DAVE RICH
Normally, recognition of a new state comes belatedly, after that state has already come into being. First come the facts on the ground – a government that controls a territory, with recognised borders and institutions of governance and so on, and bit by bit, other countries recognise that this is indeed a whole new country.
Not with Palestine. Instead it is the other way around: with Palestine, statehood is deemed to exist in principle before it exists in practice. It’s just another example of the unique, even surreal, way that people relate to this part of the world. Israel and Palestine are in a category all of their own, in which things follow a different set of rules to any other conflict on earth.
The recognition of Palestinian statehood by the UK and other western governments is less an acknowledgement of reality, and more an expression of faith. The official statements announcing recognition do not even try to pretend that Palestine meets the criteria for statehood as set out in international law, because it obviously doesn’t (this is a separate question from whether Palestinians as a people have the right to statehood). Not for Palestine, the need to fulfil the laborious challenge that every other state that has come into being in the modern era has had to meet.
Instead, it is as if these governments hope that they can imagine Palestine into being simply by saying it is so. It is statehood through the Tinkerbell Effect – the idea that something exists if enough people believe in it.
The justification offered for this is that the Two State Solution is in its death throes, and if it is not kept alive then any hope of a better future for Israelis and Palestinians will perish with it. And there is some truth in this. Support for two states is at its lowest ebb, and the practical conditions for its implementation have never seemed more remote. Meanwhile, those in the region and beyond who seek to bury the Two State Solution for good are yet to propose an alternative that is legal, moral and viable. In this context, and whatever the other political motivations for this step, recognition is being deployed by Western governments as a diplomatic tool in the hope that it prevents the concept of two states from disappearing forever.
However, the problem with this recognition tactic is that it makes the same mistake as all its predecessors, by focusing on the mechanics of achieving a two state solution, rather than its purpose.
The idea that peace between Israelis and Palestinians (and before those terms existed, between Jews and Arabs) is to be found by dividing the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea into two states has been the settled view of the international community since 1947, when the United Nations voted for partition. It has been been on the table for at least a decade before that, when it was proposed by the 1937 Peel Commission. This has been the basis for numerous UN resolutions, diplomatic initiatives, peace processes and US-hosted summits, all to try to bring the elusive Two State Solution into being. Buried within all this effort is an assumption that this is the only rational option: rational in both the equitable distribution of land and in the pursuit of peace as the highest objective. Who could object to that?
And yet, despite almost eighty years of trying, efforts to make two states a reality have repeatedly failed; and not enough people are asking why, eighty years on, it still hasn’t worked as a proposed solution.
It’s easy enough to think of the reasons why the basic land-for-peace premise of the Two State Solution has been repeatedly rejected by one or other of the parties to this conflict. Fear, mistrust, extremism and messianism, grievances and hatreds, all play a role. At times this is driven by political leaders, and sometimes it comes from the Israeli and Palestinian populations themselves. There are numerous examples of deals that seemed perfectly reasonable to outsiders being rejected by the protagonists (Yasser Arafat was especially guilty of this). It is counterintuitive to suggest that Palestinians and Israelis don’t want to live in peace – of course they do – but that is different from being willing to accept what is being offered as part of the package. However difficult and painful this conflict has been, it seems that many Israelis and Palestinians believe they have more to lose by paying the price that peace would involve, than what it would cost to keep hold of what they currently have (whether this involves holding on to land, or to security, or refusing to give up the hope they can still secure total victory and all of the land for themselves in the future).
But rather than doing the hard work of truly understanding, at a profound level, what motivates the decision making of Palestinian and Israeli politicians and publics, instead the international community of diplomats, governments, journalists and NGOs assume that they just need another push and this time it will work.
You don’t have to be a pessimist to question this approach. I fear that this latest initiative falls into the same trap of asking “How”, rather than “Why”: how can we make two states happen, rather than asking why has it never happened previously.
I’ve felt for decades that the Two State Solution offers Israelis and Palestinians the best chance of a peaceful future in which they control their own destinies, in their own nation states; but I’m not naïve enough to imagine that it is remotely achievable with conditions as they are right now. At the same time, I don’t see any other options that could work either. The Two State Solution may be impossible, but it is still less impossible than any alternative plan that is moral, legal and viable.
