France, Britain, Canada, Australia, and Malta all say they are preparing to recognize a state of Palestine at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly in September. They would join another 147 UN countries that already do so. In some senses, the move is symbolic: It will not change the realities on the ground in the Middle East, at least not in the short term. But it is a major step nonetheless.
No Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” is currently under way, the countries pledging recognition noted in their statements. This is because Israel refuses to speak with the diplomatic representative of the Palestinian people, the Palestine Liberation Organization. In effect, Israel has held the PLO and its subsidiaries—the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Fatah political party—responsible for the actions of all Palestinians, including the PLO’s extremist archrival, Hamas. (The United States, for its part, has never had a bilateral relationship with the Palestinians.)
The struggle for Palestinian statehood has been long and arduous. The PLO and PA, to be sure, have sometimes gotten in their own way. In the West Bank, the PA has overseen a corrupt system that leaves little space for civil society. And the PLO has squandered several potential opportunities to pursue statehood, especially an overture in 2008 by then–Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. But both groups have maintained a commitment to negotiation over violence, and have honored the 1993 recognition of Israel by Yasser Arafat, the PLO’s former leader. The Western nations’ formal acknowledgment of a Palestinian state under the leadership of the PLO will boost the idea that this kind of diplomacy, rather than the armed struggle of Hamas, is the path that can actually result in Palestinian independence and citizenship for the stateless millions in the occupied territories.
International recognition will do as much to rebuke Hamas’s maximalist demands as it will those of the Israeli right, dealing a blow to expansionist aspirations in the West Bank, the only territory that has any realistic chance of becoming a Palestinian state.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been characterized by a basic asymmetry: The international recognition of Jewish national rights in Palestine has never been matched by a demand for Palestinian national rights. This was the case as far back as the British government’s 1917 Balfour Declaration and the British mandate for Palestine, which took effect several years later.
Palestinians may have had an opportunity in 1947 to create their state through a UN partition resolution. In retrospect, they should have accepted the proposal, but their rejection at the time is understandable. Jews made up about 33 percent of the population and owned a mere 6 percent of privately held land in Mandatory Palestine; the UN partition resolution would have allotted the proposed Jewish state more than 56 percent of the territory. Two decades later—after multiple wars—Israel declared itself a state that would come to control the entire territory, including East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, all of which have populations that are majority Palestinian Arab. Roughly 800,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled in 1947 and 1948, followed by another 300,000 in 1967. Almost none have been allowed to return.
In 1968, Palestinians resurrected an independence movement that wrested decision making away from Egypt and other Arab countries that had been humiliated in the Six-Day War. Their crushing defeat gave Palestinians a measure of self-determination through the establishment of a renewed autonomous PLO. In the ’80s, the PLO evolved into the vehicle of a drastically reduced Palestinian aspiration: the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, all territories Israel had occupied since 1967. The First Intifada, or uprising, against Israeli rule in the occupied territories, which began in 1987, gave the PLO an opportunity to greatly expand its presence there, but it also seeded a new group of rivals, the Muslim fundamentalists of Hamas.
A breakthrough seemed possible in the aftermath of the Cold War. In 1993, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin affirming that, on behalf of the Palestinian people, the PLO recognized Israel and its right to exist free from attacks and threats. Rabin responded with a letter to Arafat recognizing the PLO as a legitimate interlocutor and undertaking to negotiate with it. But he didn’t recognize a state of Palestine, and the 1993 Oslo Accords with Israel did not specify the goal of Palestinian statehood or acknowledge the Palestinians’ right to a state. In the summer of 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton convened a summit at Camp David. Accounts vary on what Israel, then led by Prime Minister Ehud Barak, offered. But the Palestinians who attended came away convinced that they were being asked to accept an archipelago of quasi-independent Bantustans within a greater Israel. Because of an internal leadership crisis, among other failings, the Palestinians presented no detailed counteroffer. And Clinton entirely backed Israel.
The violent Second Intifada against Israeli rule in the occupied territories began on September 28, 2000. Nonetheless, negotiations resumed that fall. In late December, Clinton unveiled what is still the most reasonable framework yet proposed for an agreement that would end the conflict. But Israel suspended the negotiations pending elections early in 2001. The right-wing former General Ariel Sharon became prime minister, and the talks were not resumed.
