One of the most important unresolved issues surrounding the increasing calls for an independent state for the Palestinians is how such a sovereign entity could emerge from the rubble of the Israeli war on Gaza.
The question is rapidly gaining momentum in view of Israel’s unabating genocidal war on Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unprecedented acceleration of the annexation of the West Bank.
On the face of it, the moves to recognise a Palestinian state by a growing list of countries are apparently designed to put pressure on Israel to end its assault on Gaza and curtail the building of new Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank.
Key Western nations including Britain, France, Australia, Canada, Belgium and Finland have all said they will formally recognise a Palestinian state at a UN conference on 22 September to be held on the sidelines of the General Assembly meetings in a week when world leaders deliver major speeches.
A Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital is the declared goal of the Palestinian Authority (PA). But most Israelis consider Palestinian statehood an anathema and a nightmare scenario for their own declared “Jewish state.”
Therefore, any dramatic outcome in the Western nations’ endeavour demands a major shift in their strategy to increase the pressure on Israel to make it change its mind and stop torpedoing the two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
That could be a major sticking point. Angered by pledges from these countries to formally recognise Palestinian statehood, Israel has stepped up efforts to make the annexation of the West Bank a reality.
Hardline Finance Minister Smotrich Bezalel presented Israel’s intention to apply sovereignty over most of the Occupied West Bank to the public last week.
Widely seen as a driving force behind Netanyahu’s government, he disclosed that after months of work maps have been drawn up that will allow Israel to have sovereignty over 82 per cent of the West Bank.
“Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria [Israeli vocabulary for the West Bank] will prevent an Arab terrorist state and, God forbid, will not establish such a state. We have no desire to apply our sovereignty to a population that is interested in our destruction,” Bezalel said.
The Israeli media reported on Saturday that as a response to the recognition of a Palestinian state Netanyahu has discussed with his cabinet plans to apply “partial” sovereignty over the West Bank with additional sanctions on the PA.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu is pushing on with the brutal army offensive in Gaza with the declared goal of taking complete control of the Strip and expelling its population.
Since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, it has expanded into the territory and formally annexed East Jerusalem, which was later declared its capital. It also expanded Israeli settlements, which the international community considers illegal, violating the Geneva Conventions.
Nearly one million Israeli settlers now live in the heart of the Occupied West Bank among approximately three million Palestinians whose properties have been confiscated and movement on their own land restricted.
Although the 1993 Oslo Accords laid the foundations for a two-state solution by establishing a framework for the PA as a self-governance body in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the settlements expansion accelerated.
The accords divided the West Bank into three areas, A, B, and C. Area A, which comprises 18 per cent of the West Bank, includes the main Palestinian population centres and is under Palestinian security and administrative control.
Area B, which comprises 21 per cent of the West Bank, is under Palestinian administrative control but remains under Israeli security control, and Area C is under Israeli security and administrative control and comprises 61 per cent of the territory.
At the time of the signing of the accords there was a handful of Jewish settlements in the West Bank containing some 248,000 settlers, but over the three decades since then Israel has built some 200 new ones and hundreds of outposts inhabited by more than 940,000 settlers.
By accelerating the building of Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank, and planning to annex the territory and impose its control over Gaza, Israel hopes to close the window on a viable Palestinian state and pave the way for a “Greater Israel.”
Yet, there are important strategic considerations and profound emotional factors that lead many observers to believe that the recognition of a Palestinian state by leading Western nations will trigger genuine international interest in finding an enduring peace in the Middle East.
As expected, however, the move to recognise a Palestinian state has been met with opposition by the administration of US President Donald Trump, who has a history of strong support for Israel.
The administration has declared that it will not allow PA President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian officials to travel to New York to join the UN General Assembly meetings this month and Western leaders who are expected to recognise Palestine as a state.
The US State Department has also imposed sanctions on three Palestinian human rights groups that asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Israeli leaders over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
In furthering Washington’s opposition to Europe taking the step of recognising Palestine, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio signalled that the Israeli threat to annex the West Bank is a wholly predictable reciprocal response.
On the other hand, Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, is proposing a final offer dubbed as a “comprehensive deal” with Hamas in Gaza to release all the Israeli hostages in an apparent attempt to stall the New York gathering.
The offer does not include an end to the war or Israel’s withdrawal from the Strip which prompted Hamas to demand a “guarantee” to implement a “negotiated deal.”
A two-state solution is the idea that the two sides could co-exist in peace alongside each other, with a Palestinian state on territory Israel captured in the 1967 War and the Gaza Strip and West Bank linked by a corridor through Israel.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s highest court, said in 2024 that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories and its settlements there are illegal and should be withdrawn as soon as possible.
As of March 2025, the state of Palestine is recognised as a sovereign state by 147 of the 193 member states of the United Nations, or just over 76 per cent. Palestine has been a non-member Observer of the UN General Assembly since November 2012.
However, if the move towards recognition goes as planned, the European leaders who initiated this latest twist in Middle East diplomacy will need to face up to the challenges it entails.
The onus will be on French President Emmanuel Macron, who will co-lead an international conference on the issue in New York with Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman.
Macron has criticised the US decision not to grant visas to Palestinian officials as “unacceptable” and called for its reversal. He has also ruled out he and other partners being deterred by Israel’s intimidation.
“Our objective is clear: to rally the broadest possible international support for the two-state solution – the only way to meet the legitimate aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians,” Macron said.
“No offensive, annexation attempt, or forced displacement of population will derail the momentum we have created with the Crown Prince, momentum that many partners have already joined,” he added.
But the limited opportunity that may still exist for realising progress towards a durable peace between the Palestinians and Israel may have little chance of a breakthrough.
With the Netanyahu government’s recent approval of a huge West Bank settlement that fits into a broader push towards annexation and the war of genocide in Gaza to displace more than two million people continuing, multiple questions remain about the feasibility of the Palestinian state proposal.
These developments are not just another point of tension in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They are part of a deliberate strategy to stall the debate over Palestinian statehood by rendering it physically impossible.
Almost two years into the Gaza war, it is becoming clear that Israel’s objective is not peace with the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world but rather creeping annexation and expansion.
Many Israeli politicians have made it clear that they would rather annex the West Bank than resolve the Palestinian issue to create a context in which the so-called “Abraham Accords” and normalisation with the Arab world continues and broadens.
It is clear that France and other European partners have no concrete plans for the creation of an independent Palestinian state on the ground beyond a simple declaration of intent.
Ahead of this month’s gathering on a two-state solution, the major question remains of how much stomach the participants have to try the one thing they have not done: put pressure on Israel in order to make it real and viable.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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