Instead of pretending that the international community can imagine a Two State Solution into being, those who want to make it a reality would do better to try working out what steps need to be taken to help Israelis and Palestinians reach a place where a permanent peace between them is even imaginable. Perhaps the formal step of recognising Palestine is supposed to be a step on that road; but on its own, it has as much chance of bringing a Two State Solution to fruition as all those previous efforts that came to nought.
This article (Tinkerbell Statehood) was created and published by Everyday Hate and is republished here under “Fair Use”
See Related Article Below
The Two-State Solution Is A Western Liberal Fairy Tale
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
The only real benefit to this latest western “recognition” of Palestine is that it drew out high-profile Israeli politicians to explain to western liberals in plain English that the entire state of Israel stands opposed to their vision of a two-state solution.
Former Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz has a new op-ed in The New York Times where he explicitly states that opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state is “the heart” of a national consensus among Israelis across the mainstream political spectrum, and that this isn’t an obstacle that will go away once Netanyahu is out of power.
“Too often, Western leaders view our policies in this war not through the lens of national security, but through the prism of individuals — and, in particular, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,” Gantz writes. “The conversation is often framed as a question of what serves the prime minister, as if Israel’s national security begins and ends with one man. This view is mistaken and counterproductive to global stability, regional normalization and Israel’s own security.”
“I myself have been a vocal critic of Mr. Netanyahu,” says Gantz. “But the nation’s core security interests are not partisan property. Today more than ever, they are anchored by a national consensus that is rooted in the hard realities of our region. Opposition to the recognition of Palestinian statehood stands at the heart of that consensus.”
The dangerous & counterproductive mistake Western Leaders make about a Palestinian State & Israel’s security.
To my full New York Times Op-Ed: https://t.co/5q2yjmGoDk pic.twitter.com/a1vFufJ99n
— בני גנץ – Benny Gantz (@gantzbe) September 24, 2025
He’s spelling it out in black and white. The Bernie Sanders-style framing of the nightmare in Palestine as a Netanyahu problem which can be remedied in short order by a two-state solution is a fairy tale that western liberals tell each other so they don’t have to face the cold hard reality that the problem is the state of Israel itself.
This comes after Netanyahu publicly stated that “There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River,” and after former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant proclaimed that “There will never be a Palestinian state.”
Israel is the problem. Not Netanyahu. Not Hamas. Not that both sides have tragically failed to sit down and find common ground in good-faith negotiations. The problem is that the west established a state in the middle east which holds as its foundational ideology that the people who were living there before that state was created are less than human, and must never have access to the full spectrum of human rights.
The problem is Israel. A state which has always been a racist endeavor from its very inception. A state whose Jewish citizenry are indoctrinated from birth into accepting the hateful, supremacist worldview that is necessary for apartheid and abuse to be accepted as the status quo.
It’s so surreal how Israel can come right out and explicitly say there will never, ever be a Palestinian state and western officials will just keep babbling on about the possibility of Israel and Palestine negotiating a two-state solution as though it never happened. https://t.co/fdocleFU1D
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 23, 2025
No solutions are going to emerge until the west gets real about this. As long as western liberals are still buying into the fuzzbrained escapist fantasy that Israel is just an election away from a two-state solution if the US simply keeps funding the Iron Dome and making nice with Tel Aviv, we’re going to continue seeing Israel inflicting the nonstop violence and abuse that is necessary for it to exist in its present iteration as a state.
Any actual, reality-based solutions are not going to make liberal Zionists happy like their daydream about a two-state solution does. Israel simply cannot continue to exist as a Zionist entity. It needs to be disarmed, dramatically restructured, and comprehensively denazified as a society. This isn’t going to happen without force, and that necessary force isn’t going to be forthcoming from the western world as long as we are deluding ourselves with infantile fantasies.
The Israelis are telling us this is the case themselves, right to our faces. It’s time to wake up.
This article (The Two-State Solution Is A Western Liberal Fairy Tale) was created and published by Caitlin Johnstone and is republished here under “Fair Use”
Featured image: Adobe Stock
••••
The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
••••
Comment Policy: As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. This also applies to trolling, the use of more than one alias, or just intentional mischief. Enforcement of this policy is at the discretion of this websites administrators. Repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without prior warning.
••••
Disclaimer: TLB websites contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, health, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.
••••
Disclaimer: The information and opinions shared are for informational purposes only including, but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material are not intended as medical advice or instruction. Nothing mentioned is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Liberty Beacon Project.
Leave a Reply