We must not give up on hope of a two-state solution

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US secretary of state Anthony Blinken and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, in January this year (AP)

President Biden faces the daunting task of ensuring that both Israel receives appropriate reparation for the hideous assault on its citizens by Hamas, while avoiding a full-scale land assault on Gaza that can only inflict appalling mass casualties on beleaguered civilians.

Despite the laudable groundwork undertaken by his secretary of state Anthony Blinken in restraining Israel (so far) from a full-scale invasion – while progressing a potential escape and aid route for refugees into Egypt – the prospects for the crisis turning into a wider international conflagration remain.

The next few days of US-brokered negotiations in both Tel Aviv and Amman are perhaps as critical as the Camp David negotiations in 1978, in not only defusing the immediate crisis – but perhaps kick-starting a renewed search for the two-state solution that has so eluded US diplomatic initiatives for the past 50 years.