Recognition of Palestine as a State

Josh Butler, What conditions has Australia put on recognition of a Palestinian state – and what will happen if they are not met? (13 August 2025)

Some Comments
John Kilcullen, September 2025

1. “Recognising a state of Palestine as as part of a peace process in support of a two-state solution” will not stop the killing and destruction, unless it is supposed that the Israeli government cares about world opinion – they don’t.

2. The killing and destruction won’t stop unless the UNSC intervenes. See UN Charter arts 35, 41, 42. 

3. Australia should be working to persuade Trump that backing Israel "no matter what" is not in the national interest of the US, that the US derives no advantage from vetoing intervention

4. After the killing and destruction has stopped, the aim should be a single multi-cultural Israel/Palestine – the occupied territories and Israel together integrated into one polity (as before 1948), everyone with full and equal political rights, and minority safeguards. To achieve this would require strong international pressure and maybe peacekeepers.

5. “Recognising” Palestine is an empty gesture. No such state exists to recognise (the PA has no credibility). Recognition will not bring it into existence against determined Israeli opposition.

6. A demilitarised state (as Mr Albanese proposes) is not a state. Every state has “a right to self-defence”. More exactly: state functionaries have a duty to protect citizens and others present in their territory against one another and against outsiders. Israel has repeatedly attacked recognised states such as Lebanon and Syria and would freely raid a demilitarised Palestine.

7. To  exclude Hamas from Palestinian politics (as Mr Albanese also proposes) will not be easy to achieve. One way is for Israel to arrest candidates it accuses of being terrorists, as happened last time there were Palestinian elections. How would Australia, or any other country, ensure that Hamas was excluded from Palestinian politics? Maybe Palestinian electors will have to be trusted not to vote (by secret ballot) for people who have done them so much harm.

8. In any case, a separate state of Palestine never will exist, because Israel rejects such a state and will use overwhelming military force to prevent it from coming into existence.  Also, admission as a state to the UN requires Security Council action (art.4), which as things stand the US would veto.

9. Netanyahu gave his reasons for opposing a Palestinian state long ago, his views have not changed, most Israelis agree with him (note 8A).

10. Unless there is a very clever drawing of boundaries, each state would include many people of the other ethnicity (and of other ethnicities). This is clear from previous attempts to draw borders. If there ever are two states, each will be, or should be, “multi-cultural”. 

11. Bi-lateral negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians won’t succeed. Neither negotiating team will be politically able to offer anything that the other team would be politically able to accept as sufficient – both teams will be closely watched by irreconcilables.

In short: What is needed is immediate UNSC intervention to stop the killing and destruction; no recognition of a Palestinian state that does not exist and never will; not two states, no bi-lateral "peace process", but international pressure to bring about a single, multicultural state.

 

Some articles worth reading:

Bernark Keane, Australia's silence on genocide gives Netanyahu a free pass to exterminate Palestinians (4 July 2025), On Palestinian recognition, Albanese has outsourced Australian foreign policy to Netahyahu (28 July 2025): Making recognition of Palestine contingent on Israel entering a peace process, making it conditional on whether “the circumstances are met”, as Albanese wants — let alone making it depend on fantasies like “resolving the issue of settlements” — is to cooperate with Netanyahu’s strategy. If left to his own devices, Albanese would wait until there was no longer any possibility that a Palestinian state could functionally exist, delivering a historic victory to the most extreme, racist Israeli leader in history.

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, France and Britain’s recognition of a Palestinian state won’t stop Israel’s onslaught (30 July 2025): For Palestinians, the day after France’s announcement will be much like the day prior. Israel will continue to bomb, starve and seek to ethnically cleanse Gaza; it will carry on land grabs, home demolitions, displacement of Palestinians, and will further entrench its presence in the West Bank. Already, close to 150 countries recognize the State of Palestine, barely 20 fewer than the number that recognize Israel. The entity so recognized has no defined territory, no effective government, no sovereignty. It has, in short, none of the attributes that define a state. To the Palestinians will go empty statements and diplomatic gimmickry. To Israelis, the land, the resources, the wealth. Some deal.
... Domestically, Israel’s opposition may blame the prime minister for putting the country in this position, but it feels compelled to close ranks, unanimous in its condemnation of anything that hints at a Palestinian state. Hostility to Palestinian statehood is not the province of the current Israeli government alone. On the eve of 7 October, it pervaded Israeli society; in the wake of the bloodiest attack in the nation’s history, it has become an article of faith. A year ago, presented with a bill rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state, 68 members of the Knesset voted in favor; only the Arab parties voted against.... France and European governments that follow in its lead...  might conclude that, for now, their work on behalf of the Palestinians is done. They will expect from them deep gratitude. They might feel relieved of any obligation to exert pressure on Israel where it really hurts and really matters – to impose tangible consequences, demand accountability, or enforce sanctions if it does not stop the war, end the siege, halt its settlement enterprise....The priority today is to end the butchery in Gaza, which will not be done without imposing material costs on the Israeli government that is perpetrating it and depriving it of the weapons with which it does so. Beyond that is a need to reimagine creative approaches to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that renounce deceit and pretense, put aside the illusory goal of hard partition between two states, and seek a different pathway to dignified coexistence between the two peoples.

