By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

The Promise and Peril of Recognizing Palestine

In June, the United Nations planned to convene a conference on the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Led by France and Saudi Arabia, the assembled nations were expected to agree to recognize a Palestinian state and call for a renewed peace process, presumably based on the 2002 Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative, which proposed full peace between the Arab states and Israel after the creation of a Palestinian state.

Israel repeatedly condemned the conference, and the United States was less than enthusiastic. “We are urging governments not to participate in the conference,” read a cable sent in June by the State Department in Washington to U.S. embassies around the world, according to Reuters. “The United States opposes any steps that would unilaterally recognize a conjectural Palestinian state, which adds significant legal and political obstacles to the eventual resolution of the conflict and could coerce Israel during a war, thereby supporting its enemies,” the cable stated.

The Trump administration had a more fundamental objection to the conference: it opposes not merely the recognition of a Palestinian state but also the establishment of such a state. “Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there’s no room for it,” said Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, in an interview with Bloomberg News, adding that he did not expect to see such an outcome “in our lifetime.” And if such a state ever emerges, he suggested, it should not be located in the Palestinian territories that Israel occupies but should instead be carved out of “a Muslim country.”

Just days before the conference was supposed to begin, Israel carried out a series of air strikes on Iran. The resulting 12-day war, which the United States eventually joined, overshadowed the Israeli-Palestinian issue and made it logistically impossible to move forward with the conference, which was postponed. “This postponement cannot undermine our determination to move forward with the implementation of the two-state solution,” French President Emmanuel Macron told a news conference. “Whatever the circumstances,” he added, “I have stated my determination to recognize the state of Palestine.”

A rally to mark the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, West Bank, May 2025

Macron is not alone, and the momentum in favor of broader recognition is likely to keep building in the coming weeks and months. Whether or not the UN conference ever takes place as planned, the issue of international recognition is not going away.

What the historical development concerns initially all people born in British Mandatory Palestine between 1923 and 1948 (today's Israel) had "Palestine" stamped on their passports at the time. But when they were called Palestinians, the Arabs were offended. They complained: "We are not Palestinians, we are Arabs. The Palestinians are the Jews". The Mandate for Palestine in 1922 solidified British support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the region.

Today, the reality on the ground may appear less conducive to a revival of the two-state solution than to the consolidation of a one-state reality. The Israeli war in Gaza is paving the way for the return of direct Israeli control, the settlement of the territory, and the possible expulsion of Palestinians. In the West Bank, Israeli settlers backed by Israeli security forces have stepped up a campaign of violence and intimidation, emptying Palestinian communities to lay the groundwork for Israeli annexation. Israeli officials make clear that they have no interest in a two-state solution, a position publicly expressed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, most recently when President Donald Trump hosted him in the White House in early July. And according to numerous media reports, the details of Trump’s proposals for a “grand bargain” linking the end of the Gaza war to further normalization between Israel and Arab countries do not include Palestinian statehood in the mix.

But recognition of a Palestinian state may not be fully off the table. The costs of the ongoing conflict are high, and Trump seems to incline toward a perspective on regional issues similar to those of the leaders of Gulf states, who prioritize stability and need to show their people some progress on the Palestinian issue to justify further cooperation. Seen through the prism of Trump’s transactional worldview, the United States gives, Israel takes, and the Gulf pays—and pays well. Israel is an expensive dependent: the war in Gaza has cost Washington more than $22 billion while taxing the American military and bringing the United States into the fight with Iran. The confrontation with Yemen’s Houthi rebels—who imposed a blockade on ships headed to Israel, in solidarity with the Palestinians—has tied down the U.S. Navy and required the use of munitions costing over $1 billion, leading Trump to reach a cease-fire of sorts with the Houthis without even consulting Israel.

