Recognition of the Palestinian State: All that glitters is not gold

Ricardo Israel

By: Ricardo Israel - 28/09/2025


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This topic appears in a forthcoming book of mine. The title says it defends Israel's existence, and the cover adds that "the future is an alliance with former enemies, the Sunni Arab countries," as demonstrated in the recent war with Iran, where they supported Israel, even militarily. Therefore, I believe this extremely important geopolitical event will be the path to creating the long-delayed Palestinian state.

For now, the recognition by the United Kingdom and France has elements of an unfulfilled promise, since, according to international law, recognition does not mean what they promised. Furthermore, the path to a state requires elements of realism, including US mediation and, above all, negotiations with Israel. From another perspective, those in the Middle East who took the step of recognizing the State of Israel still need to accept it as a Jewish state, the only one in the world, tiny on the map and small in population.

The Palestinian president's own intervention at the recent 80th General Assembly demonstrates what they are missing, as he does not meet, among other criteria, that of having effective government over the entire territory, or else he would be responsible for something he is not, like what Hamas did in Gaza. International law establishes these criteria, included in the Montevideo Convention, which also allows for a distinction between bilateral and multilateral recognition, for example, within the UN, where it is not automatic, requiring the veto of any permanent member of the Security Council to be avoided. He is a hybrid actor, where he has been accumulating symbolic and legal support, which is not very different from that enjoyed by the Vatican, since recognition is not sufficient to create a state, nor does its absence prevent or abolish it, according to the principle that guides none other than Switzerland.

In short, for now we have noise, media noise, hopes that history shows end up harming the Palestinians who have been lied to so many times, since, on this occasion, as Marco Rubio said, the opportunity chosen by Macron et al. also harmed the hostages, since it gave Hamas the false impression that it was rewarding what they had done, and as acknowledged by a spokesperson, led them to break off negotiations that the US described as promising.

Europe and the European Union are making the same mistakes as the former USSR in the Middle East, one after another, and sometimes all at once, fundamentally ignoring reality. They probably won't like the outcome of this effort, as it will confirm their growing irrelevance in the top flight of global geopolitics.

When Macron and Keir Stermer made the announcement, they overestimated their countries' current capabilities, as no difference will be made, given that most of the world's countries had long recognized the Palestinian state, many of them with embassies in Ramallah, but generally not those who called themselves "friends" of Israel. Today, there are 157, and, in fact, in May of last year, Spain, Ireland, and Norway simultaneously announced the same. And despite Pedro Sánchez's best efforts to cover up his various internal problems with this activity, nothing has changed, for better or worse.

With some likelihood, the same thing will happen now. In the cases of France and the United Kingdom, everything indicates that the decision has a strong component stemming from the internal changes brought about by massive immigration in their countries, with a strong Islamist influence. This may end up forcing the replacement of current legislation with Sharia law, given the obvious difficulty in integrating or respecting the traditions of those countries, but which vote and choose. This is something Oriana Fallaci anticipated so many times and for which she was brought to trial, accused of "defamation" of Islam. The reason for the change in Canada or Australia is less understandable.

Despite the enormous pressure against her in the streets, I think Giorgia Meloni performed better among the Europeans, announcing that she would recognize the Palestinian state, but first needed the release of the hostages and Hamas removed from any government. This is going in the right direction, but the basic point for understanding what's happening in the Middle East is to stop seeing a complicated story there in terms of a Western, of "good guys" and "bad guys," where reality is far more nuanced and mixed than the one-sided view of a single perpetrator and many victims, which simply isn't true.

Of course, Israel is responsible, but it is not the only one, nor is it even the most decisive in this matter. The former colonial powers that contributed so much to creating this mess also share responsibility, as do the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Palestinians' rejections of the various opportunities offered to them by the state.

In addition to answering the question of why a Palestinian state hasn't been created, it's also necessary to ask: How much does the effort led by France and the United Kingdom truly contribute to this goal? And, above all, what, in my opinion, is the path to achieving it? One that leads to peace, and not to a new war, which, with Iran's participation, would be a continuation of the current one, both part of a jihad against the West and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The truth is that a good part of the imbalance stems from something that today France and, above all, the United Kingdom, in their do-gooderism and moral superiority, fail to recognize: first, the partition of Greater Syria and the creation of Lebanon as a proposal for common coexistence between Muslims and Christians; second, the creation of the new country of Transjordan with the allied Hashemite dynasty in charge, receiving the largest portion of the territory occupied by the British Mandate over Palestine; and third, the subsequent division voted on by the UN for Jews and Arabs was essentially the same proposal that the United Kingdom left them when it handed over a problem that was simmering rather than one on the way to resolution; in short, all of the above was a direct antecedent to the conflict that still exists.

