By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 2025 – The United States, a longstanding and unyielding Israeli ally, is threatening UN member states urging them to keep off an upcoming high-level meeting aimed at recognizing a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

The meeting, to be co-chaired by France, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and Saudi Arabia, a strong political ally of the US, is scheduled to take place June 17-20.

According to the London Guardian, the Trump administration is discouraging governments around the world from attending the conference.

The diplomatic demarche, sent out last week, says countries that take “anti-Israel actions” following the conference will be viewed as acting in opposition to US foreign policy interests and could face diplomatic consequences from Washington.

“The United States opposes the implied support of the conference for potential actions including boycotts and sanctions on Israel as well as other punitive measures,” the cable read.

The United States also opposes “any steps that would unilaterally recognise a conjectural Palestinian state, which adds significant legal and political obstacles to the eventual resolution of the conflict and could coerce Israel during a war, thereby supporting its enemies,” according to the cable cited by the Jerusalem Post.

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and former director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, told IPS
the international community should reject the Trump administration’s naked bullying to stop them from attending a conference on Palestinian statehood.

She said the international community has a legal and moral duty to help end Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid rule.

“The United States finds itself more and more isolated from the rest of the world because of its destructive obeisance to Israeli diktat,” Whitson declared.

“It is absolutely essential to keep alive the two-State solution perspective with all the terrible things we are witnessing in Gaza and the West Bank,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters last week.

“And for those that doubt about the two-State solution, I ask: What is the alternative? Is it a one-state solution in which either the Palestinians are expelled or forced to live in their land without rights?”

Meanwhile, the longtime pro-Israeli Western alliance seems to be on the verge of gradually crumbling?

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) last week warmly welcomed the decision jointly made by five Western nations – the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Norway–in imposing sanctions on two extremist ministers in the Israeli government.

The move was considered “an important step toward upholding justice and accountability and ending impunity enjoyed by the Israeli officials involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity, incitement to violence, organized terrorism, and genocide. “

The OIC said it “strongly condemned National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s storming, once again, of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, under the protection of the Israeli occupation forces”.

It cited it as a further provocation to the feelings of all Muslims and a dangerous escalation of the Israeli occupation’s plots aiming to change the historical and legal situation of the holy sites in Jerusalem, especially the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

As outlined in General Assembly resolution 79/81, next week’s Conference will produce an action-oriented outcome document entitled “Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine and implementation of the two-State solution”.

Meanwhile, two European countries –Spain and Ireland– have recognized Palestine as a sovereign nation state.

Dr. Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, and coordinator of the program in Middle Eastern Studies, told IPS rather than recognizing how Israeli security and Palestinian rights are mutually dependent on each other, the Trump administration, echoing the far right in Israel, is insisting that it is a zero-sum game.

In their view, he pointed out, any talk of a two-state solution—even a mini-state on just 22% of historic Palestine—is “anti-Israel.”

“The fact that, rather than simply boycotting the conference, the administration is threatening diplomatic consequences towards nations that attend in indicative of the extreme measures they are willing to take in support of Israeli expansionism,” he said.

Democratic foreign policy has not been much different, however.

While claiming to support a two-state solution, Dr Zunes pointed out, successive Democratic administrations and Congressional leaders have refused to recognize the State of Palestine.

Along with Israel, they have vetoed UN resolutions allowing Palestine to join as a member, have even withdrawn from UN entities which include Palestine, and have opposed pressuring Israel to allow for the emergence of a Palestinian state while categorically ruled out supporting Palestinian statehood outside of Israeli terms—even as the Israeli government has categorically ruled it out.

In practice, then, little has changed in regard to U.S. policy, declared Dr Zunes.

Asked for a UN response to the US warning against participation in next week’s conference, UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters Wednesday: “I believe that all the Member States of the system will make their own decisions, according to what their own interests are”

“But we expect that there will be widespread attendance at this meeting. And the Secretary-General in his stakeout appearance last week explained exactly the importance of keeping the two-state solution alive.

