Femi Otubanjo is a research professor at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA). In this interview, he speaks on President Bola Tinubu’s call for an end to Israeli aggression in Gaza, his advocacy for a two-state solution to the Middle East crisis, among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU writes

What is your thought on President Bola Tinubu’s call for an end to Israeli aggression in Gaza and the possibility of the two-state solution he proposed?

Well, I would say it’s a routine call because everybody has been calling for an end to Israeli aggression. It is gratifying that Nigeria has joined its voice on a global scale.

The destruction by Israel and the deprivations cannot be accepted and cannot continue. We hope that Israel will listen because the ball is in Israel’s court. Hamas also has to agree to some peace deal.

There’s been some frustration with Hamas about rejecting the peace deal up to the point that Qatar has decided to withdraw its participation in the peace deal and countries like the U.S. are calling for Palestinian representatives to be sent away from Doha since the whole purpose of their staying in Doha is to encourage them to make peace with Israel.

On the two-state solution that has been around for a very long time; the beginning of the Israeli crisis was the two-state solution, the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1937 period of the declaration.

Of course, in 1947, the UN declaration of a two-state, a proposal to set up two states in Palestine, one for the Jews and one for the Arabs. Ironically, the Arabs were the ones who rejected it and consistently rejected the two-state solution.

But gradually, it became fashionable. It was suggested during the period of the PLO that the two-state solution is the best way forward. The PLO initially rejected the idea under Arafat, suggesting that there should only be one state in the region.

But later on, by 1988, it had succumbed to the idea and was ready to accept a two-state solution. In 1993 and 1994, there was what we call the Oslo Accord, which proposed a two-state solution. And in 2003, we had the United States proposal for a Palestinian state.

The problem now is that Israel has suddenly become weary of accepting the two-state solution for very many reasons. One is that Israeli settlements have taken over most of the land that would have been part of the Palestinian state, maybe almost 50 years of occupation.

And I’m not sure they know how to get out of that. Then, there’s the danger that they have always indicated of having a sovereign Arab State beside them, given the danger that that state could be taken over by radical elements like Hamas and Hezbollah. That has been the problem. When Gaza was under the PLO, it was taken over gradually by Hamas.

Now, Lebanon has been virtually occupied by Hezbollah, and Israel is weary that its survival might not be guaranteed if a state is created nearby. There’s also the problem that the Arabs themselves have not renounced militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas’s commitment to the destruction of Israel.

So, if you have the destruction of Israel as a central agenda of these radical groups, how can you now succumb to the idea of the two-state solution? So, there are issues to be cleared on both sides. You need to get Hamas and the radical groups, the Arabs, to accept the idea of Israel that Israel must survive. Israel must have a guarantee of survival. Israel must have that guarantee maybe from the United Nations.

Another solution would be for Israeli security to be guaranteed by the U.S., or maybe Israel actually to be a member of NATO, so that there will be a mutual defense agreement with other NATO members, which will guarantee some safety for Israel. But the reality, of course, is that the situation has become more complicated than it was before. But it is, by any stretch of the imagination, the best solution to the crisis.

How relevant is the United Nations at this point, seeing that it’s quite powerless in finding a solution to the crisis in the Middle East or even getting both sides to the negotiation table?

Well, the United Nations has been very active on the matter of the Middle East. If you go into their books, they have hundreds of resolutions.

However, the United Nations is not a supranational organisation. It’s an international organisation. It does not have any power over and above what the states are allowing to apply.

But more critically is the role of the major powers, particularly the veto powers in the Security Council. Unless there is agreement and unanimity amongst them, nothing can happen because most of the time, United Nations resolutions are vetoed by the United States, the UK and France.

And therefore, in as much as the UN prefers to have peace in the region, supports the two-state solution, and has always called for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories, nothing has been achieved because every attempt to impose sanctions on Israel has been frustrated by the veto-wielding powers.

So, it is not a United Nations failure. Indeed, the United Nations has to be applauded for keeping it on the burner all the time. It’s a major element of its operations.

It’s one of the biggest elements of its agenda to see a solution in the Middle East because the problem of the Middle East is the problem of the world. It has held the world back for more than 70 years and everybody is anxious to get out of it. Maybe, the two-state solution will be the answer to that problem.

What impact, if any, is Donald Trump’s presidency likely to have on the crisis and do you think he’ll be able to broker a ceasefire when he gets into office?

I hope he will be. The instinct that one has about Trump, of course, is that he will be more pro-Israel. Remember that he was the first to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel despite opposition and insistence from the rest of the world.

We hope that his forceful character and his special relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu and others can bring a change in the trajectory of the resolution of the problem.

Again, I’m not sure what influence he will have on Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. If you continue to be hostile to Iran and sponsor what they call, acts of resistance, it might not be as easy as Trump himself makes it look. Trump thinks that he can solve the problem by just cutting off this and that.

That’s so simplistic. But the expectation and the hope and the prayer is that Trump should make a difference, so that this problem can begin to be resolved and the world can be saved from the carnage and the devastation of war in that region.

Some analysts have described the two-state solution as stillborn. Some say it cannot be revived, considering the exponential growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Some also say that partitioning Israel and Palestine will be bloodier than India and Pakistan. What are your thoughts on these?

It has already been very bloody. I mean, more than 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza. Many thousands were killed during all the wars, the Yom Kippur War, and the 1967 War.

There has been blood all over the place. But is there any alternative? I think the idea is to try to look at the obstacles and see what can be achieved through sacrifices. The settlements constitute a major challenge. But they are settlements anyway, and there will always be a solution once the big powers are ready to guarantee it.

What is more critical to the Israelis is the security of Israel. The Arabs have to work on those states that are still resisting the existence of Israel to openly declare that Israel has a right to existence. If they don’t abandon this resolution to destroy Israel, then you cannot begin to talk.

Those things can be done diplomatically. And I hope that Israel will be ready to make concessions once its security is guaranteed. That is where we should be looking at; the guarantee of Israel’s survival. But it must be preceded by a renunciation of the commitment to her destruction by those who want to destroy her.

If you don’t have that, Israel will not have the psychological disposition to want to negotiate for a two-state solution. But by any stretch of the imagination, there is no alternative to the two-state solution.

Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, says a sovereign Palestinian state poses an existential danger to Israel. He has also vowed not to compromise on full Israeli security control of west of Jordan. He says he’s going to eradicate Hamas and all other terror-affiliated groups in the region. In this kind of situation; how do you bring him to the negotiation table?

In any country, there are extreme views and extreme perspectives. Netanyahu belongs to the right, not necessarily the far right.

There are still people for the right who say all kinds of things that appear to be crazy but in diplomacy like in that James Bond film – ‘Never say Never’ – everything is about negotiation. And the point I made is that the key point is the survival and the security of Israel. That has to be guaranteed.

And it can be guaranteed by the United States aligning itself with Israel as its protector or Israel joining NATO and entering into a common mutual defence agreement, which will mean that anybody who attacks Israel will be attacking NATO.

But first, there must be a renunciation of the commitment to the agenda of destroying Israel. You need all that to take place before the hard views that are still circulating will be weakened. And Netanyahu is not the only perspective in Israel.

Many people are on the other side, who believe that peace must be made with the Arabs for Israel to enjoy its sovereignty. So, those voices can take over the place and help to negotiate a different kind of peace. Netanyahu is not the only voice in Israel and I hope that those voices of reason will prevail in the long run, if not now.