Western recognition won’t change the reality on the ground: A Palestinian state has never seemed further away

By Ivana Kottasová, CNN

(CNN) — The quest for Palestinian independence is set to get a major boost as several diplomatic heavyweights, including the United Kingdom, France and Canada, are expected to recognize a State of Palestine ahead of the United Nations General Assembly.

Formal recognition by three G7 countries – two of which are also permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – along with Australia, Portugal, Belgium and others – will mark a symbolic milestone for the Palestinian cause. But the current situation on the ground makes it almost impossible to imagine that a two-state solution, through which a sovereign Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel, could become a reality.

Many analysts and activists say this is the result of decades of Israeli policy aimed at sabotaging the two-state solution by building Jewish settlements on Palestinian land and undermining the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs parts of the territory.

Others point a finger at the PA, which remains deeply unpopular among Palestinians and is seen by many as weak, corrupt and lacking legitimacy.

Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House and a professor of international relations, said that a Palestinian state is the furthest it has been from becoming reality since the Oslo Accords established a peace process more than three decades ago.

“And in the sense of the relations between Israel and Palestinians, it’s the worst situation, probably, since 1948 (when Israel declared independence),” he told CNN.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the most far-right in Israel’s history, has become very vocal and steadfast in its rejection of a Palestinian state. Ideas previously pushed by fringe, far-right segments of Israeli society have become mainstream, with ministers openly calling for the annexation of the occupied West Bank and for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich left no room for doubt earlier this year, when he said that the approval of thousands of new Jewish housing units in the West Bank will “permanently bury the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize.”

This shift has caused alarm among proponents of a two-state solution. “They are very loud and clear about not ever wanting to see a Palestinian state and doing whatever they need to do to obstruct it and I think that this is what largely spurred the UK, Australia, France… to take the step now,” said Julie Norman, an associate professor at University College London and a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British defense and security think tank.

This reasoning is clear in the case of the UK, where an influential parliamentary committee demanded the government recognize the State of Palestine now “while there is still a state to recognize.”

Ever-expanding settlements

The UN considers East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Gaza to be Palestinian territories, and the land that would make up the future Palestinian state.

But East Jerusalem has long been annexed by Israel and decades of expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank have turned the would-be-state into a collection of disjointed Palestinian pockets cut off from each other by checkpoints, roads and swathes of land controlled by the Israeli military.

Some 700,000 Israeli settlers, most of whom are Jewish, now live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, in settlements considered illegal under international law.

That number is likely to rise. In recent months, the Netanyahu government has approved a massive expansion of settlements, including E1, a controversial project to build thousands of new homes that would effectively cut the West Bank in two. Announcing the revival of the long-stalled E1 scheme in August, Smotrich did not hide its intentions.“The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not with slogans, but with actions,” he said.

Lior Amihai, executive director of Peace Now, an Israeli non-governmental organization that advocates for a two-state solution and monitors the expansion of settlements and violence in the West Bank, told CNN the situation there has never been so dire.

“Our researchers on the ground are finding new outposts on a weekly basis, roads are being erected and created illegally on a regular basis. The annexation is already happening,” he said.

“Settler violence that leads to the expulsion of Palestinian communities, violence against women, children, elderly men, is happening on a record scale, on a regular basis, and without any accountability, if not with the support of Israeli law enforcement authorities like the military and the police.”

According to the UN, some 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Gaza, meanwhile, has been reduced largely to rubble by nearly two years of relentless bombardment and ground operations launched by Israel following the attacks.

One in 10 people living in Gaza has been killed or injured in the war, according to a former chief of the Israeli military, totaling more than 200,000. Many international experts, including the International Association of Genocide Scholars, two leading Israeli human rights organizations and an independent United Nations inquiry, have concluded that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Security question

Both Israel and its closest and most powerful ally, the United States, have criticized the plans by the UK and others to recognize a Palestinian state.

But the US and Israel are becoming increasingly isolated. The countries set to recognize Palestinian statehood will be joining more than 140 nations who already do so. And while the recognition was previously limited to mostly non-Western countries, this has changed in the past few years, with more European and Caribbean nations taking the step.

Several Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, have accused them of “rewarding terrorism,” an accusation repeated by the US State Department.

