First France, then the United Kingdom, and now Canada.
Three of the world’s most powerful Western nations have added their economic and geopolitical clout to calls for a Palestinian state, an idea already endorsed by more than 140 other countries.
The moves have many motives, from a sense of frustration with Israel, to domestic pressure, to outrage over the images of starving Palestinians. Whatever the reason, Palestinians have welcomed the announcements as a boost for their cause. The Israeli government has rejected the calls, describing them as tantamount to rewarding terrorism.
US President Donald Trump meanwhile seems increasingly frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, particularly over the starvation in Gaza that the Israeli leader denies, but has disturbed Trump.
Trump wants regional peace, as well as the accolades – namely a Nobel Peace Prize – for making it happen. He wants Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel, expanding the Abraham Accords he cemented between Israel and several other Arab states during his first term. But Riyadh has been firm that this cannot happen without an irreversible path to a Palestinian state.
But the latest moves by US allies France, Britain and Canada – while in many ways largely symbolic – have left Washington increasingly isolated over its backing for Israel.
Palestinian statehood could help bring an end to a war that has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza since Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack killed around 1,200 people in Israel almost two years ago, as well as bring home the hostages still being held in Gaza.
But one of the toughest challenges is imagining what it looks like, because a modern Palestinian state has never existed before.
When Israel was founded in the aftermath of World War II it quickly gained international recognition. That same period, for Palestinians, is remembered as al-Naqba, or “the catastrophe” – the moment when hundreds of thousands of people fled or were forced from their homes.
Since then, Israel has expanded, most significantly during the “Six Day War” of 1967, when Israel turned the tables on a coalition of Arab states and gained East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian territory has meanwhile only shrunk and splintered.
The closest to what a future Palestinian state may look like was hashed out in a peace process in the 1990s which came to be known as the Oslo Accords.
Harrowing images of starving children have driven the moves by international powers, and alarmed the White House. – UNRWA
Roughly speaking, the Palestinian state envisaged in Oslo, agreed to by both Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, would be based on Israel’s 1967 borders. The broad outline of Oslo was to have some land trades, a little bit given in one place for the removal of an Israeli settlement, in a negotiated process.
The historic handshake on the White House lawn by Israel’s then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat hosted by then-US president Bill Clinton remains one of the triumphs of modern diplomacy. Rabin’s assassination by a far-right fanatic in 1995 robbed Israel of its peacemaker leader.
And while the framework of Oslo lived on in negotiations and academia, there is little initiative now. What was on offer back then is no longer realistic.
In recent years, Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank have expanded massively, often with the encouragement of the Israeli government, threatening the chances of creating a contiguous Palestinian state in the region.
Then there is the question of who would govern a future Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, is distrusted by many Palestinians who view it as weak or corrupt.
Even without all these complications, Netanyahu won’t accept a Palestinian state, which he has recently claimed would be “a launch pad to annihilate Israel.”
Some members of his cabinet are far more hard-line, not only refusing to countenance an independent state but wanting to annex the territory.
These ministers propping up Netanyahu’s government have said they would starve Palestinians in Gaza rather than feed them, and would collapse the coalition if he so much as suggested giving in to the growing international pressure on Israel.
Netanyahu has shown no intention of backing down, and will wear whatever France, the UK, and any others force on him as a badge of honor.
Without a partner in the Israeli government, recognition of a Palestinian state will fall flat, and could even entrench Netanyahu further.
It would be a big price to pay if the outcome were Israel making the possibility of a Palestinian state all the more distant.
But at the same time, with a growing number of angry ex-partners in the international community who are likely to increase their pressure on Trump to shift his position, it is Israel that may find itself disadvantaged, however strongly it protests.
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