More than 20 months into Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, and amid its attempts to annex large chunks of the West Bank, the notion of a two-state solution has received a fillip in recent days, with France and Canada both announcing that they will formally recognise a Palestinian state in September at the annual United Nations General Assembly session. The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has also declared that the United Kingdom will recognise a Palestinian state in September unless Israel takes
meaningful steps to end its weaponisation of aid to force a famine on the people of Gaza. Coming at a time when Israel’s current government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that it no longer believes in a two-state solution and has taken all possible steps to make the idea impossible to realise, these developments may appear to point to the growing pressure on Western leaders to shift from their unquestioning support of Israel. Yet a closer look would reveal the hollowness of these recent assertions. The response to these announcements from the United States of America, in particular, underscores just how far the world has moved from the days of optimism in the 1990s over the prospects of Israel and Palestine coexisting, side by side, as sovereign states.
To be sure, these announcements are significant. Until now, no G7 nation has recognised Palestine as a state, even though several other Western European nations have joined the rest of the world in acknowledging Palestinian statehood. France, Canada and the UK, if they go ahead with the recognition, would move that club of nations closer to the global consensus. But both Canada and France, in announcing their support for a Palestinian state, have made clear that it must be demilitarised.
In other words, a future Palestinian state, according to them, must exist alongside a nation with one of the world’s strongest and most sophisticated militaries — without one of its own. Simply put, Palestine would be a second-class state, forever at the mercy of Israel’s military adventurism, much like it is now. The UK’s imposition of a condition — how Israel behaves in Gaza — before it recognises Palestinian statehood treats Palestinians as deserving of a statehood not as a matter of right but as a negotiating tactic.
In the meantime, the US president, Donald Trump, has said that trade talks with Canada cannot go ahead as planned because of its announcement on Palestine. That marks a long leap from the US role in mediating the Oslo Accords in 1993 that set the stage for the two-state solution. Today, the US has not only jettisoned the
idea but it is also actively punishing others for subscribing to it. The dodgy promises from Canada, France and the UK, and the pushback from the US, mean that Palestinian statehood will not be easy to attain even though the past week has shown that the idea is not dead either.
