Schumer calls for new elections in Israel, saying it’s a ‘grave mistake’ to dismiss two-state solution

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer offered a vision for a peaceful future for Israel and Palestine on Thursday in a floor speech in which he called on the president and his fellow lawmakers to embrace the vision of a separate, legitimised Palestinian state and called for a new government in Jerusalem.

Mr Schumer said on Wednesday that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s controversial prime minister, was not part of a productive path forward for the region and said that new elections should be held in the country. Mr Netanyahu’s support of a brutal assault upon the Gaza Strip while aid has only trickled in to the territory has drawn the ire of President Joe Biden and other Democrats who are facing a political price in their own party as images of the carnage appear on social media.

«Palestinians civilians do not deserve to suffer for the sins of Hamas, and Israel has a moral obligation to do better,” said the majority leader in his floor speech.

“The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel,” he continued. “The Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.”

He would go on to call the prime minister an “obstacle” to a lasting peace in the region.

The war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza has raged for months since a bloody terrorist attack on Israeli soil last October ended in more than 1,000 dead. Since that attack, the siege of Gaza has left more than 30,000 dead and thousands more injured and facing other hellish conditions including dehydration, starvation, and lack of electricity. Millions of residents have poured into the south of Gaza as the north has been almost entirely flattened by Israeli military strikes, and debates are now raging over whether the