Looking to the situation in Gaza—at what lawyers, genocide scholars, rights watchdogs, international civil servants, and activists all around the world increasingly recognize as genocide and famine—a number of governments announced their intention to recognize a Palestinian state during the upcoming high-level conference on the two-state solution on September 22. One would be forgiven if one experiences a sense of cognitive dissonance trying to reconcile how such actions are in any way relevant to events on the ground. The fear, and indeed the expectation held by many, is that recognition of statehood—joining 147 other countries—will serve only as a performative gesture designed to appease angry populations while maintaining the base political and economic structures of occupation and annexation, as affirmed by the 2024 International Court of Justice advisory opinion, alongside settler-colonialism, apartheid, and genocide.

Nevertheless, assuming that the move to recognize a State of Palestine is genuinely viewed as a path toward a just and sustainable regional peace, many questions still remain about how any political momentum from recognition can be translated into action on the ground. In the current context, states must adopt bold policymaking to not only recognize Palestinian statehood but also actualize it in a way that contributes to ending the war on Gaza; this means going beyond mere statements of condemnation. The recognition of Palestine must be treated by governments as a policy tool with short-term aims, which means not waiting for political effects to cascade and instead exercising forceful statecraft through diplomatic pressure, legal review, boycotts and sanctions, support for civil society initiatives, and adopting policy that is integrated nationwide and not only in the form of speeches in international fora. Without a focus on immediate outcomes, recognition risks being at best too little too late and at worst a distraction from the tragedy currently unfolding in Gaza. 

Upholding Existing Legal Commitments

When states recognize Palestine, it will get a diplomatic upgrade that amounts to more attention by the bureaucratic structures of recognizing states, which would translate into a stronger political and legal standing with these governments. The issue is, though, that most of the legal obligations that would immediately benefit Palestinians on the ground are obligations that already should have reasonably been complied with under international humanitarian and human rights law. Therefore, recognition of Palestine would first function as a political signal urging states’ bureaucracies to take seriously their legal and humanitarian obligations toward the humans—who happen to be Palestinians—being systematically murdered in Gaza. Second, it would create political momentum for other states to recognize Palestine and practice the same review of obligations, leading to an overall more stringent regime of protection of Palestinian rights due to the notion of their organization in the political unit known as a state in a state-dominated system. 

It is important to note that the Genocide Convention (to which the State of Palestine is already party) is clear on the obligation to prevent genocide. If, years later, the ICJ concludes that genocide has been committed in Gaza, then countries that supported Israel’s military, or failed to prevent its actions when they reasonably could have, will be considered to have been in violation of the convention. It doesn’t make much sense. Such is the nature of international law today; powerful states can disagree over the law and act as they wish without much rebuke or consequence due to its indefinite and inapplicable nature, and then, years later, the ICJ or an international criminal tribunal might clear up the situation and make it definite. At that moment, states that took a certain position will be said to have broken the rule in the past tense, because the situation has already passed (possibly to devastating effect). It is not a fault of the ICJ per se but rather the international system which cannot enforce the Court’s orders. The ICJ issued a provisional measures order in April 1993 telling Serbia and its agents “to take all measures within its power to prevent commission of the crime of genocide”. Two years later, the Srebrenice Massacre took place. Fourteen years after the provisional measures order and twelve years after 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were rounded up in a stadium and murdered, the court found in 2007 that Serbia had been in violation of its obligation to prevent genocide during the 1990s Balkan war. 

Thus, if states want to truly respect international law, they must attempt to weigh the law as the ICJ eventually would and not as short-term national interest may dictate. By prompting a legal review vis-à-vis the rights of a Palestine state and its people, recognition of Palestine could provide the momentum to do exactly this. It might find that, to safeguard the State of Palestine’s future, it must be forward-looking in its approach to international law. And it is by being proactive that recognition would begin to cease to be performative and begin to have concrete effects on state actions. Consider its possible effects as applied to international humanitarian law. 

With the expected exception of Israel itself, there is near-unanimous legal consensus that Israel is the occupying power of Gaza and the West Bank— a position affirmed by the International Committee for the Red Cross and Red Crescent (ICRC), the ICJ in its 2024 advisory opinion, and by the states that announced their intention to recognize Palestine in September. Israel’s conduct violates at least a dozen clauses in the Fourth Geneva Convention, such as the prohibitions on blocking humanitarian aid, using starvation as a weapon of war, attacking medical facilities, forced displacement, and collective punishment. Signatories to the Geneva Conventions undertook to “respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances,” which, according to the ICRC, entails both negative obligations to refrain from aiding parties committing violations and positive obligations to do what is possible to prevent such violations.

