Britain, Canada, Australia and Portugal on Sunday recognized the State of Palestine ahead of a conference this week at the United Nations. Other countries were expected to do the same during the gathering, which was designed to revive prospects for a two-state solution as a basis for peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
Recognition of Palestinian statehood — now formalized by some 150 countries — is welcome in the face of Israel’s decades-long denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination and a settlement expansion plan that “buries the idea of a Palestinian state,” as Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, recently put it.
However, it is empty symbolism at best, and at worst, a distraction from a lack of action to stop Israel’s war in Gaza and the starvation and forced displacement of roughly two million Palestinians living there. Any recognition of Palestinian statehood should be accompanied by concrete action to hold Israel accountable for its illegal, destructive policies.
Watching from the West Bank, where for decades Israel has been expanding its settlements to block Palestinian statehood, I am struck by a strong sense of déjà vu at how the push for a two-state solution never seems to take into account the one-state, apartheid reality Israel has imposed on Palestinians and is entrenching more deeply every day.
In August, in an apparent response to France and others announcing plans to recognize Palestine, the Israeli government approved settlement expansion in the so-called E1 area east of East Jerusalem. That will effectively sever in two the occupied West Bank, which is supposed to form the heartland of a Palestinian state. Israel had refrained from building settlements in the area for decades out of concern for the international repercussions. Doing so had been seen as a death blow to the two-state solution, even though to many it already appeared to be moribund.
Since Israel’s far-right government took power in December 2022, the E1 approval is just the latest in a wave of illegal settlement expansion, including the approval of 22 new settlements in the West Bank this spring. As explained in a joint statement by Mr. Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz, those settlements “are all placed within a long-term strategic vision, whose goal is to strengthen the Israeli hold on the territory, to avoid the establishment of a Palestinian state and to create the basis for future development of settlement in the coming decades.”
Israel already illegally annexed occupied East Jerusalem 45 years ago and has deepened its control of the city with a ring of settlements cutting it off from the West Bank. Since October 2023, Israel has laid waste to Gaza, rendering it largely uninhabitable, and with the new offensive is in the process of systematically destroying Gaza City and driving Palestinians into confined areas in the south. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported to have said in May that the destruction in the Gaza Strip would force Gazans to emigrate elsewhere.
Simply recognizing a Palestinian state and producing a document with recommendations will do nothing to change any of this. Instead, action is needed.
First, the international community must stop Israel’s war in Gaza, which rights groups and a growing number of other experts have concluded is genocidal, and to prevent Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Second, there must be serious pressure applied to Israel to force it to change its policies regarding the Palestinians, including repealing the law establishing that only the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in historical Palestine and recognition of the State of Palestine.
To achieve these objectives, governments — especially Israel’s Western backers — must impose economic sanctions, as some are considering, and a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, which rights groups have been demanding for years over Israel’s settlements and other violations of international law.
Palestinian freedom cannot be conditioned on Israeli approval. The power disparity between Israelis and Palestinians must be recognized. One of the biggest mistakes of past efforts to make peace was falsely equating the two sides, as if Palestinians have been colonizing Israeli land and systematically dispossessing Israelis for nearly eight decades, rather than the other way around. Neither side will enjoy security unless the root causes of injustice are dealt with.
Millions of Palestinians are a stateless, occupied people oppressed by Israel, a nuclear-armed regional superpower. A new paradigm is needed to address this imbalance and support the people struggling for their freedom, as was done to support the struggle of South Africans against apartheid in their country.
About 7.4 million Palestinians live under Israeli control, either as citizens or in the occupied territories; there are about 7.2 million Jewish Israelis. The Palestine Liberation Organization accepted the partition of the land decades ago, even though it meant effectively giving up more than half of what the United Nations had decided in 1947 should be the Palestinian state.
It was a major compromise. The P.L.O. went on to officially recognize Israel twice, first in 1988 and again in 1993. Israel, on the other hand, has continued to deny the right of Palestinians to have an independent state or self-determination of any kind. To the contrary, successive Israeli governments have spent more than half a century working to entrench their apartheid system.
The international community must finally recognize the failures of the past and the reality on the ground. No true or lasting peace can be made without the dismantling of Israel’s apartheid system. Real pressure must be applied to Israel for this to happen.
Mustafa Barghouti is the leader of the Palestinian National Initiative and a member of the central council of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
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