As the genocide in Gaza progresses, several European countries, including Spain and Ireland, have indicated that they are moving towards recognizing the State of Palestine.
New Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris argued that a group of like-minded countries officially recognizing a Palestinian state would “give weight to the decision and… send the strongest message”.
About that, Spanish authorities argued that this could create momentum for others to do the same. Currently, most countries in the Global South, but only a few in the West, recognize the State of Palestine. As it stands, recognition of the State of Palestine is a political and symbolic move – it signals recognition of the Palestinian right to sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza. In reality, such sovereignty does not exist – rather, as an occupying force, the Israeli regime maintains de facto control over both territories and effectively controls everything that comes and goes, including people.
Recently, some steps were also taken to grant Palestine full membership in the United Nations, thus recognizing its statehood at UN level. In mid-April, a resolution was tabled at the UN Security Council that would have paved the way for Palestine’s full membership. Twelve members of the Security Council voted in favor, but, unsurprisingly, the United States blocked the initiative using its veto power. Quite predictably, the United Kingdom and Switzerland abstained. Before the vote, the Biden administration offered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a meeting at the White House in exchange for suspending his candidacy. Abbas declined, probably still bitter about last year, when he reportedly accepted a similar offer and never received an invitation to the White House. In fact, it has happened many times before that the Palestinian Authority suspended action at the UN at the request of the Americans in exchange for a measly payment, or no payment at all.
Some Palestinians and international human rights organizations argue that recognition is a crucial step towards guaranteeing Palestinians’ fundamental rights and that it offers more legal avenues to hold the Israeli regime accountable. However, it is difficult to imagine how recognizing a state that does not exist would change the reality on the ground for Palestinians facing systematic erasure.
Indeed, it is pertinent to ask whether some states are pushing for this symbolic political move in the midst of an ongoing genocide to avoid taking much more tangible actions, such as arms/trade embargoes and sanctions on the Israeli regime, to support the Palestinians and reaffirm their right to sovereignty.
For example, Spain – one of the main voices calling for recognition – in November exported US$1 million worth of ammunition to the Israeli regime, which at that time had already killed thousands of people in Gaza. Meanwhile, Ireland’s exports of restricted “dual-use” goods with potential military purposes grew almost sevenfold in 2023, from 11 million euros ($11.8 million) to more than 70 million euros ($75 million ). Despite growing calls for an end to all trade relations between Ireland and the Israeli regime, these exports continue to this day. So it begs the question; What does it mean to recognize the statehood of a people when you remain complicit in financing, arming and equipping the regime that is destroying the very people of that state?
But for most diplomats and foreign officials, the crux of the argument for recognition is that it will revive the “two-state solution” in the midst of what is being framed as a political impasse. A solution that, based on the sharing of the land of historic Palestine, does not recognize Palestinian fundamental rights in their entirety and effectively accepts Israeli apartheid. In fact, the two-state solution requires Palestinians around the world to give up their rights to their lands and properties in historic Palestine and instead accept a truncated state on the lands occupied in 1967. Furthermore, it requires that the Palestinians accept Zionism as a legitimate ideology, rather than an ideology of colonial domination.
Today, in addition to the genocide in Gaza, which saw Israeli forces kill more than 34,000 Palestinians and destroy 70 percent of the enclave’s infrastructure, the West Bank faces land theft, settlement construction, destruction of homes, and unprecedented violence at the hands of both soldiers and settlers. This reality is a quite predictable result of decades of promoting a flawed solution framework that favors the colonial division of justice and freedom.
This is why what the Palestinians need from the international community at this time is not symbolic recognition of a non-existent state, but rather tangible action, including trade embargoes and sanctions against the Israeli regime to hold it accountable for its ongoing crimes throughout Colonized Palestine.
As the genocide progresses, Gaza continues to teach the world many things, not the least of which is that the Palestinian people cannot be “diverted to the Bantustans” and forgotten. In fact, partition will never be a sustainable or long-term solution and the international community needs to accept this.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
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