In this way, recognition provides the political will, not to instigate some sort of novel legal development, but simply to respect states’ existing positive and negative obligations to ensure respect of the Geneva Conventions by all parties. From here, the next logical question is what action states could take to refrain from aiding Israel and reasonably prevent  it from violating international humanitarian law. With this question, the discussion is transformed from an abstract legal one to a policy discussion about concrete action and outcomes, and reaching this stage is already a step further than the contentment with the issuing of statements and a hodgepodge of performative or late decisions that some states have adopted. Take France’s barring of several Israeli stands at its Paris airshow for displaying “offensive weaponry”. There is no denying that this is a genuinely positive development, but the question remains, if the Israeli companies had not displayed the specific weapons objected to, would business continue as usual? And how come such companies as Elbit were allowed to participate in the first place when they are responsible for providing weaponry used in Gaza? And this is to say nothing of the Israeli Ministry of Defense stand which remained on display. These sorts of decisions are good as headline news but fall short once examined closely due to not challenging the underlying structures of occupation. 

But there is also a further use in this context for the activity created by recognition of Palestine. In 1989, following the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) tried to accede to the Geneva Conventions and additional protocols as representative of the State of Palestine. Switzerland responded as follows: “Due to the uncertainty within the international community as to the existence or non-existence of a State of Palestine, and as long as the issue has not been settled in an appropriate framework, the Swiss Government, in its capacity as depositary of the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, is not in a position to decide whether this communication can be considered as an instrument of accession”. 

Moving towards unanimity of recognition of Palestine would dispel this uncertainty and, if a State of Palestine becomes a party, more forcefully assert the legal reality of Israel’s violations. Though illegal in the current context anyway, all state parties will be forced to review their positions to make sure they are not violating the rights of a state or its people. Palestine’s accession to the Rome Statute is a case in point; Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant would otherwise not have been wanted internationally on criminal charges, adding pressure on state parties to the Rome Statute to respect the ICC’s arrest warrants. 

If a strong enough impetus is generated by states taking their recognition of Palestine seriously, it could tip the threshold and push countries like Switzerland to accept Palestine’s instruments of accession to key treaties and, potentially, to recognize a Palestinian state themselves—further amplifying this effect. Each successive recognition strengthens the political momentum for a legal review of obligations that should already have been met, as well as new obligations arising from Palestine’s statehood. In addition, recognition would bind states not only to protect the rights of the Palestinian people as subjects of humanitarian law, but also to uphold the rights of the state of Palestine itself. Yet this raises the question, what does that state actually look like?

The Cart Before the Horse

Statehood is not a concept—or a practice—that has a clear-cut definition. The 1933 Montevideo Convention codified the common practices of the time perceived to be constitutive of statehood: a permanent population, a defined territory, government, and the capacity to enter relations with other states. Palestine’s supposed territory is firmly established by Security Council resolutions and ICJ rulings to be the borders of June 5, 1967.  Its population can be understood to be the Palestinian citizens of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. It can also be argued that the Palestinian Liberation Organization is recognized as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian Authority as its government based on the Oslo Accords. However, these arguments run into various difficulties, all going back to the de facto ineffectiveness of any sort of Palestinian self-rule due to the Israeli domination of all aspects of Palestinian life. 

The Montevideo formula, which adopts the view that statehood is a fact that is merely discovered by other states once recognized by them, is alone insufficient to declare statehood convincingly. Given its focus with the reality on the ground, it should be taken as a policy goal to achieve for Palestine rather than simply a legal qualification of statehood. 

Prominent jurist and international law scholar James Crawford addressed this question in the 2006 edition of his book The Creation of States in International Law, building on previous work. Crawford was focused on what would legally make a state a state rather than whether a state should be a state. He argued against relying on the Montevideo Convention and instead advanced a notion of statehood as independence: “the existence of an organized community on a particular territory, exclusively or substantially exercising self-governing power, and the absence of the exercise by another State, and of the right of another State to exercise, self-governing powers over that territory.” 

