Can recognition by European countries bring Palestine closer to statehood?
Palestinians walk past houses destroyed by Israeli attacks in Gaza. The resurgence of Hamas has cast doubt on Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas as a military threat. (Photo: Reuters)
By Roger Cohen
The decision by Spain, Norway and Ireland to recognize a Palestinian state reflects growing exasperation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, even among traditional friends, and suggests international pressure on him will increase.
However, it does not make it inevitable that other larger European states will follow suit. This year, President Emmanuel Macron of France said such recognition is “not taboo,” a position echoed by the French Foreign Ministry on Wednesday. In February, David Cameron, the British Foreign Secretary, said such recognition “cannot come at the beginning of the process, nor can it come at the very end of the process.”
These were small steps, although they went further than anything they have said before, but they were nowhere near the recognition of a Palestinian state itself. If Europe were to become united, with major states joining in their recognition, and the US remaining isolated by rejecting such a move, this could have a greater impact, but that stage is far from reached.
“This decision must be useful, that is to say allow a decisive step forward at the political level,” Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné said in a statement on possible recognition.
France will wait. That includes Germany, whose support for Israel, rooted in Holocaust atonement, is second only to that of the US. The decision by Spain, Norway and Ireland has made one thing clear: there will be no European unity on the issue of recognizing a Palestinian state until such a state exists in practice. There will also be no agreement between the transatlantic allies. Like Israel, the US remains adamant that recognition of a Palestinian state must come through negotiations between the two sides.
Netanyahu’s life’s work has largely been built around avoiding a two-state deal, even to the point of providing support for Hamas in the past intended to hinder such an outcome. It seems unlikely that this will change unless the US somehow agrees to Saudi normalization of relations with Israel, a vague Israeli verbal commitment to a process ending in two states and the Gaza war. can triangulate.
“We will not allow the possibility of the two-state solution to be destroyed by force,” said Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish Prime Minister.
Those were moving words. It seems possible that at a time of terrible suffering – in the ruins of Gaza and under what is widely seen as the Palestinian Authority’s ineffective and corrupt rule in the West Bank – recognition will give Palestinians a morale boost. But the reality is that a divided Europe has had little or no real influence on the conflict for some time.
©2024 The New York Times News Service
First print: May 24, 2024 | 12:24 pm IST