France Is Right to Recognize Palestine
And Canada is right to join them. Other countries should follow France’s example and recognize a Palestinian state.
This article is part of a debate from The Next Move. Evan Gottesman argues that French recognition of Palestine represents a much-needed shock to the system. After you read his piece, check out Uriel Epshtein’s article, which makes the case against recognizing Palestine—and let us know where you land in the debate!
Evan Gottesman is director of communications and special projects at the Renew Democracy Initiative.
If war is politics by other means, then war without a political horizon is just senseless destruction. In the nearly two years since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, Israel has refused to articulate a plan for the day after it removes the Palestinian terrorist group from Gaza.
Into this strategic void steps Emannuel Macron. Last week, the French president announced that his country would recognize the State of Palestine—meaning the Palestinian Authority/PLO—in the West Bank and Gaza. Now, it looks like Canada and others will join them. They are right to do so: Israel’s evasiveness means international leadership is required.
Critics quickly weighed in against Macron’s move. Some detractors dismissed it as hollow symbolism, since no Palestinian state currently exists. Israeli officials and their allies in the US have decried it as a reward for Hamas terrorism.
The French move is not just a symbolic nod, nor is it a win for Hamas. It is part of a full court press to organize European and Arab states around a political strategy to end the Gaza war, dismantle Hamas, and subvert the untenable status quo ante in Israel and Palestine by promoting a two-state solution. France has cleverly gotten Saudi Arabia, whose recognition Israel craves, to co-sign their recent initiatives.
For decades, Israel’s Western allies avoided recognizing Palestine under the pretense that it would hurt the cause of peace. The Israeli government abused that goodwill to further entrench the occupation, and it has only doubled down since October 7. While Hamas bears primary responsibility for kicking off the war with an unprecedented massacre, the terror group’s crimes are not license for Israeli conquest and settlement in the territories. With Israel intransigent and the United States passive (or worse), countries like France are going to have to step up.
Why recognizing Palestine matters now
The Israeli government has categorically ruled out restoring the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, despite the PA’s record of security cooperation in the West Bank. The PA has sustained security ties with Israel since the start of the Gaza war, even though it assumes enormous risks by doing so.
Officials in Jerusalem thanked their partners in Ramallah by mulling returning Jewish settlements to Gaza. Talk of resettling the Strip began almost immediately after October 7. Now, those ideas have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s imprimatur—in the coming days, he is expected to propose annexing parts of Gaza.
And that’s only Gaza. With outside attention split between Gaza, Iran, and Syria, Israel is also tightening its hold on the West Bank. Last year, for the first time since the Oslo Accords, settlers established outposts in Area B—territory allocated to the Palestinian Authority under the Israel-PLO treaties of the 1990s. Israel regularly undercuts the PA’s ability to govern, withholding tax revenues and preventing the payment of civil servants.
Recognizing Palestine is a rejection of creeping Israeli annexation. It denies normalization to the Israeli occupation, putting Israel in the uncomfortable company of other countries that seize their neighbors’ sovereign territory. It’s especially urgent when the settlement machine is moving full-steam ahead.
No excuses
How does recognizing Palestine square with the Hamas threat? It’s an important question, because Hamas cannot be part of any future political solution, and anyone who talks about a Palestinian state needs to account for this.
However, rather than engage with French-led diplomacy, Israeli and American officials have defaulted to predictable non-answers. In Jerusalem and Washington, Macron’s move was decried as capitulation to Hamas terror.
Israeli foreign Minister Gideon Saar set the tone, saying of the French decision that:
It represents a reward to Hamas and terrorism in the wake of October 7.
Saar’s American counterpart, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, echoed that claim:
This reckless decision only serves Hamas propaganda and sets back peace. It is a slap in the face to the victims of October 7th.
Drawing a connection between October 7 and France’s explicitly pro-two-state initiative is risible.
Hamas’s goal is a single state, displacing Israel between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Its terrorism is carried out in pursuit of this revanchist vision.
