Writing in Wednesday’s New York Times, Israel’s former minister of defense, Benny Gantz, criticized the growing wave of Western governments recognizing the state of Palestine. “The growing support in the West for recognition is too often framed as a rebuke of both Mr. Netanyahu and his war policies,” Gantz wrote, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The truth is that international recognition of Palestinian statehood under current conditions is not a rejection of Mr. Netanyahu. It is a rejection of Israel’s bipartisan security consensus.”
On this, at least, Gantz is right.
While his article rests on a number of highly contestable claims, the world is indeed rejecting Israel’s current bipartisan security consensus. And that’s a good thing.
It is reasonable and just to reject any “security consensus” in any country that rests on apartheid and leads to genocide. Indeed, by deferring to Israel’s bipartisan commitment to crushing Palestinian rights, Western states have helped create the crisis we face today. To the extent that recognizing Palestinian statehood represents a step toward ending that deference, it’s a long overdue move in the right direction.
But it is nowhere near enough.
As Marc Lynch and Shibley Telhami wrote in a July Foreign Affairs piece, there is a danger in treating recognition as an end in itself. “If formal recognition becomes a substitute for defending the primacy of international law and addressing the core realities of Palestinian suffering,” they write, “it would be at best a hollow gesture—and at worst an epic misallocation of scarce international political capital.”
Having recognized the state of Palestine, Western governments must therefore act in response to the ongoing colonization and dismemberment of that state in concrete, not just symbolic, ways. All these governments should immediately take steps to uphold international law and put real pressure on the Israeli government to stop its campaign of forced displacement, starvation, and slaughter in Gaza, as well as its illegal annexation of the West Bank. They should cease arms sales to Israel, suspend other forms of cooperation, and enforce international court orders against Israeli officials credibly implicated in human rights abuses and war crimes.
Europe should take the lead in these efforts. The European Union’s recent failure to suspend its association agreement with Israel was, in the words of Amnesty International’s secretary-general, Agnès Callamard, “a cruel and unlawful betrayal,” but EU officials are now apparently revisiting this decision. The EU should also consider suspension of joint R&D projects under the Horizon Europe program. Individual EU states also can and should move forward with their own individual measures opposing violations of international law. Europe is the destination for almost one-third of Israeli exports. Governments should use this leverage and impose a broad ban on trade with Israel’s illegal settlements.
Meanwhile, judging from U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech at the United Nations, the United States will almost certainly continue to be part of the problem. But there are things that pro-peace politicians in America can still do. Members of Congress can sign on to measures endorsing Palestinian statehood, such as the House letter led by Rep. Ro Khanna. Sen. Jeff Merkley has also introduced a resolution calling on the United States to recognize Palestine, which a number of his Senate colleagues have already co-sponsored. But most importantly, Congress should support measures to block arms sales to Israel, such as Rep. Delia Ramirez’s Block the Bombs Act, alongside other resolutions of disapproval to stop further weapons transfers. It is unlikely that these measures will change U.S. policy in the short term, but they are helpful in demonstrating that the era of the West’s blank check for Israel is ending.
Getting back to Gantz. While no country’s political consensus should be allowed to function as a shield of perpetual impunity, the truth is that any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have to engage with the realities of both Israeli and Palestinian domestic politics. That’s why countries imposing sanctions on Israel for its international lawbreaking should be clear that they will end as soon as Israel’s lawbreaking ends. The goal is not to punish Israel but to secure the peaceful coexistence of all the people in Israel and Palestine.
With each new Israeli settlement built in occupied territory, the prospects for a two-state solution, as traditionally understood, grow dimmer. This has, understandably, led many to conclude that advocacy for a Palestinian state is delusional. But so far, Israel has never felt real, tangible consequences for policies aimed at destroying the prospect of Palestinian statehood. Imposing those consequences today is necessary to keep any hope for a just solution alive.
At the U.N. on Tuesday, Trump claimed that recognizing a Palestinian state was a “reward” for terrorism. But the opposite is closer to the truth: political recognition rewards diplomacy. It was the world’s repeated failure to provide it in the past that helped Hamas thrive. Hamas’s savage Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s barbaric reprisal have shown once again that the status quo of occupation and blockade are unsustainable. Acknowledging that isn’t rewarding terrorism, it’s recognizing reality: People will simply not agree to be caged in perpetuity. In the absence of peaceful tools for liberation, they will choose violent ones.
Ending the Gaza genocide should be the world’s most urgent priority. If followed by concrete measures, then support for Palestinian statehood and self-determination can be an important part of this. Creating a credible nonviolent path to Palestinian liberation is the best way to avoid future bloodshed. Closing off that path to avoid rewarding terrorism will only lead to more of it.
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