Crawford also emphasized the centrality of self-determination in contemporary international law as a strong driver for statehood, which is particularly important in the Palestinian case. “The PLO of course is a national liberation organization, widely recognized as such, and is the external representative of the Palestinian people. The people of Palestine […] have a right of self-determination, a position noted by the International Court in its advisory opinion on [the separation wall]. There is thus a non-State legal entity recognized as represented by a national liberation movement.” 

He ultimately dismissed Palestinian statehood as incompatible with the reality of the time. However, Crawford did concede the possibility of a ‘premature’ statehood that seeks to address the injustice on the ground by recognizing the right of a people to a state by virtue of their self-determination. As he explained, “there may come a point where international law may be justified in regarding as done that which ought to have been done, if the reason it has not been done is the serious default of one party and if the consequence of its not being done is serious prejudice to another […] and circumstances can be imagined where the international community would be entitled to treat a new State as existing on a given territory, notwithstanding the facts.”

There is a strong argument that this is the case for Palestine today. In fact, international law scholar Marko Milanovic remarked that if James Crawford were alive today, he might reach this conclusion. Nevertheless, the view of one jurist, no matter how prominent, is not the focus of the issue. This is merely to illustrate that recognition of statehood, typically considered recognition of a legal fact, can—in certain cases where the lack of statehood is due to unjust conditions imposed by another state—be a policy to achieve statehood. 

In other words, states should put the cart before the horse and then use it as a battering ram. Adopting this mindset is the first step to ensure recognition of Palestine amounts to atrocity prevention. Yet many steps remain to concretize the possible implications of recognizing a Palestinian state. 

Creating a Sense of Urgency

The most urgent step is creating a real sense of urgency surrounding the situation. States could use the recognition of Palestine as a springboard to question Israel’s every action against the Palestinians as an action against the State of Palestine. Summoning the Israeli ambassador would become a daily routine. Without action to halt the genocide in Gaza and the colonization of the West Bank, expulsion or a downgrading of diplomatic relations would become a very real and imminent possibility. Other diplomatic tools are on the table, such as calling for further General Assembly meetings based on UNGA Resolution 377A (Uniting for Peace), issuing joint statements with regional countries and blocs, and providing logistical support and defense to ships carrying aid in international waters, sending diplomats every day to Egyptian Rafah while holding press conferences in front of the aid Israel refuses to let in. Once Israel is seen as a state systematically and brazenly violating the rights of another state and its people—and creating significant regional instability—the debate surrounding sanctions would no longer be about whether or not to adopt them, but what type and scale are required to halt Israel’s violations. 

Here, a thought is overdue: would policymakers actually adopt firm, atrocity-preventing measures—regardless of recognition of a Palestinian state? This question is rhetorical because the answer is, unfortunately, obvious. It can be assumed with near certainty that they will not go the full distance of the measures outlined/to be outlined in this essay, but, not to hold much hope that they adopt even some of these measures, providing such a roadmap may at least contribute to increasing the political cost of inaction; the excuses of ‘we did all we could’ or ‘we did not know’ would hold even less water as viable alternative courses of action are further disseminated and advocated. Business as usual for many states would, with sober reflection, come to be seen (initially by a growing minority) as being uncomfortably close to complicity or even joint criminal enterprise. 

Lethal Business

Doing business with the Israeli state or its market becomes a form of complicity while it commits genocide in Gaza—including via engineered famine—kicks Palestinians out of their homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and moves to annex the land of a hoped-for Palestinian state. Recognition of Palestine provides a very legitimate opportunity to review all business and economic implications with Israel at large (and not only the war on Gaza) including financial ties, the military sector, big tech, and the activity of companies like Caterpillar feeding the occupation’s machinery; according to the 2024 ICJ advisory opinion, states have a legal responsibility to cease aiding or assisting Israel’s continuing occupation, annexation of Palestinian land, apartheid or racial discrimination, and more.

One of the first things states need to do if they take their recognition of a Palestinian state seriously is to listen to Francesca Albanese. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)’s June report, “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide”, details how corporate actors are actively enabling Israel’s genocidal war and settler-colonialism and invites states to revisit their trade and economic ties with Israel. In this intertwined, interdependent ultracapitalist system, and in this age of information, the links between states and certain corporations have become irrefutable, and the ability of states to prevent private sector trade with other states already an operationalized practice. Global sanctions on apartheid South Africa have proved how pariah states can be forced to change. Justified Western sanctions on Russia serve as proof that, when political will is present, a bloc of countries can take coordinated collective action. Conversely, the politically-motivated U.S. trade embargo wit Cuba show that countries do not hesitate to act alone when needed. 

