Recognising the State of Palestine may seem, at first glance, like a moral turning point – a sign of western conscience reawakened amid the devastation of Gaza.
France took the lead, hosting an international conference with Saudi Arabia under the UN banner.
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer soon followed, pledging conditional recognition. His foreign secretary, David Lammy, spoke of Britain’s “special burden of responsibility” – a nod to the Balfour Declaration, which enabled Zionist colonisation of Palestine under British protection.
But peel back the optics, and this gesture is exposed for what it is: a facade, a diplomatic performance masking business as usual.
What’s being offered isn’t statehood. It’s a demilitarised, non-contiguous pseudo-entity with no control over borders, airspace, resources, or movement. It is a ghost administration under Israeli command, tasked with managing a shattered, occupied population. Less than the Oslo Accords and more like a glorified municipality dressed up as liberation.
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And yet, Western leaders present it as bold, visionary. Why? Because this isn’t about Palestinian rights – it’s about political cover.
Absurd contradiction
France, under President Emmanuel Macron, sees the Palestinian cause as a diplomatic bridge back into the Arab and Muslim worlds, after its decline across Africa.
Macron postures as a new Charles de Gaulle, despite France’s legacy of aiding Israel’s nuclear ambitions.
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Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is leveraging the recognition initiative to justify normalisation with Israel. It offers the illusion of progress while pulling Arab and Muslim countries deeper into the Abraham Accords.
Starmer’s motives are more immediate. With rising public anger over his unwavering support for Israeli aggression – and a new left-wing challenge emerging from Jeremy Corbyn and Zahra Sultana leading a new political party – he’s using recognition as a diversion.
It is not a commitment, but a tactic. He’s offered it conditionally – as leverage to coax Israel back to the “peace process”. If Israel cooperates, recognition is shelved. Palestinian statehood becomes a bargaining chip to be played – not a right to be affirmed.
It’s an absurd contradiction: if Starmer truly supported a two-state solution, recognising the second state would be the first logical step. But in the West, even symbolic gestures towards Palestine must pass through Tel Aviv.
And yet, even these hollow gestures have rattled Israel’s far-right coalition.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz scoffed that a Palestinian state should be built in Paris or London. US President Donald Trump threatened Canada with trade retaliation for considering recognition.
But that fury shouldn’t distract from the deeper truth: this initiative is a mirage, a tranquiliser for international conscience.
Gaza, meanwhile, is being obliterated.
Entire neighbourhoods flattened. Hospitals, schools, homes reduced to dust. Israeli ministers say it openly: “All of Gaza will be Jewish” and “We must find ways more painful than death” for its population.
These are not rogue extremists – they are ministers of state, shaping official policy. And the West watches in silence, offering “recognition” instead of consequences.
Empty diplomacy
In the occupied West Bank, settler violence intensifies and military raids escalate. Between 1993 and 2023, the settler population grew from 250,000 to over 700,000 – despite the Oslo Accords’ promise to freeze expansion.
A state that exists only on paper, that must be approved by its occupier, is not a state. It’s a lie and recognition without action is not diplomacy – it’s complicity
Checkpoint by checkpoint, hilltop by hilltop, the land for a viable Palestinian state has been erased.
This is not a policy failure – it is policy.
It began in Madrid in 1991, and was formalised in Oslo in 1993. That so-called “peace process” replaced international law with endless negotiations, and justice with delay.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation, under pressure, recognised Israel and relinquished claim to 78 percent of historic Palestine, agreeing to negotiate over the remaining 22 percent – the West Bank, Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem.
In return, they were promised a state. But the core issues – refugees, Jerusalem, settlements, borders – were deferred indefinitely as “final status” matters. And in the meantime, Israel deepened its control.
Settlements multiplied. The apartheid wall was built. The West Bank was carved into a patchwork of isolated cantons. Gaza was blockaded, then bombed. The Palestinian Authority, born out of Oslo, became a subcontractor for Israeli security – tasked with suppressing dissent and policing its own people.
Instead of liberation, Palestinians got lockdown.
Instead of sovereignty, they got surveillance.
This wasn’t a peace process – it was pacification. And every time the Palestinian struggle gains momentum – whether during the First Intifada, the Second, or now with worldwide outrage over Gaza – the same script returns: revive talk of the “two-state solution”.
Not to realise it, but to bury the movement beneath another round of empty diplomacy. It’s a strategy of containment disguised as concern.
That’s what we’re witnessing now.
A virtual state
Gaza faces a manufactured famine, yet instead of halting the siege or sanctioning the siege-masters, the West retreats into the fantasy of a “virtual state”. Words replace pressure. Gestures replace justice.
France, Britain, and Germany continue to supply weapons to Israel. Political support remains ironclad – defended under the banner of Israel’s “right to exist”, even as Palestinians’ right to live is extinguished.
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Nothing fundamental has changed. Only the rhetoric.
The flow of arms continues.
The flow of funds continues.
The flow of lies continues.
If the West truly believed in Palestinian statehood, it would start by ending the military, financial and diplomatic support that fuels apartheid and occupation.
Recognition without consequences is not a step forward – it’s a step around the truth.
We’ve seen this game before. An endless “process” that leads nowhere – by design. Even now, in Gaza, negotiations are cover. A ceasefire was within reach last January. Israel shattered it in March. No consequences. Just a return to “talks”, while ethnic cleansing continues and officials speak of a “Jewish Gaza”.
Macron and Starmer talk of a Palestinian state while funding its erasure. They offer “recognition” that means nothing – except delay. What they propose isn’t sovereignty – it’s symbolism, a convenient fiction to pacify public outrage while cementing occupation.
But a state that exists only on paper, that must be approved by its occupier, is not a state. It’s a lie and recognition without action is not diplomacy – it’s complicity.
If the West won’t stop the genocide – if it won’t cut the weapons, halt the funding, or impose a single cost on Israeli war crimes – then its declarations are worse than meaningless. They are part of the killing machine.
So, for those pushing this fiction, let’s ask a simple question: Where exactly will this Palestinian state hold sway?
In Gaza, reduced to ashes? In the West Bank, carved up by walls and settlements? In Jerusalem, annexed and ethnically cleansed? In Jordan? In Sinai? In Saudi Arabia, as Netanyahu had mockingly suggested?
On Mars?
If it’s meant to exist on land occupied in 1967, then sanction the occupier.
If it’s to be built anywhere else, then call it what it is: a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, the crowning of genocide.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
