UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday met with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where he said, "There is no plan B for the two-state solution."
"We believe that settlement activity is illegal under international law. It’s an obstacle to the two-state solution."
About 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.
The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel’s continued settlement expansion on Palestinian territories.
In early August, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat denounced the Trump administration for silence on the expansion of settlements in the occupied territories as well as failure to prop up the two-state solution. Erekat said such a conduct had encouraged the Israeli regime to continue its “apartheid” policies.
Since the inauguration of Trump in January, the regime in Tel Aviv has stepped up construction of settler units on the occupied Palestinian land in a blatant violation of international law.
Less than a month before Trump took office, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2334, calling on Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem” al-Quds.
Trump backtracked on Washington’s support for a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict earlier this year, saying he would support any solution favored by both sides.
Trump has also vowed to fulfill his campaign pledge to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem al-Quds.