NEWS
ANALYSIS
Can European Recognition Bring Palestinian
Statehood Any Closer?
Not on its own, in all likelihood. But it reflects a
growing, global exasperation with Israel that might eventually lend momentum to
a two-state solution.
Roger Cohen
By Roger
Cohen
Reporting
from Paris
May 23,
2024, 12:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/world/middleeast/europe-recognition-palestinian-statehood.html
The
decision by Spain, Norway and Ireland to recognize an independent Palestinian
state reflects growing exasperation with the Israel of Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, even from traditional friends, and suggests that international
pressure on him will grow.
It does
not, however, make it inevitable that other larger European states will follow
suit. This year President Emmanuel Macron of France has said such recognition
is “not a taboo,” a position reiterated by the French Foreign Ministry on
Wednesday. In February, David Cameron, Britain’s foreign secretary, said that
such recognition “can’t come at the start of the process, but it doesn’t have
to be the very end of the process.”
Those were
small steps, although beyond anything they have said previously, but far short
of recognition of a Palestinian state itself. If Europe were unified, with the
major states joining in recognition, leaving the United States isolated in
rejecting such a step, then it could have a greater impact, but that stage is
far from being reached.
“This
decision must be useful, that is to say allow a decisive step forward on the
political level,” Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné said in a statement about
potential recognition. “France does not consider that the conditions have been
met to date for this decision to have a real impact on this process.”
France, in
other words, will wait. So, too, will Germany, whose support for Israel, rooted
in atonement for the Holocaust, is second only to that of the United States.
The decision of Spain, Norway and Ireland has made one thing clear: There will
be no European unity, or at least aligned timing, on the question of
recognition of a Palestinian state before such a state exists on the ground.
Nor will
there be agreement between trans-Atlantic allies. Like Israel, the United
States remains adamant that recognition of a Palestinian state must come
through negotiation between the two parties. Otherwise the mere act of
recognition changes nothing on the ground, where day by day conditions
deteriorate.
Mr.
Netanyahu’s life’s work has been largely built around the avoidance of a
two-state agreement, even to the point of past support for Hamas intended to
obstruct such an outcome. That seems unlikely to change, unless the United
States can somehow triangulate Saudi normalization of relations with Israel, a
vague Israeli verbal commitment to a process ending in two states and the end
of the war in Gaza.
“To any
prime minister but Netanyahu, the U.S. offer is very attractive,” said Itamar
Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, who noted that an
end to the Gaza war would inevitably bring an official inquiry into
responsibility for the Oct. 7 disaster and confront Mr. Netanyahu with the
fraud and corruption charges against him. “But for his own personal reasons, he
balks at any postwar significant Palestinian role in governing Gaza.”
Leaders of
the three European states recognizing Palestine said they were determined to
keep the two-state idea alive. “We’re not going to allow the possibility of the
two-state solution to be destroyed by force,” said Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish
prime minister.
Those were
stirring words. It seems possible that at a time of terrible suffering — in the
ruins of Gaza and under what is widely seen as the ineffective and corrupt rule
of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — the recognition will provide a
moral lift to Palestinians pursuing their right to self-determination.
But the
reality is that a divided Europe has had little or no real leverage over, or
impact on, the conflict for some time.
It has been
a marginal player since Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the early 1990s
resulted in the Oslo accords. The only voice today that Israel will listen to
is America’s — and even there Mr. Netanyahu has proved defiant of late.
“The
Europeans really have no influence,” Mr. Rabinovich said. “The recognition of a
Palestinian state is purely symbolic and changes nothing. If they sent 30,000
European troops to Gaza to end the war, it would be different, but we know that
if 10 of them were killed, they would all leave immediately.”
The
recognition comes in a week when the chief prosecutor of the International
Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and his defense
minister, Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in
Gaza, at the same time as he sought warrants for Hamas leaders. The requests
are still subject to approval by court judges.
The United
States called the I.C.C. prosecutor’s decision “shameful,” whereas France said
it “supports the International Criminal Court, its independence and the fight
against impunity in all situations” — another possible sign of allied disunity
as the war festers. But Mr. Séjourné, the foreign minister, later said the
warrants “must not create an equivalence” between Hamas, which he called a
terrorist group, and Israel.
In response
to a case brought by South Africa, the International Court of Justice, which
judges cases between states, not individuals, has already ordered Israel to
prevent its forces from committing or inciting genocidal acts.
Pressure on
Israel, in other words, is growing. So, too, is its isolation. Mr. Netanyahu’s
decision, with his own political and judicial fate at stake, to draw out the
war and decline to lay out a day-after plan for Gaza comes at a heavy price.
A
fundamental question remains: Will all the condemnation bring a change in
Israel’s firm position that the war over Hamas must be won, including in Rafah?
Or will it entrench that position as resentment grows at what is widely seen in
Israel as unforgivable European moral equivalency between the terrorists of
Hamas and Israel’s democratic state?
Some fierce
opponents of Mr. Netanyahu, whose far-right coalition has a shrinking
constituency in Israel, have been so outraged by the I.C.C. prosecutor’s
seemingly equating the Israeli leader with Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader
within Gaza and mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack, that they have felt obliged to
rally to the Israeli leader’s side.
“Today’s
decision sends a message to Palestinians and the world: Terrorism pays,” Israel
Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, said in a scathing response to the three
states’ recognition of Palestinian statehood, adding that there would be
consequences.
There is
little question that the Palestinian cause, dormant until the terrorist
violence of Oct. 7, is now front and center once again in Western capitals and
beyond.
The attack
on Israel, and Israel’s devastating bombardment of Gaza in response, have
shaken the world out of its torpor over an intractable conflict. The Biden
administration, along with European powers, had scarcely mentioned a two-state
outcome in the preceding years, believing the Palestinian issue could be
finessed in some wider Middle Eastern normalization of relations with Israel.
That proved
to be wishful thinking.
Two
peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, battling for the same narrow sliver of land
between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, remain the inalienable core
of the conflict. Neither is going away; each believes its claim is irrefutable.
Now, as a wider regional confrontation appears possible, a scramble to revive
the two-state idea has occurred even as the conditions for it appear less
favorable than ever.
The
recognition of a Palestinian state by Spain, Norway and Ireland is part of that
scramble, which may have come too late. It reflects a widespread feeling that
“enough is enough.” It is part of a global exasperation that might contribute
to forward momentum if a multitude of things change — not least the replacement
of the current Israeli and Palestinian leadership, the end of the war and the
establishment of some governing authority in Gaza that has nothing to do with
Hamas.
Roger Cohen
is the Paris Bureau chief for The Times, covering France and beyond. He has
reported on wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza,
in more than four decades as a journalist. At The Times, he has been a
correspondent, foreign editor and columnist. More about
Roger Cohen
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