Performance, punishment or policy: What would recognizing Palestine really mean?
A taxi passing a banner in London’s Parliament Square urging British lawmakers to recognize Palestine in a symbolic parliament vote in 2014
Dahlia Scheindlin writes in Haaretz on 28 May 2025:
Whatever one thinks about the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, one thing is clear: The parties won’t get there themselves. That’s why France and Saudi Arabia are gearing up to try again, by spearheading a process at the United Nations to draw the blueprint for getting it done.
At a UN preparatory session last Friday, representatives from both France and Saudi Arabia promised to put the wheels in motion. They spoke of “Real, irreversible and transformative change.” They called to “chart the course for action, not reflection.” The Saudi representative, Manal Radwan, said: “This conference is not about words but about action.”
A special conference of working groups to be held in mid-June at the UN, Radwan told the General Assembly, will deliver “practical and time-bound outcomes” via “concrete proposals,” and each country must “be ready to shoulder long-term responsibilities.”
That sounds serious, and similar to the French position: “Our aim remains to mobilize the entire international community so that it actively commits by supporting a resumption of the peace process. … [we must] reaffirm our commitment to the two-State solution … by assembling the concrete contributions that all international partners are prepared to provide.”
Except that the latter statement was the French Foreign Ministry’s description of a conference for peace – in January 2017. That conference followed another French-hosted convening in 2016, which followed the outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech in December that year, advocating “significant steps that would signal real progress towards creating two states. That’s the bottom line: If we’re serious about the two-state solution, it’s time to start implementing it now.”
Recognition – the ace or the red herring?
Perhaps to prove that this time is different, France’s Emmanuel Macron has raised fresh speculation – or the specter, for Israel’s right-wing – of formally recognizing the State of Palestine. Last week, his Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Paris was “determined” to do it. On Monday, Malta announced it plans to do the same. They would be following nearly 150 other countries that have already recognized Palestine since the PLO declared a state in 1988. On Wednesday, Indonesia announced a Saudi-style sweetener – that it would recognize Israel, if Israel recognizes a Palestinian state.
But the problem is staring us in the face: All those recognitions have failed to actually add up to a sovereign state of Palestine.
It’s not surprising, then, that “there are some debates right now among Palestinians” about whether recognition is worth it, said Dalal Iriqat, who teaches conflict resolution at the Arab American University in Ramallah, in an interview. Her students complain that such declarations fail to change the difficulty of their lives on the ground, causing mainly frustration; they say “it’s very symbolic, so we don’t need it,” she observed.
But Iriqat rejects that position. For her, “recognition is a pre-requisite for all member states who have supported the two-state solution. However, it must come with a package: End Israeli occupation, define borders, hold Israel accountable and end impunity for war crimes.”
Empty or substantive symbolism
“Just symbolic” is a common concern among Palestinians. Omar Dajani, a Palestinian-American law professor and former legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team, told me bluntly “Recognition must be more than symbolic.” He is the Palestinian co-chair of the board of A Land for All, where I have been an active member for a dozen years. Palestinians and Israelis who support a two-state solution have plenty of ideas for how to turn such a policy into what Dajani calls “transformative recognition.” He outlined a set of basic principles.
The first, which should be obvious, is to anchor recognition “explicitly” to the Green Line, which demarcated Israel from the Palestinian territories on the eve of the 1967 war. In the West Bank, Israel has stretched its occupation so far east of the line as to make the West Bank unrecognizable. Going back to that line as the starting point both recognizes the need for a smooth, contiguous Palestinian state, not “resembling a Bantustan,” writes Dajani – and is a de facto reversal of Israel’s de facto annexation.
Iriqat recalled the July 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice ruling that Israel’s occupation of territories beyond that line as illegal. She didn’t say so, but recognizing Palestine would mean that Israel is violating the sovereign territory of another state – an even clearer-cut violation than protracted occupation. Dalal advocated sanctions at the bilateral level – meaning, individual countries should “walk the talk,” for example by ending arms sales, or sanctioning settlers in general for the violation of international law, not only against those who commit violence against Palestinians.
Until last week, such advice would have sounded hypothetical if not remote. But Britain, Canada and France have now issued warnings of “concrete actions” and targeted sanctions over the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Britain suspended trade negotiations with Israel. It’s a new week, and Germany’s chancellor has issued a stern criticism of the war, which his finance minister seconded in statements that sounded very much like a warning. Putting teeth like this behind recognition of Palestine, too, would go well beyond symbolism.
