A Palestinian State Has Already Been Offered, Rejected — Yet Europe, Canada, and Australia Pretend It’s New?
In recent weeks, a hysterical parade of world leaders — France and Britain at the front of the pack, joined by Canada and Australia — have rushed to recognize a Palestinian state.
Their motivation is not the search for peace but the search for relevance, and they seem to believe that recognition costs nothing. In fact, recognition was given long ago.
What has been missing, time and again, is the will to turn principle into reality.
The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan (Resolution 181) explicitly provided for two states: one Jewish, one Arab. Notably, there was no reference to a “Palestinian” state.
At that time, the concept of a Palestinian national identity was not part of the Arab political imagination. The Arabs of the territory largely identified with the broader Arab nation, and the land itself was often described as “Southern Syria” under the Ottoman Empire.
It was only in the early 1970s, under Yasser Arafat, that the term “Palestinian” came into widespread use to designate the Arabs living in the western part of that Ottoman province.
Yet even in 1947, the principle of dual statehood was established clearly and unambiguously.
Whenever the moment came to make that principle real — by accepting a state for themselves alongside a Jewish state — Palestinian leaders refused.
At Khartoum in 1967, the Arab League adopted its infamous “Three No’s”: no negotiation, no peace, no recognition.
The preference remained absolute: if recognition of a Palestinian state required recognition of a Jewish state, then better to have nothing.
Israel, however, returned repeatedly to the principle.
At Camp David in 2000, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered statehood.
In 2008, then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made another far-reaching offer.
In both cases, with a sitting U.S. president serving as a witness, Palestinian representatives declined.
Refusal was elevated to strategy.
There is, however, one moment when principle was given a framework for reality: the diplomatic process opened at the Madrid Conference of 1991, carried forward by the Oslo Accords of 1993.
Those accords, signed on the White House lawn and recognized internationally, established the unconditional rule that Palestinian statehood could not come from rhetorical declarations abroad but only through direct agreement between Israel and the Palestinians themselves.
Crucially, Madrid and Oslo did not remain private understandings.
They were welcomed by the United Nations, endorsed by the United States, and embraced by Europe. France and its partners invested diplomatic capital and billions of euros in aid to support their implementation.
In this way, Oslo acquired the weight of international law: it became the accepted legal framework by which Palestinian statehood could emerge — not because outside leaders proclaimed it, but because both Israel and the Palestinians had themselves agreed, and the world ratified that agreement.
That is why today’s declarations ring hollow. Recognition of something that the Palestinians themselves have consistently refused to bring into existence cannot produce reality.
Instead, it turns the peoples of the Mideast into props in the theater of international diplomacy. It gives European, Canadian, and Australian leaders the illusion that they are shaping history, when in fact they are only generating expectations untethered to the ground.
And even more importantly, in each of these countries there has been, and continues to be, strong media criticism of what their leaders are doing.
The charge is clear: they are exploiting an international crisis over which they have little real influence in order to distract from their own domestic political failings.
In France, President Macron’s maneuver has even emboldened left-wing mayors to allow the Palestinian flag to replace the French tricolor at demonstrations that have nothing to do with foreign affairs.
France has long yearned for a role in Mideast diplomacy.
Yet its history is one of irrelevance, in part because it often refused to align itself with the United States when balanced resolutions were on the table — resolutions that condemned not only Israeli actions but also Arab terrorism and violations of international law.
Left sidelined, France compensates by playing to the gallery at the United Nations.
The danger is not only futility but also distortion.
President Macron, in announcing France’s recognition of Palestine, went so far as to suggest he was preparing an international coalition to disarm Hamas.
Such a statement would be risible if it were not so irresponsible.
Here is a country still hesitating on how firmly to oppose Russia’s aggression in Ukraine — and already facing new threats in the Baltics — suddenly declaring that it will raise and lead a military force in Gaza, one that would supposedly outperform the Israeli Defense Forces themselves.
It mocks the sacrifices of Israelis who send their own sons and daughters into combat, at high cost, to pursue this very objective.
Recognition without reality is not progress. It’s theater.
The longer this theater continues, the more it feeds illusions, prevents accountability, and delays the hard choices which alone can bring peace.
The principle of two states was established in 1947, given a framework at Madrid and Oslo, and remains on the table today. The refusal to accept it cannot be erased by rhetorical flourishes in Paris, Ottawa, Canberra, or London.
Mark L. Cohen practices law and was counsel at White & Case starting in 2001, after serving as international lawyer and senior legal consultant for the French aluminum producer Pechiney. Cohen was a senior consultant at a Ford Foundation Commission, an adviser to the PBS television program “The Advocates,” and assistant attorney general in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He teaches U.S. history at the business school in Lille l’EDHEC. Read Mark L. Cohen’s Reports — More Here.
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