Why Recognizing Palestine Is Meaningless or Even Harmful
Recent announcements by France, Britain, and Canada are mostly performative.
By Steven A. Cook via Foreign Policy
AUGUST 6, 2025
For almost two years now, as the war in Gaza rages, politicians, analysts, and journalists have been grasping for something constructive that can be done about all the bloodshed and suffering. In the early days after Oct. 7, 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration were seized with revitalizing the Palestinian Authority. Later, so-called day-after plans started clogging people’s inboxes. With the inauguration of Donald Trump last January, we got his plan to turn Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East” (along with a truly weird AI-generated video of what the area would look like after the expulsion of Gazans). Now, we have countries promising to recognize Palestinian sovereignty, including France, the United Kingdom, and Canada—not nearly as absurd as Gaz-a-Lago but not very helpful either.
It is not that such a state is a bad thing or that Palestinians do not have a right to a state, but the timing and conditions that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney attached to recognition are head-scratchers. French President Emmanuel Macron, to his credit, did not condition French recognition of a Palestinian state. Nevertheless, the whole exercise is performative. Clearly, Starmer, Macron, and Carney feel the need to do something in a situation where they have limited influence at best. So, they opted to virtue signal. It is hard to imagine recognition by these three countries helping in any substantial way—and, in fact, it could actually make matters worse.
In Washington, the general response among mostly right-of-center analysts to the announcements has been negative, assailing what commentators refer to as a “reward” for Hamas. It is an important rebuke. But it misapprehends what the British, French, and Canadians are calling for, which Hamas would almost certainly reject—making a further mockery of what Starmer, Macron, and Carney have proposed. No doubt, these leaders envisage something along the lines of what the Oslo Accords were intended to produce: a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It’s a vision that hardly seems relevant today in a conflict that pits one-staters of Hamas against one-staters of Israel. Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 to liberate not just the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but also all the areas in between. Much of Israel’s settler community regards 2025 as the opportune moment to extend sovereignty to the West Bank—i.e., annexation—and the idea seems to have significant support within the Israeli government and the Knesset. Yes, polls have consistently demonstrated that around 70 percent of Israelis want the war in Gaza to end, but only 23 percent of Jewish Israelis support a two-state solution.
It is hard not to feel for Starmer, Macron, and Carney. They all have constituencies that are highly critical of Israel, and Starmer is confronting a new political challenge from the left. Jeremy Corbyn—who once referred to Hamas as “friends” but later claimed that he regretted the statement—and Zarah Sultana, a fierce critic of Israel, have launched a new political party. Still, foreign policy, which often reflects the least worst option confronting leaders, should strive to do the least amount of harm. Oddly, this does not seem to have been part of the British, French, and Canadian calculation.
In response to Macron’s declaration that France plans to recognize a Palestinian state, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich thanked the French leader “for providing yet another compelling reason to finally apply Israeli sovereignty over the historic regions of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], and to definitively abandon the failed concept of establishing a Palestinian terrorist state in the heart of the Land of Israel.” Separate from Smotrich’s vow to annex territory as the “fitting Zionist response” to Macron, the Israelis are not beneath engaging in diplomatic shenanigans. One can imagine Israel recognizing New Caledonia’s independence, expressing support for the Falklands to revert to Argentine sovereignty, and supporting Trump’s “Canada should be the 51st state” of America troll.
In the United States, Republican reaction was withering (while some Democrats expressed support for the recognition of a Palestinian state). It was once hard to imagine the United States punishing it closest allies, but that now seems like a live issue, and the British, French, and Canadian intentions to recognize Palestine have created more tension in these relationships. Sure enough, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Wow! Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine. That will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them. Oh’ Canada!!!” The trans-Atlantic relationship just got a little bit wobblier over the recognition of Palestine.
How does any of this help Palestinians in their quest for statehood and justice? It doesn’t.
No doubt, there are officials in the three countries who argue that recognizing Palestine is the moral thing to do. Fair enough. But why add conditions, like in the case of the U.K. and Canada? The terms that the British and Canadians are offering are a sign that their intentions to recognize a Palestinian state have nothing to do with morality. Presumably, if the humanitarian situation in Gaza improves as Israel permits more aid into the region—which it is now reportedly doing—the Brits will hold off on recognition. If Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas fails to hold hold elections that exclude Hamas, the Canadian government will not recognize Palestine. If it is the right and moral thing to do, why not just recognize a Palestinian state without conditions?
On top of all this, one needs to ask: Why now? Why didn’t the U.K., France, and Canada recognize Palestine in 2002 when then-U.S. President George W. Bush declared that forging “two states [Israel and Palestine], living side by side in peace and security,” was U.S. policy? Why not do so in 1993 after then-Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Declaration of Principles and shook hands on the White House lawn? Perhaps they could have recognized Palestine in 2000 ahead of, or after, the famous summit at Camp David or maybe in December of that year, with the collapse of the peace process that dominated U.S.-Middle East policy for most of the previous decade. Any of these moments were more propitious for recognizing a Palestinian state than the current one. After two years of warfare, there is very little in the way of goodwill between Israelis and Palestinians.
The British, French, and Canadian positions are part of growing international support for Palestine—147 of the United Nations’ 193 member states have already recognized it as a sovereign state. But in the most important place—Israel—the trend lines run the other way. Support for a two-state solution has diminished, and, as a result, the state that the U.K., France, and Canada want to recognize cannot come into existence. Israel holds all the cards and whatever pressure the three countries believe they are bringing to bear on the Israelis, it is unlikely to accede. That sounds terrible. Palestinians argue that statehood is a right, and they do not need anyone’s approval. In principle, they are correct, but that is not the world in which we now live.
In this reality, there is no two-state solution and thus no Palestine to recognize.
Steven did not use Artificial Intelligence to generate this content.
Steven is the author of The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East.
