UPSC Prelims 2018 · Question 24 of 99

UPSC Prelims 2018 question on Two State Solution

The term 'two-state solution' is sometimes mentioned in the news in the context of the affairs of

  1. China
  2. Israel
  3. Iraq
  4. Yemen
Show answer

Answer: B. Israel

Analysis

The two-state solution belongs to the Israel and Palestine context, so the answer is (b) Israel.

The two-state solution envisages an independent State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel, west of the Jordan river. UN Security Council Resolution 1397, agreed in 2002 with United States support, was the first Security Council resolution to endorse the two-state formulation.

The distractors are all countries with well known internal conflicts, which is exactly why they were chosen. Iraq and Yemen have serious sectarian and civil conflicts, and China has territorial disputes, but none of these is framed in international diplomacy as a two-state proposal. Option (c) would have been right only if the phrase referred to partition proposals for Iraq, which is not how the term is used.

Source

The Hindu report on the two-state solution and the Palestinian and Israeli conflict.

How to crack it

Terminology questions reward reading the term literally against the news. Two-state implies a dispute where one recognised State and one aspirant State claim the same land, which is a very specific configuration. Note in your current affairs file not just that a term is in the news but which conflict it names, because UPSC's distractors are always other conflicts, never unrelated topics.

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