What’s the Point of Recognizing the State of Palestine?
Countries That Recognize Palestine
At the September 2025 annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, the United Kingdom, France, Portugal, Australia, Canada, Monaco, Luxemburg, Malta, Andorra, and San Marino formally recognized the State of Palestine. Ten other countries, most importantly Ireland, Norway, Spain and Mexico, have recognized the State of Palestine since October 7, 2023.
Some 90 UN member states recognized Palestinian statehood in the year following the declaration of Palestinian independence proclaimed by the 20th Palestine National Council in November 1988, at the highpoint of the First Intifada. Currently, 157 of the 193 UN member states recognize Palestine as a sovereign state; 164 UN member states recognize Israel.
The State of Palestine does not now exercise sovereignty over any territory. All its territory, wherever its borders may be, is illegally occupied by Israel according to the July 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice.
The United States is the only UN Security Council member that does not recognize Palestine. Its veto has prevented Palestine from becoming a full member of the UN, as opposed to the non-member observer state status it has enjoyed since 2012. The US supplies 65.6% of all Israeli arms imports. Germany (29.7%) and Italy (4.7%), Israel’s second and third most important international arms suppliers, also do not recognize Palestine.
Does this flurry of states recognizing Palestine bring the liberation of the Palestinian people, however one understands that term, any closer?
It is certainly a diplomatic achievement for Palestinians which the people of Gaza have paid for with rivers of blood and tears witnessed in real time by a global public whose outrage has been unable to stanch the flow. It shines a global spotlight on the question of Palestine in the same way that the scores of Palestine solidarity encampments on college and university campuses did during the academic year 2023-24.
Skeptical French readers asked Le Monde’s Gilles Parris, a columnist with reporting experience in Jerusalem and Washington: “Isn’t recognizing the State of Palestine without imposing sanctions on Israel just a way to ease one’s conscience at little cost?” He responded,
When (French President Emmanuel) Macron said in his speech on Monday (Sept. 22) that France and its European partners would “tie the level of its cooperation with Israel to the steps it takes to end the war and negotiate peace,” he paved the way for questioning the impunity Israel has enjoyed for decades. The word “sanction” was not used, but it can be read between the lines….
We may therefore witness the beginning of an unprecedented struggle between Israel and countries that have so far turned a blind eye to its creeping annexation policy in the West Bank or have limited themselves to terse statements. The credibility of those who have just recognized the State of Palestine will be put to the test…
Perhaps, as Gilles Parris suggests, the Gaza genocide will stir countries to “question […] the impunity Israel has enjoyed for decades.” But there are good reasons to expect that their answers to those questions will not result in effective actions. The Western states (Ireland and Spain commendably excepted) fully supported Israel’s assault on Gaza, although it was obvious from its earliest stages that Israeli military actions far exceeded any reasonable understanding of self-defense. Gaza highlights the dysfunction, if not the demise, of what is hypocritically called the international rules-based order.
The EU cannot impose sanctions on Israel without the unanimous agreement of its member states. Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic oppose sanctioning Israel. Absent such sanctions and interruption of arms supplies, Israel will not cease its de facto annexation and ethnic cleansing of large swathes of the West Bank.
Prime Minister Netanyahu and Jewish political leaders across the spectrum from the neo-fascist, messianist Itamar Ben-Gvir, to the centrist official opposition leader Yair Lapid, to the left Zionist Democrats recently elected leader Yair Golan, have all denounced the recognitions of the State of Palestine as a “reward for terror.”
The trauma they experienced on October 7, 2023 disabled Israelis from recognizing how their actions are perceived in the world (even more so than was previously the case). Therefore, they saw a photonegative image of the diplomatic recognitions of Palestine. Rather than rewarding terrorism, those recognitions are primarily an international rebuke to Israel, even if symbolic and infuriatingly mild, for its genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip.
That rebuke is being amplified in the realm of popular culture, which may well have a greater impact on ordinary Israelis than the diplomatic elevation of the State of Palestine. Many Israelis are distraught by the calls to exclude Israel from the Eurovision Song Contest, the likely upcoming suspension of Israel from the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), and perhaps most importantly, efforts to ban Israel from participating in the 2026 Men’s World Cup (football everywhere in the world but the US, which persists in calling it soccer).
No one expects that there will be any diplomatic progress towards a two-state solution – the point of recognizing the State of Palestine for all the countries who have recently done so – as long as the current Israeli government remains in power. All its components strongly oppose a Palestinian state. This is why there have been no meaningful negotiations between Israel and any Palestinians since Benjamin Netanyahu returned as prime minister in 2009. It is also why Netanyahu supported Qatar transferring funds to Hamas and sought to strengthen Hamas vis a vis its rival, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. October 7, 2023 blew up that strategic conception.
Does the Israeli political center offer an alternative? Some American liberal journalists seems to have decided that retired IDF Chief-of-Staff Benny Gantz is their great Ashkenazi hope, exemplified by a feature article in The New Yorker.
In 2019 Gantz formed a centrist alliance, including another former IDF Chief-of-Staff Gadi Eisenkot and Yair Lapid’s There is a Future (Yesh Atid) Party. Many had great hopes that this alliance, laden with retired generals and unburdened by any ideological commitments, could remove Netanyahu from Israeli political life. But it fell apart during the stress test of Israel’s five parliamentary elections from April 2019 to November 2022, leaving Gantz and his diminished National Unity Party with eight seats in the current Knesset.
After October 7, Gantz joined the war cabinet of the Netanyahu government. He resigned in June 2024 because he believed Netanyahu’s “personal considerations” were impeding the conclusion of a hostage deal and formulating a plan for post-war Gaza.
Since then, his star has waned in Israeli politics. Recent polls show his party receiving four or five seats in the 120 member Knesset if elections were held now (the next scheduled election is October 2026).
Nonetheless, some American liberals still appear to persist in hoping that Gantz or someone like him will alleviate the symptoms of their toxic attachment to Israel. The New York Times offered Gantz a platform to explain, “What the World Gets Wrong About Israel.” Gantz tells us,
There are deep political divisions and disagreements in Israel. I myself have been a vocal critic of Mr. Netanyahu. But the nation’s core security interests are not partisan property. Today more than ever, they are anchored by a national consensus that is rooted in the hard realities of our region. Opposition to the recognition of Palestinian statehood stands at the heart of that consensus. Any path forward for broader Palestinian civil autonomy must first incorporate a proven long-term track record of accountable governance, comprehensive de-radicalization reforms and a successful crackdown on terror elements targeting Israelis.
Absent from this statement is any mention of a Palestinian state… ever. “Civil autonomy” is the most Gantz offers Palestinians, but not for a long time.
While Gantz perceives Israelis to be deeply divided, he actually affirms Peter Beinart’s argument in his Nov. 7, 2022 Jewish Currents article that,
…Israel is not deeply ideologically polarized. It’s already an ethnocracy and no major political party wants to change that. That’s what sets Ben-Gvir apart from figures like Trump and Le Pen: His rivalry with his centrist foes may be politically fierce, but it’s not a contest over the basic definition of the state. In the global struggle between group supremacy and equality under the law, Ben-Gvir and his centrist rivals are on the same side.
Recognition of Palestinian statehood does not challenge Jewish supremacy in the state of Israel. Fussing over the details of the number of states and their borders when no diplomatic process to resolve the question of Palestine is on the horizon is a distraction. More fundamental is to begin thinking about the generations long task of dismantling the structures of Jewish supremacy and apartheid, making reparations for Palestinian lands and properties seized by the state of Israel during the 1948 War (the Nakba) and since, and welcoming Palestinian refugees to return home.