With the lack of support from United States, how much of the possibility is still there for a two-state solution?

“I think the Secretary-General has been very clear and very straightforward about what the challenges are that the two-state solution faces. And he’s also been clear, as he told you last Friday, what are the alternatives to it?

“We need to have a solution where the people of Israel and the people of Palestine can live side by side in peace and security. This is the one solution that the international community has embraced and has been able to try to push forward over the years.”

“Obviously, there are challenges facing it, and they’re extremely clear at this moment. But this is the way forward that we have, and we have to embrace it”, said Haq.

IPS UN Bureau Report

By Mario Osava
TIMBO / FLORIANOPOLIS, Brazil , Jun 13 2025 – In 2014, Santa Catarina became the first and only state free of open-air garbage dumps in Brazil. Now, 14 of its municipalities are seeking to also free themselves from landfills and make use of nearly all urban solid waste.

The Intermunicipal Consortium of the Middle Itajaí Valley (Cimvi) expects to process in recycling, biodigestion and composting more than 90% of the garbage, surpassing the 65% benchmark reached by the Nordic countries of Europe, emphasized its executive director, Fernando Tomaselli.“We have 36 landfills in the state, only three public, the rest are private and there is little interest in changing the system, because whoever dominates the landfill also dominates the garbage collection service”: Fernando Tomaselli.

“It is a utopia,” said the executive president of the Brazilian Association of Energy from Waste (Abren), Yuri Schmitke.

“The unrealistic goal compromises the project,” he warned. Several European countries, Japan and South Korea have already eliminated sanitary landfills – the areas for the final disposal of solid waste – but resort to incineration to generate energy with non-recyclable garbage, he added.

Cimvi rules out that alternative. Its goal is to expand recycling and the circular economy of waste to an unprecedented proportion. “Our obsession is to take advantage of everything, to prove that garbage does not exist,” said Tomaselli.

But recycling has limits. Europe, after many attempts and advances, covers 25 % of waste on average and 32 % in the exceptional case of Germany. In addition, 19% of the waste still goes to landfills, according to data from Abren, which had its sixth annual congress in Florianopolis, capital of Santa Catarina, on June 5 and 6.

Cimvi was created in 1998, with only five participating municipalities, to jointly manage several issues, but not yet garbage. It reached its current composition of 14 municipalities in 2017 after taking over the management of the sanitary landfill in 2016, previously in charge of the water and sewage authorities.

Its headquarters was installed in Timbo, a town of 46 099 people, according to the 2022 national census. The 14 municipalities had 283 594 residents that year, the most populous being Indaial, with 71 549.

Fernando Tomaselli, director of Cimvi, an intermunicipal initiative that promotes circular waste management in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Landfill and recycling

The landfill receives garbage from five other “partner” cities, in addition to the 14 in the consortium, with a total of between 5,000 and 7,000 tons per month. Environmental education campaigns in schools, businesses and the streets have gradually expanded selective waste collection.

Yellow sacks were popularized and disseminated where the population put recyclable waste which, collected by the municipalities, are taken to the Waste Assessment Center (CVR I) at the Cimvi headquarters, on the outskirts of Timbo.

“Today we recover 20 to 22% of recyclable waste, against a Brazilian average of 2%. We want to reach 27%,” Tomaselli told IPS.

“We receive an average of 60 tons a day, 24 hours a day, in three shifts, Monday to Monday,” said Rosane Valério, president of the Medio Vale Cooperative, hired to separate and send the waste to purchasing companies, at CVR I, where 87 recyclers are employed.

The cooperative has another unit to process waste from two other nearby cities, Ituporanga and Aurora, with a total of 33 300 people.

“Of the material received, we still discard 30% that comes mixed or dirty with food remains, sometimes blood that attracts mosquitoes, glass and other dangerous objects such as syringes and medicines, which generate major difficulties for recycling,” explained Valério.