For years, Netanyahu’s government transferred Qatari money directly to Hamas in a game of divide-and-conquer aimed at rendering a Palestinian state stillborn. Back in 2019, the prime minister bragged to supporters that anyone against Palestinian statehood should back his cash-for-Hamas scheme in order to keep the PA-administered parts of the West Bank separated from Gaza. That strategy blew up with tragic results four years later.
France, by contrast, is explicitly repudiating both Hamas’s bloody one-state absolutism and reckless Israeli expansionism. In announcing recognition, the French Foreign Ministry pointed to the PA, Hamas’s archnemesis in Palestinian politics,
which has come out strongly in favor of the two-state solution and peace, strongly condemned the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas on October 7, called for the release of the hostages, the disarmament of Hamas and its exclusion from the governance of Gaza.
When a future Palestinian ambassador presents their credentials at the Elysee Palace, it will be a representative of the PLO, not Hamas. The envoy in Paris will answer to the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership, which recognizes and cooperates with Israel.
Meanwhile, Paris’s diplomacy has put the Arab states on the record calling for Hamas’s disarmament and an end to the group’s terror regime in Gaza—while appealing to end the ongoing war and move toward two states. In a communique drafted in New York at the end of July, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, and other governments declared:
In the context of ending the war in Gaza, Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority, with international engagement and support, in line with the objective of a sovereign and independent Palestinian State.
This was the first time Arab governments collectively made such a commitment, and a dramatic step like French recognition of Palestine helped to make it possible. It’s now on France to hold them to account, but it’s significant nonetheless.
In any event, the Israeli and American excuses don’t pass the smell test. Who outside the hasbara echo chamber believes that recognizing Palestine alongside Israel in borders that Hamas doesn’t accept, under Hamas’s PA rivals, is somehow a reward for Hamas?
A diplomatic lifeline to Israel
Finally, French recognition of Palestine is actually a diplomatic lifeline to Israel.
Israel’s tenuous status as a democracy rests on a political and legal fiction that the West Bank is not a part of Israel; that the area and those who live there are simply under temporary occupation pending a future peace agreement.
This rhetorical sleight of hand confers Israel legitimacy and normalcy, as well as lucrative relationships throughout the Free World. While some may dismiss France as a bit player in international affairs, Europe is Israel’s largest trading partner, and the EU-Israel Association Agreement clearly states that “Relations between the Parties [...] shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles.”
The notion that the West Bank is not functionally a part of Israel contravenes both reality and Israel’s stated position on the matter. Just last week, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed a resolution calling for formal sovereignty over the occupied territory. Of the 13 million people under permanent Israeli control—as defined by Israel—about three million (more, if Gaza is annexed) lack political and civil rights. There is a word for that, and it isn’t democracy.
It’s not difficult to imagine that a couple of years along this current trajectory, the debate in Western capitals will not be about recognizing Palestine and Israel, but whether to recognize Palestine or Israel. Imperfect as the two-state formula is, a solution predicated on and is infinitely less complicated, more peaceful, and more just than one based on either or. In recognizing Palestine alongside Israel, Macron is bucking the maximalism of both Hamas and the Israeli government.
France faces significant headwinds in insisting that Israel and Palestine are neighboring and not overlapping. But recognizing Palestine may be just what’s needed to jolt the world out of incrementalism and remind us that the pre-war situation was not normal. France was right to take this step, and other countries should follow their example.
Why do we do debates at The Next Move? Read this note from RDI founder and chairman Garry Kasparov.
Check out the other side of the debate:
France Is Wrong to Recognize Palestine
The international community needs to pressure the chief culprit in the Israel-Gaza conflict: Hamas.
To understand Isreal/ Palestine consider what we know about post-colonialism.
Try starting here:
What Does “Decolonization” Mean in the Context of Gaza?
On The Media - WNYC - Podcast, Interview with Iyad el-Baghdadi , Palestinian human rights activist, writer , professor & Author.
