Plans announced by France, the United Kingdom and Canada to recognize a Palestinian state won’t bring one about anytime soon, though they may further isolate Israel and strengthen the Palestinians’ negotiating position over the long term.
The problem for the Palestinians is that there may not be a long term.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects Palestinian statehood and has vowed to maintain open-ended control over occupied East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and the war-ravaged Gaza Strip — territories Israel seized in the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for their state.
Israeli leaders favour the outright annexation of much of the West Bank, where Israel has already built well over 100 settlements, illegal under international law, housing more than 500,000 Jewish settlers. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has reduced most of it to a smouldering wasteland and is pushing it toward famine, and Israel says it is pressing ahead with plans to relocate much of its population of some two million to other countries.
The United States, the only country with any real leverage over Israel, has taken its side.
Palestinians have welcomed international support for their decades-long quest for statehood but say there are more urgent measures Western countries could take if they wanted to pressure Israel.
After almost two years of war, Palestinians in Gaza welcome the news that Canada will recognize a Palestinian state in September — with conditions — but some say the move comes ‘a little too late.’
“It’s a bit odd that the response to daily atrocities in Gaza, including what is by all accounts deliberate starvation, is to recognize a theoretical Palestinian state that may never actually come into being,” said Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.
“It looks more like a way for these countries to appear to be doing something,” he said.
More than 60,000 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of Israel’s offensive, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Fathi Nimer, a policy fellow at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think-tank, says they could have suspended trade agreements with Israel, imposed arms embargoes or other sanctions. “There is a wide tool set at the disposal of these countries, but there is no political will to use it,” he said.
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada will recognize a Palestinian state later this year if the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, meets certain conditions.
New surge to recognize Palestinian state
Most countries in the world recognized Palestinian statehood decades ago, but Britain and France would be the third and fourth permanent members of the UN Security Council to do so, leaving the U.S. as the only holdout.
“We’re talking about major countries and major Israeli allies,” said Alon Pinkas, an Israeli political analyst and former consul general in New York. “They’re isolating the U.S. and they’re leaving Israel dependent — not on the U.S., but on the whims and erratic behaviour of one person: Trump.”
Recognition could also strengthen moves to prevent annexation, said Hugh Lovatt, an expert on the conflict at the European Council on Foreign Relations. The challenge, he said, “is for those recognizing countries to match their recognition with other steps, practical steps.”
It could also prove significant if Israel and the Palestinians ever resume the long-dormant peace process, which ground to a halt after Netanyahu returned to office in 2009.
Rob Oliphant, parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, says Canada is ‘adding its voice to a diplomatic chorus’ by planning to recognize Palestinian statehood as the humanitarian situation in Gaza worsens.
“If and when some kind of negotiations do resume, probably not in the immediate future, but at some point, it puts Palestine on much more equal footing,” said Julie Norman, a professor of Middle East politics at University College London.
“It has statehood as a starting point for those negotiations, rather than a certainly-not-assured endpoint.”
Israel rejects calls for statehood
Israel’s government and most of its political class were opposed to Palestinian statehood long before the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas that triggered the war.
Netanyahu says creating a Palestinian state would reward Hamas and eventually lead to an even larger Hamas-run state on Israel’s borders. Hamas leaders have at times suggested they would accept a state on the 1967 borders, but the group remains formally committed to Israel’s destruction.
Western countries envision a future Palestinian state that would be democratic but also led by political rivals of Hamas who accept Israel and help it suppress the militant group, which won parliamentary elections in 2006 and seized power in Gaza the following year.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose authority administers parts of the occupied West Bank, supports a two-state solution and co-operates with Israel on security matters. He has made a series of concessions in recent months, including announcing the end to the Palestinian Authority’s practice of providing stipends to the families of prisoners held by Israel and slain militants.
Such measures, along with the security co-ordination, have made it deeply unpopular with Palestinians, and have yet to earn it any favours from Israel or the Trump administration. Israel says Abbas is not sincerely committed to peace and accuses him of tolerating incitement and militancy.
Lovatt says there is much to criticize about the PA but that “often the failings of the Palestinian leadership are exaggerated in a way to relieve Israel of its own obligations.”
Some worry that progress toward a Palestinian state is coming too late.
If in September 2023, Palestinians were told that major countries were on the verge of recognizing a state, that the UN’s highest court had ordered Israel to end the occupation, that the International Criminal Court had ordered Netanyahu’s arrest and that prominent voices from across the U.S. political spectrum were furious with Israel, they might have thought their dream of statehood was at hand.
But those developments pale in comparison to the ongoing war in Gaza and smaller but similarly destructive military offensives in the West Bank. Israel’s military victories over Iran and its allies have left it the dominant and nearly unchallenged military power in the region, and Trump is the strongest supporter it has ever had in the White House.
“This [Israeli] government is not going to change policy,” Pinkas said. “The recognition issue, the ending of the war, humanitarian aid — that’s all going to have to wait for another government.”
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