On Recognising the Palestinian State
Mark Carney says that Canada intends to recognise the state of Palestine next month at the United Nations. This is both long overdue and premature; part of the eternal contradiction of the Middle East.
Carney's letter leaves room to rescind the proposed recognition if the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas does not meet the conditions he is advancing. Like so many western leaders before him, playing in the sandbox of the Middle East will wind up burning him. Pro-Palestinian factions will say he has not gone far enough, pro-Israel factions will be righteously indignant. Everyone will be mad, nobody will be satisfied — and it won’t bring peace.
Unilaterally recognising Palestinian statehood without being part of a comprehensive peace process is to exonerate Hamas, even if the conditions of disarmament and elections are met. They still hold some 50 hostages and their fates are not clear. Not all the hostages they have held since the massacre they launched on October 7, 2023, have been returned alive. Conversely, Israel’s ‘settlements’ still dominate Palestinian landscape and not recognising Palestinian statehood is to say Israel’s behaviour is on point. Doing anything and not doing anything are both to take a side where neither side is sincerely seeking peace.
Granting statehood to Palestine at this moment is to justify the violence that has taken us to this point. As I said last year, “The war won’t end until Hamas returns all the hostages they hold, and Hamas won’t do that as long as the world keeps taking their side in the conflict.”
After the October 7th attacks, Israel’s right wing leadership simply had enough. After generations of treating Palestinians as a problem to manage, rather than as a partner to deal with, they have gone on the warpath and many many thousands of Palestinians have died. Some are calling it a genocide. Like everything in the middle east, there is far more nuance.
The mass starvation reported in Gaza is substantially exacerbated by Hamas, for example, and there are a lot more Palestinians living in Israel than Jews living in Palestine. Most of those that do live on Palestinian lands do so under Israeli occupation, not Palestinian governance — under whose authority they are not welcome.
I have heard the chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” sung by children right here in Canada and I understand its implication that Israel must be eliminated, and why so many Jews interpret it as a desire for yet another attempt at the wholesale elimination of the Jewish people. In a genocidal fight to the death where neither side accepts the other’s mere existence, there are no winners.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be gaining some pyrrhic military victories in his war on Hamas in Gaza, but he has completely alienated the international community from the cause of Israel and the associated Jewish homeland. It is very hard to defend Israel when its authoritarian leader is waging a war whose only apparent end-game is the elimination of what’s left of Palestine; if long term peace is his objective, he’s not exactly showing how else he intends to achieve it.
France, Britain, and now Canada, have all announced their intention to recognise Palestine as a state, a largely symbolic gesture. All have long advocated for a “two-state solution” so this should not come as an enormous surprise from a policy standpoint, and all have made it conditional upon meaningful reform — meaning it probably won’t even actually happen.
Britain in particular has added a caveat, according to the Guardian: “The reality is unless the Netanyahu government falls in the next six to eight weeks or makes an 180 degree U-turn, the only outcome of this is the UK recognising the state of Palestine.” In other words, Britain may not recognise Palestinian statehood if Israel rapidly changes government or genuinely seeks peace. Odd carrot.
Donald Trump, a close ally of Netanyahu, has reacted quite negatively to Carney’s declaration, saying that it would be “very hard” to sign a trade deal with Canada following the move.
This is telling. With Trump going around the world systematically pissing off all of his country’s traditional allies, and Netanyahu playing Trump like a fiddle, there is another simpler, crasser explanation for the timing. It is likely that the western allies are signalling their plans to recognise Palestinian statehood as a deliberate snub of Trump rather than out of a genuine belief that it will make any difference to the on-going conflict.
Palestinian statehood is an inevitable eventual outcome should Israel’s leaders and supporters ever seek true peace. Whatever western leaders say this month, though, it won’t happen until all supporters of Palestine offer a corresponding belief in Israel’s right to exist. A two state solution must be a two viable state solution.
Until then, endless war and performative declarations will continue for generations to come.
The two sides are not Israel and Palestine nor Jews and Arabs. They are war and peace.