Posturing, punishing, or building
But Palestinian statehood isn’t actually about punishing Israel; it’s about building. To this end, Dajani advocates backing recognition with a plan for an “international transitional administration for Palestine,” involving multiple countries who can contribute to managing or building institutions alongside Palestinians, something I’ve supported since early in the war.
Naturally Israel would have to agree, since it controls what goes in and out of Palestine (other than smuggling). Nor should a two-state solution be held hostage to settlers; A Land for All has a constructive, non-punishment based proposal offering permanent residency inside Palestine to help.
A real state, of course, needs to be economically viable, which won’t happen overnight. The war has “erased” Gaza’s economy – and wreaked tremendous damage in the West Bank as well. Beyond the $53 billion the World Bank estimates will be needed to reconstruct Gaza, the international community could take steps to ease Palestine’s decades-old dependence on Israel – and vulnerability to Israel’s decisions.
Raja Khalidi, Director General of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS), stressed that economic independence must start from the premise that “there’s no such thing as economic sovereignty, there’s sovereignty – and with it you can get an economy which is more or less sovereign.” He is rightfully suspicious of attempts to advance Palestinian economic growth instead of independence – a prospect as fictional as conflict management, since sustainable growth hinges on Palestinian independence, alongside Israeli cooperation.
If the global community truly wants Palestinian independence, Khalidi said, it “should start thinking about what are the economic attributes of a sovereign state?”
He gave two examples: allowing Palestine to borrow money either from official or commercial financial markets, and treating the future state of Palestine as a “separate customs territory,” a status the World Trade Organization denotes as one of the types of entities eligible for accession, which facilitates its ability to conduct international trade.
But these are easier said than done – both are subject to the decisions of governments, financial institutions or private lenders, for example, who generally prefer precisely what Palestine doesn’t have: actual control over its borders and customs policies, or the stability and institutional strength that lenders trust.
To that end, said Khalidi, “we know that economic development and independence can only come through political sovereignty, and political sovereignty is what remains elusive.”
Two Israeli law professors concur on the need for greater Palestinian control over their economy. In a pre-war 2023 paper, Arie Reich and Guy Harpaz noted that the Paris Protocol, the economic arrangements negotiated during the first stage of the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, maintained Palestinian economic dependence on Israel via control over imports, borders, customs – famously collecting clearance taxes and sometimes withholding them for political reasons, regulations on certain imports and various types of control over exports. This “institutionaliz[ed] the unequal trading relations between the parties.”
They recommended doing away with the customs union model in favor of a free trade agreement, which would provide more “symmetry,” and give Palestinians more control over their trade policies – another way to advance Palestine’s status as a separate customs territory, and thus its candidacy for joining the World Trade Organization.
Reich, the Deputy Rector of Bar-Ilan University, speaking in his personal capacity, told me he stands by the recommendations of mid- 2023. He wants Palestinians to take more responsibility for their economic life; but Reich spoke from an Israeli perspective, hoping to reduce the blame on Israel for Palestinian economic difficulties.
Reich also recognized that in the current political circumstances, “considering our terrible situation with Gaza, we need to show an alternative horizon to those who haven’t attacked us, with whom we have security cooperation … the Palestinian Authority – that they get something back,” – i.e., reward and incentives to be a peaceful partner.
Once again, this requires Israel’s consent. The FTA model he and Harpaz proposed “allows them to establish their customs [policies] with all other countries, but it’s a little hard because we [Israel] sit on all the borders.”
He suggested that the international community could advance these ideas, including through incentives to Israel.
This is just a sample of concrete policy ideas, but ultimately any policy to build Palestinian statehood beyond words will require Israel to cede control, for Palestinians to truly advance their own policymaking, accountability, institution-building and economic policies of a state. Palestinians have plenty of work to do on governance, leadership and legal institutions. Without a horizon for sovereignty, who will have the legitimacy – or the motivation – to bother?
There are no nice ways to say this: Everyone wants Palestinian statehood but Israel, and Israel won’t change on its own. Recognition must be a big package of policy, one with teeth and bricks alike, or it will end up like all the other failures.
This article is reproduced in its entirety