Similarly, there were decisions by the Arab League, on its own behalf and on behalf of the Palestinians, that are also an integral part of the current problem, since instead of creating the Palestinian State, the day after the creation of the Jewish State they invaded it, inaugurating a trend that has been repeated ever since: Israel does not start wars, but wins them all militarily. This does not lead to a definitive solution, since it loses the war in terms of image and propaganda, perhaps because, as now, there is no political plan for the day after.

The fact remains that in that territory the only independent state that has existed was ancient and modern Israel, no other, since the others, including the Romans, have been the powers and empires of their time, which is also true, in a temporary form, but with lasting consequences, in the case of France and Britain.

In 1947, the UN resolution referred to the division of the British Mandate into an Arab and a Jewish country, which was due to the fact that all those living there were Palestinians. Like the Ottoman Empire, it continued to use the name Palestine, which the Romans had initiated in retaliation for a Jewish revolt in 70 AD to replace the ancient names of Israel. Understandably, the designation used by the dominant powers also extended to documents, including passports, just as it had previously happened with immigrants traveling to Latin America. Because of the travel documents they used, both Arabs and Jews who came from there were referred to as "Turks," including two of my grandparents.

In 1948-49 the Arab League made decisions that froze the situation of the Palestinian Arabs until today, including the victims of the Nakba or the Palestinian “catastrophe”, but they were not the only ones, since a similar number were Jews expelled, expropriated or displaced from Arab countries such as Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria and others, where they had lived for centuries and whose presence long preceded the conquest of them by Islam, from the sands of Saudi Arabia in the 7th century.

The difference was that these little-reported Jews were integrated into the nascent State of Israel, where they made a new life. The displaced Arabs became refugees, a status that persists to this day, with that status passed on to their children and subsequent descendants. In the case of the Arabs who remained in the new State of Israel, they were not occupied territory; they became Israelis, and, despite many difficulties, today they are fully integrated citizens with equal rights, just like the Druze and Bedouin.

Because the UN resolution referred to the division between Jews and Arabs, instead of creating a Palestinian state in 1948-49, its territory was divided between Jordan, which occupied both the West Bank (the new name that replaced the biblical names of Judea and Samaria) and East Jerusalem, which prevented compliance with another provision of the original partition, which stated that, due to its importance also to Christians, Jerusalem should be internationalized. At the same time, Egypt occupied Gaza. At that time, a Palestinian state was never proposed or requested.

This situation lasted until the Six-Day War in 1967, which culminated in the victory of Israel, which proposed the return of all these territories in exchange for peace. This was rejected by the well-known three NOs from Khartoum, named after the city where that Arab Summit took place: no to peace, no to recognition of Israel, no to negotiation.

It was another wasted historic opportunity, from a list that even predates the United Nations, since, in the 1930s, the conclusions of the Peel Commission (named after the British lord who headed it) had been rejected. This Commission proposed the same partition that would serve as the basis for the UN decision, also based on censuses conducted by both the Ottomans and the Europeans. The rejections did not end there, as the Arab delegates also rejected another proposal from the 1939 London Conference, which consisted of a version of a binational state developed by the Zionist delegates and consisted of one state, but with autonomy and self-government for each community.

These were years in which the Palestinians lacked their own voice, something that would only change in 1964-65 with the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), whose president and face of Palestinian Arab nationalism, until his death, was Yasser Arafat, born in Cairo. The PLO represented various groups, including those with special ties to certain Arab countries, including those where a religious vision predominated, such as Saudi Arabia, as well as countries that followed the example of Gamal Abdel Nasser. There were also groups with ties to the former USSR.

This PLO not only confronts Israel, but also supports one side in the Lebanese civil war and has a conflictual relationship with Hashemite Jordan, so much so that an attempt to overthrow King Hussein led to Black September and 30,000 Palestinian victims.

The path taken by several Arab countries in 1948-49 had frozen the situation of the Palestinian victims who remained as refugees in their territories, so much so that even today a dichotomous situation persists in some of them, where on the one hand the reality is that they have been living there for generations for something that was supposed to be temporary, and on the other hand, discriminatory legislation remains in place in some, which even today does not allow them citizenship or prohibits them from exercising certain trades or professions.

