This Sunday, the leaders of several countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Portugal, announced their recognition of Palestinian statehood. A day later, France, Andorra, Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta and Monaco joined the diplomatic effort.
“We must do everything within our power to preserve the very possibility of a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security,” French President Emmanuel Macron said, opening a United Nations session on a two-state solution, co-hosted with Saudi Arabia.
While Macron later described the recognition of Palestine as “the beginning of a political process, and a peace and security plan for everybody”, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the move was a bid “to keep alive the possibility of peace and a two-state solution”.
Efforts to recognise a Palestinian state are not new, but the current wave of endorsements reflects a renewed international urgency amid intensifying violence in Gaza and escalating regional tensions. While many nations have rallied behind the cause, the United States sided with Israel in boycotting the conference, calling it “a circus and performative”.
Under the Ottomans
Since 1516, Palestine had been governed by the sultans of the Ottoman Empire. From this time until the end of the First World War, Palestine did not exist as a unified geopolitical entity. It was divided between the Ottoman province of Beirut in the north and the district of Jerusalem in the south. The Muslim inhabitants of Palestine were subjects of the Ottoman sultan-caliph, the religious and temporal head of the Islamic world, and local governors were appointed by the Ottoman court in Constantinople.
Among the large towns of Palestine, Jerusalem was the biggest and most important. “To the south of Jerusalem,” notes historian Jonathan Schneer in The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2011), “the most significant towns were Gaza and Hebron; Beersheba, with only about eight hundred residents, was practically deserted by 1914.” To the north and west, Nablus was a significant trading centre, whereas Jericho stood to the north and east. Farther up the coast, at the foot of Mount Carmel, was Haifa.
In Britain, Palestine and Empire: The Mandate Years (2010), academic Rory Miller states: “There had been a dwindling Jewish presence in Palestine since biblical times when this area comprised a Jewish state. In August 1897, the First Zionist Congress was held in the Swiss town of Basle, under the chairmanship of Theodor Herzl, a renowned Viennese journalist.”
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Following the Ottoman Empire’s decision to enter the First World War on the side of Germany in 1914, the Zionists or Jewish nationalist leaders looked to Great Britain, the leading anti-Ottoman power in the Middle East, for support in establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
The ordeal of claiming recognition
It was only in November 1917 that the Zionists achieved their goal when the British government issued the Balfour Declaration. As Miller notes, “The Balfour Declaration called for the ‘establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’ and pledged that Great Britain would ‘use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine’”.
While successive British governments have talked about recognising a Palestinian state, such recognition has been framed as part of a broader peace process.
The Balfour Declaration (Wikipedia)
“The shared trauma of the Nakba (catastrophe), which is the word that Palestinians use to describe the loss of their land and the creation of Israel in 1948, brought the Palestinians closer together…,” writes academic Yaser Alashqar in Routledge Handbook of State Recognition (2020). This period saw the rise of the national movement, led by a new middle-class leadership in exile, that organised political structures like the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
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By 1974, the Arab League and the UN recognised the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, resolving the ongoing tensions for Palestinian representation. In addition, the European Economic Community, now the European Union, recognised the rights of the Palestinian people through the adoption of the Venice Declaration in 1980.
The 1990s saw the signing of the Oslo Agreement between Israel and the PLO. Under this, Israel recognised the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and accepted the creation of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and the West Bank. The PLO, in return, renounced the use of violence and recognised the right of Israel to exist in peace.
In 2011 and 2012, the Palestinian Authority sought membership in the UN. According to the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, as cited by Alashqar, the admission of Palestine to the UN would pave the way for the “internationalization of the conflict” and the pursuit of claims “against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice”.
Several countries supported the bid, including Turkey, China, Russia, Norway and France. Alashqar notes that Russia described the UN vote as a significant contribution towards “reinstating historic equality”. The representative of France explained that by voting to recognise Palestine as a non-member observer state, “France had voted in favour of a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security, within secure, internationally recognized borders”
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What is the two-state solution?
The two-state solution refers to the creation of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace. The solution emerged in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, when Israel gained control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which are inhabited by many Palestinians. Since then, the idea of a two-state solution has been floated by the international community.
The basic principles of this are that Israel would recognise a Palestinian state, and Palestine would give up their claim to Israel. “The two states would have internationally recognised borders, with Israel retaining control over some of the settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem,” writes Gilad James in Introduction to Palestine (2023). The Palestinian state would have its capital in East Jerusalem, and peace would prevail.
Speaking at the summit this week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres emphasised his support for the two-state solution, calling it the only viable path towards peace after years of unrest and violence.