As the genocide continues to rage in Gaza, several European countries, including Spain and Ireland, have indicated that they are moving toward recognizing the state of Palestine.
New Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris argued that a group of like-minded countries formally recognizing a Palestinian state would “give weight to the decision and… send the strongest message.”
Meanwhile, Spanish officials argued that this could encourage others to do the same. Currently, most countries in the Global South, but very few in the West, recognize the State of Palestine. As it stands, recognition of the State of Palestine is a political and symbolic step – it signals recognition of the Palestinian right to sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In reality, there is no such sovereignty – rather, as an occupying power, the Israeli regime maintains de facto control over both territories and effectively controls everything that comes in and out, including people.
Recently, some steps have also been taken to grant Palestine full membership in the United Nations, thereby recognizing its statehood at the UN level. In mid-April, a resolution was introduced in the UN Security Council that would have paved the way for full membership for the Palestinians. Twelve members of the UN Security Council voted in favor, but unsurprisingly the United States blocked the initiative with its veto power. 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 the bid. Abbas declined, probably still upset over last year when he reportedly accepted a similar offer and never received the invitation to the White House. In fact, it has often happened that the Palestinian Authority has suspended its activities at the United Nations at the behest of the Americans in return for meager or no compensation.
Some Palestinians and international human rights organizations argue that the recognition is a crucial step toward securing basic Palestinian rights and provides greater legal opportunities to hold the Israeli regime accountable. Still, it is difficult to imagine how recognizing a state that does not exist would change the reality on the ground for Palestinians facing systematic extermination.
In fact, the question arises whether, in the face of ongoing genocide, some states are pushing for this symbolic political step in order to avoid taking much more concrete measures such as arms/trade embargoes and sanctions against the Israeli regime to support the Palestinians and reaffirm their right to Sovereignty.
For example, in November Spain – one of the leading voices calling for recognition – exported $1 million worth of ammunition to the Israeli regime, which by then had already killed thousands in Gaza. Meanwhile, Ireland’s exports of restricted “dual-use” items with potential military purposes increased almost sevenfold in 2023, from 11 million euros ($11.8 million) to over 70 million euros ($75 million) . Despite increasing calls for an end to all trade relations between Ireland and the Israeli regime, these exports continue to this day. So the question arises; What does recognizing the statehood of a people mean if one continues to participate in financing, arming and equipping the regime that is destroying the population of that state?
But for most diplomats and foreign officials, the essence of the recognition argument is that it will revive the “two-state solution” amid a political impasse. A solution based on the division of the land of historic Palestine, which does not recognize Palestinian fundamental rights in their entirety and which effectively accepts Israeli apartheid. In fact, the two-state solution requires that Palestinians around the world give up their rights to their land and property in historic Palestine and instead accept a truncated state in the territories occupied in 1967. Furthermore, it demands that Palestinians accept Zionism as a legitimate ideology and not as an ideology of settler-colonial rule.
In addition to the Gaza genocide, in which Israeli forces killed more than 34,000 Palestinians and destroyed 70 percent of the enclave’s infrastructure, the West Bank today faces unprecedented land grabbing, settlement building, home destruction and violence by both soldiers and settlers. This reality is a fairly predictable result of decades of promoting a flawed solution framework that favors the colonial division of law and freedom.
That is why what the Palestinians need from the international community at this moment is not symbolic recognition of a non-existent state, but concrete measures, including trade embargoes and sanctions against the Israeli regime, to hold it accountable for its ongoing crimes throughout colonized Palestine.
As the genocide rages on, Gaza continues to teach the world many things, including that the Palestinian people cannot be “diverted into bantustans” and forgotten. In fact, division will never be a sustainable or long-term solution and the international community must come to terms with it.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.