In the parallel reality, there is a situation that has survived the current war well, as several countries that had fought against Israel signed peace treaties, such as Egypt and Jordan. The Abrahamic Covenants subsequently brought into the circle of peace countries with which arms had not yet been exchanged, but which today also have full relations, such as the United Arab Emirates or Morocco, which has been able to obtain diplomatic concessions from the United States on the sovereignty of the former Spanish Sahara, to the detriment of the Polisario Front as well as Algeria and Spain, its rivals on this point.

In 1993 the Oslo Accords were signed, now discredited, but where another missed opportunity existed, since they were also a path for the birth of an independent Palestinian entity, and however disappointing their results were, it is still striking that the failure is doubly regrettable, since although it may be difficult to believe, it was the first and, to date, the only opportunity offered to the Palestinians for some form of self-government, since what Israel had done had never been done by any Arab country, nor was Gaza another missed opportunity, since Israel's unilateral withdrawal from that territory in 2005 culminated in Hamas staging a coup d'état in 2007, which met with little resistance from the Palestinian Authority, the legitimate authority according to those Accords.

This circumstance wouldn't matter so much if Tehran's pursuit of a jihad hadn't ended in the current war in that part of the world, resulting in the terrible suffering and death toll it has caused in Gaza—a war, let's not forget, triggered by the Hamas invasion. Furthermore, corruption in government administration has always drawn strong criticism, more so in the Gulf countries than in Europe, regarding funds that end up in private bank accounts, whether in Qatar in the case of Hamas or in Paris in the case of Arafat.

Another missed opportunity was recounted by former President Clinton, who invited Arafat to a Peace Summit at Camp David in 2000, attended by Yasser Arafat on behalf of the Palestinian Authority and Prime Minister Ehud Barak. There, an Israeli offer was made to return 95% of the disputed territory and to make Jerusalem the capital of the future Palestinian state. Clinton said she regretted that Arafat not only refused, but that it unleashed the violence of the Second Intifada.

There was no counterproposal, nor was there a positive response when Ehud Olmert, the next prime minister, made a similar offer to Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat's successor, in 2008.

That's the reality of the Middle East and also of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians: many wars, but also many negotiations, glass half full or glass half empty. But we must understand that the path is to negotiate with Israel and the mediation of the United States. There is no other path that has yielded results. However, the lack of a state is also a result of the fact that the Palestinian partner for peace has not existed whenever it has been proposed, even with difficult concessions.

So far, I think, as I am convinced, the new factor today is the Sunni Arab countries committed to peace, and I am sure they will be Israel's best ally for this purpose, for various reasons that include a shared fear of Iran, the mutual benefits of a general peace agreement for Israel, but also for them because of the various benefits that Israel can provide. Only Saudi Arabia is missing, which has said that the private agreements it has with Israel will not be transferred to a Treaty until there is talk about a Palestinian state. For some, it is not the best moment because of the allies who give the government a minimal majority to be able to govern, but that will change as soon as the war is over, since Israel must form the postponed high-level commission to investigate the major errors that allowed the invasion of 7-X, including those of Netanyahu, as head of the government.

I think that for all the conditions to be met, the way forward for Israel is to forget about an increasingly anti-Semitic Europe and for everyone to reread that part of the original UN resolution that speaks of an Arab State and a Jewish State, so that once Hamas is defeated, with Israel retaining its security presence, it should be the Arab countries that take charge of the management and administration of Gaza, and if there is an agreement, take the path that leads to a Palestinian State, by way of something that truly leads to peace, that is, a process similar to that which existed in Germany to free itself from Nazi influence.

A process with credible partners to achieve two states, one alongside the other and not one instead of the other. Just as the United States emerged from the Second World War with enemies like Germany and Japan turned into allies, the same can be true, as the Sunni Arab countries can be the necessary key to a lasting peace, as well as to the Palestinian state that was first formally announced on November 15, 1988.

Meanwhile, what France and the United Kingdom are doing sounds like what it is: a promise that can't deliver what it claims.

@israelzipper

-Master's and PhD in Political Science (University of Essex), Bachelor of Law (University of Barcelona), Lawyer (University of Chile), former presidential candidate (Chile, 2013)


«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».