France Recognizes Palestine

NYT (“France Will Recognize Palestinian Statehood, Macron Says“):

President Emmanuel Macron announced late Thursday that France would recognize the state of Palestine as part of “its historical commitment to a just and durable peace in the Middle East.”

In a surprise statement on X that followed months of hints and hesitations over possible French recognition of a Palestinian state, he said that he would make a formal announcement to that effect at the United Nations General Assembly in September in New York.

“Today the most urgent thing is that the war in Gaza cease and the civilian population be helped,” Mr. Macron said. His statement came as anger mounted across the world over the continued Israeli military operation in Gaza and growing starvation there.

France would become the first of the Group of 7 major industrialized nations — also including the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany, Japan and Italy — to recognize a Palestinian state. The decision appeared likely to irk the Trump administration as it stands behind Israel and pursues its own attempts to end the war in Gaza.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, reacted angrily to the French move. He said in a statement that “we strongly condemn Mr. Macron’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state next to Tel Aviv in the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre” of 2023, adding that a Palestinian state could become “a launchpad to annihilate Israel.”

Israel has consistently opposed French recognition of Palestinian statehood, saying it would reward Hamas terrorism and accusing Mr. Macron of leading “a crusade against the Jewish state.” Relations between the two countries have become strained and now appear certain to worsen.

Netanyahu’s histrionics aside, this is just unhelpful. However much one sympathizes with the desire of the Palestinian people for self-determination, it simply is not a state. By pretty much every definition, a state must have recognized borders over which it exercises sovereignty. Palestine has neither of those characteristics.

Writing before Macron’s announcement, The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg (“The Worst-Kept Secret of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict“) states the obvious:

One of the more poorly kept secrets of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that many of those involved would prefer to take all the land and have the other side disappear. A 2011 poll found that two-thirds of Palestinians believed that their real goal should not be a two-state solution, but rather using that arrangement as a prelude to establishing “one Palestinian state.” A 2016 survey found that nearly half of Israeli Jews agreed that “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.” A poll in 2000, conducted during negotiations toward a two-state solution, found that only 47 percent of Israelis and 10 percent of Palestinians supported a school curriculum that would educate students to “give up aspirations for parts of the ‘homeland’ which are in the other state.”

These stark statistics illustrate why the conflict has proved so intractable: Palestinians and Israelis subscribe to dueling national movements with deeply held and mutually exclusive historical and religious claims to the same land. After a century of violence and dispossession, it should not be surprising that many would happily wish the other side away, if such an option existed. The current American administration, though, is the first to reinforce those ambitions, rather than curtail them.

Aside from the efforts of beleaguered moderates, what restrains the region’s worst impulses is not principle, but practicality. Neither side can fully vanquish the other without unending bloodshed, and the international community has long refused to countenance an outcome in which one group simply routs the other. Instead, successive American presidents—with the notable exception of Donald Trump—have insisted that Israelis and Palestinians resolve their differences bilaterally at the negotiating table.

Even if we replaced the Israeli government with one totally out of step with its Jewish population and they recognized the autonomy of Gaza and the West Bank, withdrawing all troops and Jewish settlers—a complete fantasy, of course—we would still have the rather huge problem that very few Palestinians would be satisfied with that outcome. We would almost certainly still not have peace.

We have two peoples who want all of the same piece of territory. One of them has international recognition and membership in the United Nations; the other is recognized by a handful of the worst dictators on the planet and France. One has far and away the most powerful military in the region; the other is reduced to terrorist attacks. Given mutually exclusive aims, I’m betting on the former.