unveiled last month on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution unites nations from the Middle East, Europe, and beyond.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said Wednesday that nearly 90 “states and international organizations” were participating in the two-day meeting in Riyadh.
Among them was the 27-nation European Union, represented by Sven Koopmans, the special representative for the Middle East peace process.
The U.S., Israel’s closest ally, sent Hady Amr, the State Department’s special representative for Palestinian affairs.
Faisal urged the nations to “exert all effort to reach a two-state solution” as “issuing condemnations against Israel and proposing partial solutions are no longer viable.”
His comments came just days after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei appealed to the world to form a military coalition “if necessary” against Israel after the Jewish nation struck army sites in Iran on Saturday, killing at least four military personnel.
WORLD COALITION
In comments reviewed by Worthy News on Monday, Khamenei said: “The world should form a coalition, a political coalition, an economic coalition, and if necessary, a military coalition against the war crimes of the Zionist regime, an evil regime that is committing the most savage war crimes today.”
Though tensions with Tehran remain, Prince Faisal seems to agree with these views, saying: “A genocide is happening with the goal of evicting the Palestinian people from their land, which Saudi Arabia rejects,” he said, describing the humanitarian situation as “catastrophic” and denouncing the “complete blockade” of northern Gaza.
Israel has rejected accusations of genocide, saying the goal of the ongoing operation is to “eliminate terror group Hamas” and rescue 251 hostages kidnapped on October 7, 2023.
The Hamas assault killed some 1,200 people, described as the “worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust,” also known as the Shoah.
However, the Israel-Hamas war triggered by the massacre has revived talk of a “two-state solution” in which Israeli and Palestinian states would live side by side, though analysts say the goal seems more unattainable than ever.
The Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains opposed to Palestinian statehood in the current circumstances, saying it would reward “the monsters of Hamas.”
The decision by Ireland, Norway, and Spain to announce their recognition of a Palestinian state in May prompted an angry response from Israel, which cast it as a prize for terrorism.
SLOVENIA JOINING
Slovenia soon joined them, bringing the number of countries recognizing a Palestinian state to 146 out of the 193 United Nations member states.
Yet, like Netanyahu, polls suggest that many Israelis share distrust toward Palestinian statehood following decades of terrorism, culminating in the October 7 massacre.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter and custodian of what Islam regards as its “two holiest sites,” paused U.S.-brokered talks on recognizing Israel after the war broke out between Hamas and Israel.
However, last month, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, said an “independent Palestinian state” was a condition for normalization.
He and others say Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7, which Hamas-run authorities claim killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and injured more than 100,000 others.
At least 10,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble throughout the Strip, according to Palestinian sources.
These figures have been difficult to verify, and the Hamas-run Health Ministry doesn’t differentiate between killed fighters and civilians.
Amid the human suffering, Saudi Arabia said it sees “a vital role” for the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
However, Israel moved this week to ban the UNRWA after a U.N. investigation concluded that at least nine employees “may have been involved” in last year’s Hamas massacre in Israel.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
More Worthy News
U.S.-based singer and rap star Nicki Minaj brought her global profile to the United Nations on Tuesday to draw attention to the mass killings of Christians in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, where more than 7,000 Christians were murdered in the first seven months of this year, according to the watchdog group Intersociety.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) used his first White House visit in seven years to deliver a blunt message: Riyadh is ready to join the Abraham Accords — but only if there is a real, irreversible path toward a two-state solution.
In one of the most lopsided votes in recent congressional history, the House of Representatives voted 427-1 on Tuesday to force the Department of Justice to release all unclassified documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. The Senate quickly followed suit, passing the measure by unanimous consent, sending the bill to President Donald Trump–who announced this week that he would sign it.
As the United Nations Security Council approved a U.S.-drafted resolution laying out a pathway toward a Palestinian state, new polling shows Israeli public opinion moving sharply in the opposite direction.
Martin Bosma of the anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) has lost his bid for another term as speaker of the Dutch House of Representatives, in a vote signaling shifting parliamentary dynamics after last month’s election.
A visibly angry U.S. President Donald J. Trump said the broadcast license of U.S. broadcaster ABC should be “taken away” after one of its reporters confronted him over his ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — an exchange that played out with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman seated beside him in the Oval Office.
Palestinian attackers killed an Israeli man and wounded three others in a combined ramming-and-stabbing assault in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) on Tuesday, shortly after the United Nations Security Council endorsed U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s peace initiative for Gaza, Israeli officials said.