(Adnkronos) – This week’s landmark truce and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas will ease the two-year suffering of Palestinians and Israeli captives and their families. But for permanent Mideast peace, negotiators must strive for an independent Palestinian state alongside the Jewish one, according to Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella.
“The announced ceasefire will alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians and finally lead to the return home of those who have been kidnapped,” Mattarella told a meeting in Estonia’s capital, Tallin, on Friday.
“The goal of two states for two peoples is the result not of blind obstinacy but of clear historical vision,” Mattarella said, urging support “for the further efforts of mediating countries and the goal of two people, two states,” he said.
The creation of an independent Palestine – envisaged by US president Donald Trump’s peace plan whose first phase was the truce and hostage deal – requires “the complete reversal of the dispossession of the territories assigned to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank,” Mattarella argued, referring to Jewish settlements there.
“It is essential to support the further efforts of mediating countries, so that the next steps towards true peace in the Middle East can be reached quickly,” he said.
“The alternative would be devastating,” Mattarella warned.
As envisaged by Trump’s peace plan, “aid to Gaza must be able to arrive immediately and in large quantities,” Mattarella underlined.
“It is extremely important that the Plan expressly provides for full humanitarian access and the involvement of the United Nations,” he said.