A bench at the entrance of Cimvi’s headquarters, made of thermoplastic produced from waste that was previously considered non-recyclable and destined for landfills. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Thermoplastic

She regretted that “we do not know the origin, there is a lack of awareness of the population in the correct disposal”. In any case, half of that 30% of discarded waste can be used for the production of thermoplastic, a hard material like concrete, which is used to make benches for squares, sidewalks, pavements and walls.

The cooperative already operates a pilot plant, with experimental production that has not yet been sold externally. “The municipalities are the initial market for the thermoplastic plates, as well as for the compost from the composting,” says Tomaselli.

Abren’s president, Schmitke, is skeptical. The consortium municipalities have a limited, insufficient demand, and the population does not trust products made from garbage, he argued.

Jaqueline Wagenknetht and Maria Eduarda Pegoretti, Cimvi’s environmental education and communication advisors, promote environmental education in the so-called European Valley to improve selective garbage collection and promote tourism and sustainable living. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

But thermoplastic has been around for four decades and now there is equipment that facilitates its production at a high temperature, 160 degrees Celsius, and as an input, half of the plastic that is added to other waste, such as textiles, is enough, countered the director of Cimvi.

The use of local waste will take a leap forward with the inauguration of CVR II, which is expected in early 2026 and will use a large part of the organic waste for the production of biogas and biofertilizers. Another part will go to composting.

“The goal is to take advantage of 100% or 98%,” for which alternatives must be sought for waste, the “common garbage” for which there are still no ways to recycle, he said.

Cimvi headquarters, in the Sunflower Park, which combines ecotourism, sanitary landfill and urban waste utilization plants for biogas generation, recycling and composting. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Bottlenecks

One stumbling block is selective collection, which needs to be perfected. “In Milan, Italy, five types of garbage are separated at the source, be it food, plastics, paper, metals or glass. Here, it’s harder because everything is mixed together,” said Tomaselli.

That is why Cimvi gives priority to environmental education, through several campaigns such as “Vale reciclar”, and sustainable tourism, which highlights the beauties of the so-called European Valley, which includes other municipalities in addition to the 14 consortium members.

The Girasol Park was also created for this purpose, a tourist complex that includes the landfill, the Cimvi facilities and the surrounding forest, with trails for walks, said Jaqueline Wagenknetht, environmental education advisor.

Design and poetry contests among local students seek to promote the valley, which is called European because its population includes many immigrants, especially Germans, Italians and Poles.

The name Sunflower was chosen for the park because, in addition to its beauty, the flower symbolizes sustainability, as a source of oil and biofuel, the advisor explained.

Design of the future Sunflower Park, in which the green buildings, in the center, are intended for recycling and energy biodigestion. In the background on the left is the landfill already covered, able to receive solar energy panels. Credit: Courtesy of Cimvi

Cimvi benefits from the experiences of São Bento do Sul, a municipality of 83 277 people, 120 kilometers north of Timbo, which has a similar program that seeks to use up to 100% of the waste.

A process of dehydration of the organic part allows a better use of the waste, explained Jacó Phoren, consultant of the company 100lixo, which is involved in the project, during his speech at the Abren congress on June 6.

Fostering new companies that generate solutions for the waste industry is another focus of Cimvi, said Tomaselli.

In Curitibanos, a city 185 kilometers southwest of Timbo, with 40 045 people, the company Inventus Ambiental claims to have invented equipment that will facilitate the separation of garbage for better energy recovery or recycling, reducing the waste that makes landfills bigger.

Its pilot project will be inaugurated in a few months and is based on the use of 90-degree heat to treat organic material, informed Dirnei Ferri, director of the company.

Santa Catarina has already eliminated open dumps, although it is ignored if all of them have been cleaned up. Now it is a matter of “breaking the landfill trench”, said Tomaselli.

“We have 36 landfills in the state, only three public, the rest are private and there is little interest in changing the system, because whoever dominates the landfill also dominates the garbage collection service,” he concluded.

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