Can recognition by European nations bring Palestine closer to statehood?

By Roger Cohen

The decision by Spain, Norway and Ireland to recognise a 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 US 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 will wait. So will Germany, whose support for Israel, rooted in atonement for the Holocaust, is second only to that of the US. The decision of Spain, Norway and Ireland has made one thing clear: There will be no European unity 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 US remains adamant that recognition of a Palestinian state must come through negotiation between the two parties. 
 

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 US can somehow triangulate Saudi normali­sation of relations with Israel, a vague Israeli verbal commitment to a process ending in two states and the Gaza war.
 

“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. But the reality is that a divided Europe has had little or no real leverage over, or impact on, the conflict for some time.
 

©2024 The New York Times  News Service