In subsequent years, some hopeful signs for Palestinian statehood persisted. In 2002, President George W. Bush endorsed establishing a Palestinian state, and his administration voted for UN Security Council Resolution 1397, which, for the first time, explicitly called for two states “side by side within secure and recognized borders.” Palestinian divisions intensified, however, after the 2005–06 elections resulted in the acrimonious pairing of a Fatah/PLO leader, Mahmoud Abbas, with a Hamas-dominated Parliament. In 2007, Hamas violently seized control of Gaza, precipitating a split with the West Bank that continues to this day.
The Palestinians had one more potential chance at statehood through negotiations. In 2008, Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, offered an agreement that the PLO, led by Abbas, considered broadly reasonable. However, Abbas doubted that Olmert was speaking on behalf of Israel, or even his own government, given that most members of his cabinet reportedly opposed his proposal. Moreover, the Palestinian negotiators could not get anything in writing. The deal also included Palestinian concessions on issues such as refugees, and Abbas ran the political risk of being seen to accept concessions while ultimately being left with nothing if Israel didn’t follow through. Neither Olmert nor Abbas was willing to take the issue directly to the Israeli public, and the negotiations fizzled.
Since that time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dominated the Israeli political scene and dedicated himself to preventing any movement toward Palestinian statehood. He exploited the rift between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, seeking to keep both in power and at each other’s throats, and thereby unable to advance their respective visions of independence. The Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, betrayed the folly of this policy. But it also hardened the position of the Israeli right that to live next to any Palestinian state would be an intolerable security risk. In the nearly two years that war has raged in Gaza, Netanyahu has become ever more explicit in his refusal of a two-state solution. Just last month, he ruled out the prospect of Palestinian statehood, saying that it would only serve as a platform for the elimination of Israel.
The Israelis claim that recognition would reward Hamas and terrorism. But the opposite is true. Pretty much the only thing Hamas and Fatah agree on is that they are all Palestinians. Other than that, the disagreements are almost total: The PLO is a secular national movement that still seeks a negotiated peace with Israel through diplomacy, and to establish a small Palestinian state in the occupied territories. Hamas is an Islamist party and militia that wants a theocratic Muslim government in not just the occupied territories but also what is now Israel. In Palestinian politics, the binary is so stark that virtually anything that strengthens one group weakens the other.
Recognizing a Palestinian state under the authority of the PLO harms Hamas and rewards the patient diplomacy and commitment to peace of its rivals in Fatah. Already, the PLO has benefited from an apparently minor change in its status at the UN in 2012, from “observer” to “non-member observer state.” This gave it standing at the International Criminal Court and suggests what international recognition—something Israel cannot take away—can accomplish: the potential protection of key multilateral instruments and institutions, and thus the potential frustration of Israeli ambitions for further annexation.
While the world’s eyes have been fixed on the horrors of war in Gaza, far-right Israeli officials, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have effectively taken charge of West Bank, where they are stoking conflict by encouraging right-wing settlers to confront Palestinian villagers. When Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency last year, Smotrich celebrated, saying that the opportunity had come to annex the West Bank. The Israeli military has displaced 40,000 Palestinians in the territory, according to the United Nations, and extremist settlers have continued to harass and attack villagers.
International recognition of Palestinian statehood could seriously complicate Israel’s designs on the West Bank. Britain has said that it will recognize Palestine if the Gaza war continues into September, but France and Canada appear focused on discouraging Israeli annexation in the West Bank. Each is sending a clear message to Israel: End the war in Gaza, and more important, do not expand formalized control of the West Bank, the only territory that could become a true state for Palestinians.
Pushing back against Israeli annexation efforts is crucial to reviving the possibility of a two-state solution. Canada, Australia, Britain, France, and Malta are not asking or expecting Israel to withdraw from the West Bank tomorrow. But they clearly understand the danger that further settlement there poses to the Palestinian independence movement. Netanyahu and his allies know this too. Smotrich has his eyes firmly on annexation, having recently announced new settlements surrounding Jerusalem that he says will “bury” any potential for a Palestinian state.
The world must act as if a two-state solution is not merely necessary, but possible. International recognition of a Palestinian state is a key start. Without such a state alongside Israel, these two beleaguered peoples, the whole region, and the entire world will be sentenced to further decades, and possibly centuries, of bloodshed and oppression. Shrugging, walking away, and accepting this outcome cannot be an option.
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