Trump is frustrated with the status quo, and as for his predecessors, the most easily available policy gambit he could choose would be a symbolic move that reaffirms a two-state solution but does not truly produce one. The Gulf states, the Europeans, and many other players will tell him that a Gaza ceasefire, while desperately needed, is not enough. Even if a ceasefire takes hold, it’s unlikely to lead to a permanent end to the war. As even many hawkish Israelis have come to accept, the Israeli military will not be able to destroy Hamas. Thus, the only way to terminate the war, short of a sea change in Israeli public opinion or leadership, is for the United States to check an expansionist Israeli government that is armed with ruinous American weapons.

With all this in mind, the push for recognition of a Palestinian state should not be dismissed. If a large new wave of countries jointly recognize a state of Palestine, it would serve as a powerful symbol of growing international frustration with Israel’s obliteration of Gaza and apartheid-like domination of the West Bank. Much of the world would welcome an alternative to the seemingly inexorable drive towards annihilation and annexation. Recognition would also help anchor the debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in international law and could save Gaza from the full-scale destruction and depopulation threatened by some Israeli government ministers. And it would give the Trump administration leverage that it can use to push for the kind of grand bargain he hopes to broker.

But recognition of de jure Palestinian sovereignty in the absence of real change on the ground would be a trap. Recognition cannot be an end in itself. If many countries choose to recognize Palestine but fail to confront the reality of escalating Israeli domination of the occupied territories, recognition could prove seriously counterproductive. If formal recognition becomes a substitute for defending the primacy of international law and addressing the core realities of Palestinian suffering, it would be at best a hollow gesture—and at worst an epic misallocation of scarce international political capital.

 

Recognition, If You Can Keep It

The push for recognition of the state of Palestine has a long history. The UN General Assembly admitted Palestine as a nonvoting member in 2012. Although this did not meaningfully advance Palestinian independence or sovereignty, it allowed Palestine to become a state party to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and to expand its diplomatic efforts within UN institutions. Recognition also inherently bolsters the flagging ideal of a two-state solution and reinforces the principle that Israeli control of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem is illegal and that “Israel is under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible,” as the International Court of Justice put it in a sweeping ruling last year.

Recognition has become an attractive option as anger at the horrors of Gaza has built pressure for some form of meaningful international action. Recognition of Palestine by European countries, in particular, would represent a major setback for Israeli diplomacy, given Israel’s ferocious lobbying to shore up Western support for its policies and to hold off critics around the world. If wealthy and influential European countries joined the roster of states recognizing Palestine, it would signal a crumbling of Israel’s firewall against meaningful international pressure and leave it even more dependent on an unpredictable United States.

Recognition would also be an accomplishment for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Before Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and Israel launched its retaliatory war in Gaza, the Saudi leader had hoped to normalize relations with Israel. He has since stepped back from that goal amid popular outrage in Arab countries over Israel’s campaign. Linking recognition of a Palestinian state (and presumably, Saudi Arabia’s own normalization with Israel) to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative would give MBS a strong claim to regional leadership. It would also be an opportunity for the Saudis to one-up their rivals in the United Arab Emirates, which agreed to decouple the issue of a Palestinian state from its strategic relations with Israel by signing the Abraham Accords during the previous Trump administration.

Many countries already recognize Palestine as a state, but a new wave of recognition could well trigger a cascade of global support. Proponents believe widespread recognition could put new pressure on Israel to commit to a two-state outcome by strengthening the voices of Israeli supporters of an independent Palestinian state, who have been silenced in recent years, and give Palestinians a way out of their current impasse. In this view, recognition could also represent a focal point for the enormous groundswell of outrage over Gaza to do something tangible. It might cause Netanyahu’s coalition to collapse and galvanize desperately needed political change in Israel. And given the enormous resources that would have to be mustered to rebuild Gaza and devastated parts of the West Bank, donors would likely be more willing to put up the funds as part of a path to an endgame.

