PRESENTED BY H.E. AMBASSADOR LEWIS G. BROWN, II, PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA TO THE UNITED NATIONS, AT THE SECURITY COUNCIL, 10207TH MEETING HELD ON AUGUST 11, 2026.
Excellencies. 79 years ago, Liberia cast its vote for UN Resolution 181. A vision of two sovereign homes, an Arab state and a Jewish state. One was born and Liberia was among the first to recognize it. The other has spent nearly eight decades caught in the cruel physics of occupation, displacement and unfulfilled promise. Liberia has never withdrawn that vote.
Today, this Council treats the two state solutions like a permanent destination we describe in briefings rather than a political decision we actually enforce, we deplore, we adjoin. And meanwhile, physical facts on the ground are set in concrete.
The latest UN reports lay bare a rapidly deteriorating reality across the West Bank.
Over 33,000 Palestinians remain forcibly displaced from Jenin, Tokam and Nor Shams, their homes emptied, their right of return denied. Acceleration of the E1 settlement project and ongoing land grabs threatened to sever the west bank in two, dealing an irreversible blow to any viable contiguous Palestinian future.
These are not administrative adjustments. They are the systematic burial of peace. Yet Liberia’s clarity remains absolute on two non-negotiable principles. First, security is indivisible. No durable peace can ever take root. While Israelis live under the terror of attacks. We condemn such violence unequivocally.
Concurrently, we condemn with equal severity the unbearable suffering inflicted upon Palestinian civilians where women and children bear the catastrophic brunt of a crisis, not of their making.
Hamas, an armed faction that holds a population’s statehood hostage to its own survival, paradoxically undermines the very liberation and much needed statehood it claims to pursue.
The full implementation of Resolution 2803 and the decommissioning of non-state weapons are essential to establishing one legitimate government, one law and one accountable security authority. The same is and must be true about ending settlement expansion and its associated violence in the West Bank. Second, human dignity cannot be conditional.
The Secretary-General’s reports record a staggering scale of violence violations against children across the region. No child should ever become collateral damage to the political failures of adults.
Madam President, Liberia asked this Council to measure our credibility on this issue against four tests. Protection, return, accountability and viability. If we fail these four tests, let us then drop the diplomatic pretense.
We are not preserving a two state solution. We are presiding over its slow motion disappearance. History will not ask whether this Council issued enough press statements or debated the Middle east and Palestinian question time without number.
It will ask whether when the window for peace was being sealed shut beneath concrete and violence, we had the courage to act.
Excellencies, Liberia cast its vote for two states in 1947. 79 years later, we continue to stand for the security of both peoples, the dignity of both peoples and the absolute right of their children to inherit future defined by peace, definitely not by perpetual war.
I thank you for your kind attention.