Gideon Levy, Recognising Palestine won't stop the Genocide in Gaza: Sanctions on Israel will (3 August 2025): International recognition of a Palestinian state rewards Israel, which should be thanking each and every country doing so, since such recognition serves as a misleading alternative to what must actually be done – imposing sanctions....
It would be best if practical punitive measures were first taken, forcing Israel to end the war – Europe has the means – and then bring to the agenda the only solution now remaining: a democracy between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River; one person, one vote. Apartheid or democracy. To our horror, there's no third path anymore.

Andrew O'Hehir, There is no “two-state solution.” Can we stop pretending? No meaningful Palestinian state will exist anytime in the foreseeable future. Facing that truth is crucial (10 August 2025): ...Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other Western democratic leaders who have decided to recognize a Palestinian state that does not exist and probably never will.These people are well-informed and not idiots; we must assume they are aware of the opinions expressed by Walt and any number of other actual experts: The two-state solution imagined 32 years ago in the Oslo accords was fanciful then — when 60 percent of the land in the West Bank was left in Israeli control, and the Palestinian population was split up into 165 non-contiguous chunks of territory, often called “bantustans” — and is entirely fictional now, as illegal Israeli settlements have replaced Arab villages, one at a time, year after year after year.

Martin Kear,  Beyond recognition: Challenges of creating a Palestinian state are so formidable, is it even possible?  (11 August 2025): Redressing these issues and the myriad others will take time, money and considerable effort. The question is, how much political capital are the leaders of France, the UK, Canada and Australia (and others) willing to expend to ensure their recognition of Palestine results in an actual state?

John Lyons, Western nations' moves still fall short of real pressure on Israel, but there are more options (12 August 2025)

Guardian: Recognising Palestinian state must not distract from ending Gaza mass deaths, UN expert [Albanese] says (13 August 2025): “Ending the question of Palestine in line with international law is possible and necessary: end the genocide today, end the permanent occupation this year, and end apartheid,” she said. “This is what’s going to guarantee freedom and equal rights for everyone, regardless of the way they want to live – in two states or one state, they will have to decide.”

Alaa Salama, Forget symbolic statehood — the world must recognize Israeli apartheid: The push to recognize a Palestinian state creates the illusion of action, but delays the real remedies: sanctioning and isolating Israel's apartheid regime (29 August 2025): Let us not waste another 30 years of Palestinian lives on the partition paradigm — a colonial “solution” to a colonial problem. Israel has long made clear it will never accept a Palestinian state; clinging to the two-state solution is gaslighting on an extraordinary scale, and it has brought us only despair... Now, more than ever, symbolic gestures are worse than useless, as they buy time for the regime committing the crimes and drain urgency from the only remedies that matter: ending the genocide, sanctioning the perpetrator, isolating the apartheid system, and insisting without apology on equal rights and the right of return. This is not extremism. It is the bare minimum of justice.... If countries wish to recognize a Palestinian state, so be it, but they must not pretend that it changes reality. Real change begins with acknowledging the truth: there is already one state here, and it is an apartheid state. From there, countries must act legally, diplomatically, economically until the cost for Israel to maintain apartheid outweighs its benefits.

Shatha Yaish, "As the world recognizes a Palestinian state, Israel’s E1 plan moves to bury it" 12 September 2025 “performative diplomacy”: a way for governments to show they are doing something in the face of ongoing violence without confronting Israel or taking the concrete steps required under international law. “What they effectively do is contradictory to that: You’re recognizing the Palestinian state, but at the same time, your actions are aiding and abetting the very system that is destroying that potential state,” she continued. “So this is pure hypocrisy.” Recognition, Abdel Razek argues, has done none of this. Even with 147 of the UN’s 193 member states recognizing Palestine, Israeli settlements continue to expand, Gaza is being annihilated, and East Jerusalem is increasingly cut off from the rest of the West Bank. Moreover, recognition further empowers a PA that wields little real power and, with no elections in nearly 20 years, little legitimacy — while the population remains under de-facto Israeli control. “For the PA, recognition is a victory. But if you look on the ground, there is little resembling a Palestinian state,” she said. “What does exist are Palestinians themselves, fighting to remain on their land and to see their fundamental right to self-determination fulfilled.” “If a Palestinian state were recognized now, would it exist in the air? Without land or people? The Israeli government is destroying everything in its path,” she added. “Our president [Mahmoud Abbas] and the world should first protect the people and stop this war at any cost. Only after that should we think about anything like a state.”

Dana El Kurd, Recognizing Palestine While Ignoring Palestinians  17 Sep, 2025 Palestinian analysts in particular have pointed out that these statements are an easy way for international actors to give the semblance of action without actually holding Israel accountable for the impacts of the war in Gaza. …Instead of holding Israeli leadership accountable, recognition is a fig leaf that can be held up in front of domestic audiences to placate growing public discontent. In addition to avoiding issues of accountability, recognizing Palestine does nothing to pressure Israel to end the war. … Perhaps most importantly, Palestinians are not blind. They can see that Gaza has been perhaps irreversibly destroyed, with Palestinian society there reduced to conditions never before seen in Palestinian history. They can also see that the demographics of the West Bank and East Jerusalem are being reengineered before their eyes: villages depopulated, refugee camps razed and residents sequestered into smaller and smaller areas. Scholars have long viewed this trend as a sign that the two-state solution is no longer a possibility. Under these conditions, Palestinians must ask: What state is now being recognized? What good is that recognition?

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