The most obvious starting point is the military industry. Unfortunately, the main suppliers of weapons to Israel (the U.S., Germany, and Italy) are not among the countries intending to recognize a Palestinian state. However, there are companies in countries that intend  recognition that are supplying components going into Israel’s F-35 fleet, whether directly or by supplying companies that are known to sell to Israel significant quantities, such as the American firm Lockheed Martin. Thus, other countries have a role to play in circumscribing relations between themselves and their private sectors on one hand and the Israeli military, public, and private sector on the other, including any American or other intermediaries. Full sanctions on dual-use products and an arms embargo are the obvious options.

To ensure a future for a State of Palestine, companies fueling the occupation, like Elbit and Israeli Aerospace Industries, must not be allowed to be approached or entertained in any manner, whether by states or private companies operating within these states. To do otherwise would be to favour an occupying power over an occupied state, as if countries are dealing with Russian weapons manufacturers that play a role in the occupation of Ukrainian territory. 

In truth, at this point of Israel’s systematic infliction of suffering on Palestinians, especially with the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declaring a famine in Gaza, governments that recognize a Palestinian state in September should ask themselves whether Israel deserves treatment any less severe than the one Russia received when it illegally and brutally invaded Ukraine. Why shouldn’t Israel be heavily sanctioned for its violations, its leaders and businesspeople unable to operate abroad? Why shouldn’t its sports teams be banned from international competition? Why shouldn’t its banks be frozen out of the Swift system? 

The financial system in particular deserves a moment’s pause. Albanese’s report highlighted undeniable facts: banks such as BNP Paribas underwrote Israeli treasury bonds, and Barclays facilitated Israeli debt offerings to investors. In recent decades, the global financial system has taken on a life of its own, yet it remains subject, to some degree, to state sovereignty. The scale of interconnectedness between certain Western economies and Israel’s financial system makes divestment a difficult choice for policymakers. For that reason, it also makes it an essential one. What chance does a Palestinian state have at becoming viable amid the full force of global capitalism propping up Israel’s economy as it wages its war on Gaza and annexation of the West Bank? 

The other sector deserving of particular scrutiny is tech. Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Palantir, and IBM have all been proven to be directly and unashamedly facilitative of genocide. Unfortunately, Microsoft and Google services have become cornerstones of individual as well as enterprise use. But this does not change the fact that Microsoft provides a special version of its Azure cloud storage to the Israeli military for mass surveillance of phone calls, and Google provided AI services following Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza. These companies’ activities in Israel should be sanctioned, at the very least. Any tech company providing the Israeli military with such levels of support should not be contracted by governments of states intending to recognize Palestine, as such companies are an active component of violating the rights of what would be Palestinian sovereignty and of those who are Palestinian citizens. This means that companies from other countries, such as the U.S., operating in states that recognize Palestine should be placed under national bureaucratic scrutiny for compliance with human rights and humanitarian standards—and face sanctions if they are found in violation.

Sanctions must be immediate, and they must be comprehensive. Companies mentioned in Albanese’s report such as Caterpillar, HD Hyundai, and Volvo profit by selling equipment used in demolishing Palestinian houses. Such companies cannot be allowed to operate in sanctioning countries as long as they continue to fuel occupation. Leonardo and Lockheed Martin’s weaponry mustn’t be acquired by other states until Israel stops its genocidal campaign and lifts the occupation. Laws should disallow companies like Airbnb and Booking to operate locally while their hosting offers include units in settlements. Oil and gas companies like Chevron should not be awarded new contracts until they stop exploiting natural resources within occupied Palestinian maritime boundaries. 

Taken together, these companies show how without a comprehensive sanctions framework, actions against individuals fall short of addressing the structural nature of the occupation. The issues of occupation, colonialism and annexation, apartheid, and genocide, can no longer be treated as isolated issues receiving isolated efforts. Israel’s actions are empowered by its history of impunity in the entirety of the Occupied Territories which has allowed it to undermine peaceful Palestinian resistance efforts. To recognize a Palestinian state means to see all of these issues as deeply intertwined. 

One State, Two State, No State, My Fate.

I have previously argued in the virtual pages of the Cairo Review that the discussion of a two-state solution is premature, paternalistic, and pointless; instead, respecting Palestinian self-determination should be held as the priority, and the Palestinian people should be given sufficient space to then pursue the solution they see fit while reckoning with the prevailing political reality. I would not amend this argument, even as the two-state solution seemingly gains new life with this new wave of recognition. There is a normative reason and a realist one, and they are linked. 

