Statehood remains a distant dream for Palestinians as nightmare unfolds
in Gaza
[August 01, 2025]
By JOSEPH KRAUSS
OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — Plans announced by France, the United Kingdom and
Canada to recognize a Palestinian state won't bring one about anytime
soon, though they could further isolate Israel and strengthen the
Palestinians' negotiating position over the long term.
The problem for the Palestinians is that there may not be a long term.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects Palestinian statehood
and has vowed to maintain open-ended control over annexed east
Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and the war-ravaged Gaza Strip —
territories Israel seized in the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for
their state.
Israeli leaders favor the outright annexation of much of the West Bank,
where Israel has already built well over 100 settlements housing over
500,000 Jewish settlers. Israel's offensive in Gaza has reduced most of
it to a smoldering wasteland and is pushing it toward famine, and Israel
says it is pressing ahead with plans to relocate much of its population
of some 2 million to other countries.
The United States, the only country with any real leverage over Israel,
has taken its side.
Critics say these countries could do much more
Palestinians have welcomed international support for their decades-long
quest for statehood but say there are more urgent measures Western
countries could take if they wanted to pressure Israel.
“It’s a bit odd that the response to daily atrocities in Gaza, including
what is by all accounts deliberate starvation, is to recognize a
theoretical Palestinian state that may never actually come into being,”
said Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.
“It looks more like a way for these countries to appear to be doing
something," he said.
Fathi Nimer, a policy fellow at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think tank,
says they could have suspended trade agreements with Israel, imposed
arms embargoes or other sanctions. “There is a wide tool set at the
disposal of these countries, but there is no political will to use it,”
he said.
It's not a completely empty gesture
Most countries in the world recognized Palestinian statehood decades
ago, but Britain and France would be the third and fourth permanent
members of the U.N. Security Council to do so, leaving the U.S. as the
only holdout.
“We’re talking about major countries and major Israeli allies,” said
Alon Pinkas, an Israeli political analyst and former consul general in
New York. “They’re isolating the U.S. and they’re leaving Israel
dependent — not on the U.S., but on the whims and erratic behavior of
one person, Trump.”
Recognition could also strengthen moves to prevent annexation, said Hugh
Lovatt, an expert on the conflict at the European Council on Foreign
Relations. The challenge, he said, “is for those recognizing countries
to match their recognition with other steps, practical steps.”
It could also prove significant if Israel and the Palestinians ever
resume the long-dormant peace process, which ground to a halt after
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office in 2009.
“If and when some kind of negotiations do resume, probably not in the
immediate future, but at some point, it puts Palestine on much more
equal footing,” said Julie Norman, a professor of Middle East politics
at University College London.
“It has statehood as a starting point for those negotiations, rather
than a certainly-not-assured endpoint.”
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Israeli right-wing activists, one holding a sign ""Gaza is ours
forever," attend a rally calling for the re-establishment of Jewish
settlements in the Gaza Strip, near the border in southern Israel,
Wednesday, July 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Israel calls it a reward for violence
Israel's government and most of its political class were opposed to
Palestinian statehood long before Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack
triggered the war.
Netanyahu says creating a Palestinian state would reward Hamas and
eventually lead to an even larger Hamas-run state on Israel's
borders. Hamas leaders have at times suggested they would accept a
state on the 1967 borders but the group remains formally committed
to Israel's destruction.
Western countries envision a future Palestinian state that would be
democratic but also led by political rivals of Hamas who accept
Israel and help it suppress the militant group, which won
parliamentary elections in 2006 and seized power in Gaza the
following year.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose authority administers
parts of the occupied West Bank, supports a two-state solution and
cooperates with Israel on security matters. He has made a series of
concessions in recent months, including announcing the end to the
Palestinian Authority's practice of providing stipends to the
families of prisoners held by Israel and slain militants.
Such measures, along with the security coordination, have made it
deeply unpopular with Palestinians, and have yet to earn it any
favors from Israel or the Trump administration. Israel says Abbas is
not sincerely committed to peace and accuses him of tolerating
incitement and militancy.
Lovatt says there is much to criticize about the PA, but that “often
the failings of the Palestinian leadership are exaggerated in a way
to relieve Israel of its own obligations.”
The tide may be turning, but not fast enough
If you had told Palestinians in September 2023 that major countries
were on the verge of recognizing a state, that the U.N.'s highest
court had ordered Israel to end the occupation, that the
International Criminal Court had ordered Netanyahu's arrest, and
that prominent voices from across the U.S. political spectrum were
furious with Israel, they might have thought their dream of
statehood was at hand.
But those developments pale in comparison to the ongoing war in Gaza
and smaller but similarly destructive military offensives in the
West Bank. Israel's military victories over Iran and its allies have
left it the dominant and nearly unchallenged military power in the
region, and Trump is the strongest supporter it has ever had in the
White House.
"This (Israeli) government is not going to change policy," Pinkas
said. “The recognition issue, the ending of the war, humanitarian
aid — that’s all going to have to wait for another government.”
___
Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed.
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