Elliott Abrams, who has served in three Republican administrations, including during Trump’s first term, said that he believed the countries’ decisions to recognize Palestinian statehood were motivated by domestic political pressures.

“This does absolutely nothing to benefit one single Palestinian. It is a result of domestic political pressure from the left and from Muslim groups… these are democracies, and they are reacting to the desires of voters. But it’s not going to help Palestinians at all,” he told CNN. Abrams, currently a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, is among those who argue that the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no longer viable – partly because, he said, Israel cannot allow it.

“The critical question for Israel is, especially after October 7, security. Israel now has the ability to go in and out of the West Bank at will, against Hamas and other terrorist groups. If Palestine were a sovereign state, (Israel) would lose that ability, so I don’t think there’s a real possibility any longer for a Palestinian state,” he said.

But according to both RUSI’s Norman and Amihai of Peace Now, Israel’s security is precisely the reason why an independent Palestinian state is necessary.

“As long as there is occupation, as long as there is Israeli control over the territories, there’s always going to be some kind of resistance to that, whether it’s Hamas or another body,” Norman said.

“This is going to be necessary for Israel’s security. It is not rewarding Hamas, if the way that this is being framed is that Hamas has to disarm to allow this to go forward,” she said, pointing to the New York Declaration approved by the UN General Assembly in recent days.

The resolution, which outlines steps towards a two-state solution and backs a Hamas-free government for Palestine, says that governance, law enforcement and security must lie solely with the PA, with appropriate international support.

Hamas has ruled in Gaza since taking over following a brief civil war with rival faction Fatah, which dominates the PA, in 2007. It has not held an election since then.

As for whether the plan is workable, Amihai has a simple answer. “It’s always a question of price and the alternatives. If the alternative is to have an apartheid state without security, without democracy, then it’s not an alternative,” he said.

“And of course, even evacuating half a million settlers (from the occupied West Bank) is a price worth paying in order to have democracy for all people, freedom for all people and security for all people,” he said.

“The Israeli government are now taking an enterprise of destruction of the livelihood of 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, and are fantasizing about transferring them elsewhere. That is a much bigger project than establishing or providing the possibility to establish Palestinian statehood.”

Symbols matter

Analysts across the board recognize that at present, the reality on the ground makes a functioning Palestinian state impossible – even if they disagree on whether that’s because Israel has spent decades torpedoing the two-state solution, or because the PA is considered dysfunctional and corrupt.

But many say that even though the recognition by the UK, France and others won’t change that reality in the short term, it could start moving the needle.

Ardi Imseis, an associate professor of international law at Queen’s University in Canada, former UN official in the Middle East and author of the 2023 book “The United Nations and the Question of Palestine,” said the step is not just symbolic.

“Although the act of recognition is a political one, once it is given, very clear legal consequences flow that impact the recognizing state’s obligations under international law,” he told CNN.

Among these, he said, are the obligations to respect the territorial integrity and political independence of the recognized state and to accept the inherent right of self-defense by the recognized state if it is subject to an unlawful use of force.

“These three norms are fundamental to the maintenance of international peace and security. And in Palestine, each of them is being violated by Israel,” he said, pointing to the 2024 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, the UN’s top court, that Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal.

Whether these latest countries’ recognition of Palestinian statehood will be followed by any meaningful action is unclear, given the many decades of failures by the international community to back up peace plans with concrete measures.

The New York Declaration outlines steps for Israel, the PA and the international community to take, including the possibility of imposing restrictions on those who try to undermine them. Mekelberg of Chatham House said that if these materialize, it could make a real difference.

European states in particular could put much more pressure on Israel through trade restrictions, as the European Union is by far Israel’s largest trading partner. “They could cause a lot of economic misery. For example, every time there is an announcement of new settlements, there should come some reaction that has economic and diplomatic impact,” he explained.

The EU has sanctioned some violent settlers and said it would review its association agreement with Israel. Earlier this week, the EU Commission proposed imposing new sanctions against “extremist ministers and violent settlers” and removing some of the country’s trade concessions, which would effectively mean putting new tariffs on Israel.

The recognition, Mekelberg said, also goes both ways, placing greater obligations on the Palestinian Authority. “From the Palestinian point of view, it’s a responsibility. If you are a state, you behave differently, or you should behave differently, and this has to be tested, because at the end of the day, both sides have to make concessions.”

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