Belief in such an outcome, however, requires what might be charitably described as a leap of faith. It has been many years since a two-state solution seemed viable, and the prospects have further diminished in the past 19 months. The situation on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank makes territorial division and peaceful coexistence ever more difficult to imagine. Few Israelis today disagree with the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, Tzipi Hotovely, who bluntly asserted last month that “the two-state solution is over.”

That was arguably true long before Hamas attacked Israel in 2023 and the war that followed. All the territory west of the Jordan River has long constituted a single state under Israeli rule, where the land and the people are subject to radically different legal regimes, and Palestinians are permanently treated as a lower caste. Israel’s assault on Gaza has further entrenched this apartheid-like one-state reality as Israeli officials push towards permanent occupation and even annexation of Palestinian territory. As Gaza has become uninhabitable, more destruction and homelessness have been visited on the West Bank and the construction of Israeli settlements there has accelerated.

Given these conditions, recognition of Palestine could be seen as little more than a dodge: a way to make a statement without doing anything to make a change. It is far easier to call for a two-state solution than it is to confront the reality of Israeli domination of a de facto single state. It is easier to affirm the existence of a Palestinian state than to do the extraordinarily difficult things it would take to truly create one. To be more than an empty gesture, the conference must attach demands for concrete changes on the ground to match Palestine’s new legal status. The affirmation of Palestinian sovereignty must also spell out the costs for continued Israeli violations of international law, offer protections for Palestinians from further depredations, and lay out steps for building governing institutions and a viable economy from the rubble Israel leaves behind.

 

Never Say Never

It is no surprise that the Trump administration has opposed the UN conference. Trump himself is highly unlikely to be moved by appeals to international law; he recently issued an executive order sanctioning four judges of the ICC for their investigation of alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian territories. And when it comes to Israel, Trump is hardly an outlier among American presidents: for decades, under successive presidential administrations, U.S. policy has been to offer lip service to a two-state solution while doing everything possible to prevent the application of international law to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But this is not a normal moment in American or global politics. Trump’s willingness to break with tradition and override experts, his affinity for the wealthy Gulf states, and his personal distaste for Netanyahu push Washington in surprising directions. Trump’s attack on the ICC, his musings about depopulating and seizing Gaza, and his exploitation of concerns (both genuine and disingenuous) about anti-Semitism to attack American universities all suggest a conventional right-wing, pro-Israeli orientation. But when it comes to the Middle East, Trump can be unpredictable: he surprised observers and even his own supporters by lifting sanctions on Syria’s new government and by pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran.

Israel’s reliance on American support for its war, and its growing international isolation, has left the country more dependent than ever on Washington. At the same time, Israel finds itself out of step with American policy towards Iran and Syria, and falling out of favor with ordinary Americans, including Republicans under the age of 50. In its relationship with Washington, Israel is perhaps more vulnerable than at any time since the end of the Cold War, when President George H. W. Bush launched an ambitious effort to bring about a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.

Trump is thus presented with an unusual opportunity to shake things up. He has already signaled that he believes it is time for Israel’s war on Gaza to end and that he views action on the Palestinian issue as connected to his diplomacy with Iran and partnership with the Gulf states. He shows little sign of viewing the American relationship with Israel as somehow more special than Washington’s relations with any other country. He has centralized decision-making in the White House and banished the bureaucratic expertise that ordinarily keeps policy locked onto a single track. And his controversial domestic policies show that he cares little about political pushback at home.

Taking ownership of a renewed global push to recognize the state of Palestine and make it a reality on the ground would be the kind of dramatic reversal that perhaps only a leader as unconstrained by traditional political considerations and as personally mercurial as Trump could pull off. It’s unlikely to happen. And it would not alone be enough. But recognizing Palestine and forcing an end to the war in Gaza represents Trump’s best path to forging a new nuclear agreement with Iran, consolidating U.S. partnerships in the Gulf, and proving that he really can do better on foreign policy than his predecessors did.

 

 

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