The realist reason is that a two-state solution is currently impossible to achieve, given the Israeli control over Palestinian lands, even before October 2023, let alone now, combined with the Israeli government and people’s hard slide to the right. And to pursue it while a genocide is taking place, with plans to annex the entirety of the West Bank, is to stop a tsunami by spraying water at it. The normative reason is that there is political momentum associated with Palestinian statehood, yet the conditions on the ground are not yet conducive to such an immediate outcome, therefore recognition of Palestine must serve to actualize Palestinian self-determination as the rightful path to statehood. And this is the outcome that makes moral, legal, and political sense. It has several implications.

One, safeguarding and promoting self-determination entails ending genocide and settler-colonialism. Two, the PLO must be empowered to represent the Palestinian people by supporting its revitalization and widening its political representation. Three, the Palestinian Authority must be dismantled in all but name, and a revitalized PLO build something genuinely and holistically (and not selectively) Palestinian in its place. Four, the boundaries and other conditions of a Palestinian state in the standard vision of a two-state solution (borders of 5 June 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital, reconstruction of Gaza, linking Gaza and the West Bank) must be guaranteed as the unconditional minimum starting point which the Palestinians will then use to negotiate a final settlement with the Israelis if they so choose. 

The power imbalance and paralyzing conditionality imposed by the Oslo process cannot be repeated. The existence of Hamas as a key actor in the conflict landscape should not be seen as a complicating factor. Not only is there precedent for organizations (Fatah, the PLO) previously considered terrorists by some states (a political classification anyway) to be accepted into the fold, but Hamas has also shown time and again that it is willing to come to the table to negotiate and that it is willing to compromise. Thus, the idea of disbanding Hamas as a precondition for statehood is contrary to self-determination insofar as Hamas is one of many political elements within the wider Palestinian landscape. It is up to the Palestinian people themselves to choose who shall represent them. The Israeli military and far right, responsible for a level of terrorism and dehumanization far exceeding in scale anything Hamas has done, have not faced the same conditionality, yet the ICC also wants Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes charges (Israel assassinated the Hamas leaders who were wanted in the same case). Is it because Israel is an already-established state that has the power to manage its own internal affairs that this conditionality is imposed only on the Palestinian side? Recognition of a Palestinian state must address precisely this hidden imbalance. It should mean empowering the Palestinian people, represented through a widened PLO, to organize the state and sit at the negotiating table with the state-based system, if not in its favor, then at least not playing against it at every turn. 

A State of Palestine Must be Inherently Decolonial

The recognition of the existence of a Palestinian state under conditions where there cannot feasibly be one implies that such a state must be inherently decolonial to reverse the colonization of the land within its intended borders. This is perhaps the subtle yet powerful implication that policymakers have not fully taken into account when pledging recognition, but with which they will have to reckon all the same. 

To recognize the State of Palestine means to offer a firm and blanket opposition to the existence of settlements, new and old. In the West Bank, it means further sanctions on settlers, as the UK has previously done more than once. But not only that, it means taking an economic stance, as previously detailed, against West Bank settlements. It means understanding Israel as an illegitimate apartheid state as long as it creates a systemic regime of separation between two populations, one privileged and one downcast, over land it is not entitled to in the first place. It means adjusting diplomatic relations on that basis. And it means to oppose genocide in Gaza by any means necessary. Arms embargos, economic sanctions, multilateral diplomacy, supporting civil society, out-of-the-box policymaking—the works. 

As mentioned time and again, most actions described can be taken independently of recognition of the State of Palestine. However, since this is the route taken, combining the political momentum of recognition with practical policy choices that have immediate effects contributing to ending genocide, colonialism, and occupation is the only way that the route taken is one that ends up somewhere. Otherwise, recognition will be, as the pattern within the international community often goes when action must be taken, too little, too late—a futile attempt at politics while what is needed is to be human. 

Postscript: Israel’s attacks today on Qatari soil—in brazen violation of international law and common diplomatic sense—have demonstrated how far the Israeli government is willing to go to fulfill its delusions, and how the status quo is irreparable. It demonstrates the imperative for the recognition of Palestine to be a qualitative shift rather than more of the same—a fate that is unlikely, but possible, as outlined in this essay.