LINK: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/what-it-means-decolonize-palestine-on-the-media
"Colonialism comes in two flavors. In extractive colonialism, the objective is to extract wealth from the land and the people's labor, who you need to keep under control. In settler colonialism, the colonizer wants the land without the people, and that better describes Palestine. The colonizer wants the land for expansion by displacing locals. The tools are usually more brutal, because they don't need the people.
The word "decolonization". is often confused with anti-colonial. But not every anti-colonial movement is really de-colonial. Anti-colonial simply means being opposed to the presence of a colonizer. But Anti-colonial movements can follow some of the same behavioral patterns as colonizers, or have a worldview built on colonial concepts. Decolonization, isn't about removing anyone, it's about removing the supremacy of a group over another, so there's equal citizens…. It cant erase past inequities, but it's the light that can lead us forward to a different future.
There are two main models for ending settler colonialism, and understanding them is key to Palestine. There's the Algerian and South African models, and both have been applied to Palestine. The model followed by the Algerians was a military approach, that made the colony unlivable, until the occupiers left. In the South Africa model, colonialism was resolved by creating a democracy that included both the previously colonized and the colonizers.
Sharon's Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, referred to both models when in 2005 when Israel withdrew from Gaza. Olmert said. "More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated two-state solution because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one... From a struggle against occupation to a struggle for one man, one vote. Since that's a cleaner and more popular struggle, and ultimately a more powerful one. But for Israel it would also mean the end of the Jewish state."
He's basically saying Palestinian statehood is a lethal threat to the ethno-national Jewishness of the state. The pre-October 7th reality wasn't something that Israel just stumbled into. It was a conscious choice, made and sustained by two generations of Israeli politicians. Olmert said the importance of them pulling out of Gaza, was that would let them freeze the peace process. So that the possibility of Palestinian statehood was put off indefinitely .
Because the Algerians got the French to leave, Palestinians thought they should do the same, and fight militarily till the israelis leave - some also felt jewish israel had no right to exist. But French-Algeria isn't like Israel for many reasons. For one, because the French had France to go back to. Also the French were always a minority, who never made up more than 20% of the population. But In the case of Israel/Palestine, the population is roughly half and half. And Israel was also largely founded by Holocaust survivors, escaping from a millennium of antisemitism and persecution, which makes this a very different psychological dynamic. And their historic ethnic religious roots were also here.
Many who are “pro-Palestinian” also think of it now as still being like Israel in 1948. Back then israel was mostly European jewish white settlers. But more than 60% of Israelis today are now descended from Middle Eastern Jews. So the idea that it’s still a white settler colony, is just not true.
Decolonization doesn't mean removing people but removing domination, that's why the South African model is so helpful, because it is rooted in values such as equality, coexistence, humanity, and integration. in this case that also fits the demographic reality, sInce the total population is pretty evenly split between palestinian and Jewish people, so the premise of equality is more applicable here.
Basically, these are two peoples locked in a cycle of trauma, who keep traumatizing each other more. We can't forget our humanity when we approach that problem.... The objective cant simply be to defeat Israel or to protect it or liberate Palestine. Instead we have to create a situation that both people can live in. We also have to think in generational terms. Palestinians and Israelis both say "how can we live with these people after what they have done?" But they are simply going to have to. Babies will be born tomorrow between the river and the sea, some Jewish, and some Palestinian. We have to ask what we want for them 20 or 30 years from now? Do we still want them to be doing what we're doing right now? If not then then the question must be how to change this?
The current israeli goverment's solution seems to be to completely subjegate the palestinian population and deny them the basic rights that they themselves were built on: the right to rule of law, equality before law political and economic freedoms
Many Palestinians think of "liberation" as a somehow reversing "The 1948 Nakba". But Edward Said, the prominent Palestinian American scholar, warned that obsession with the past will doom any possible progress. A de-colonial vision is a job for entrepreneurs and for architects, not for nihilists. We have to have the imagination to build a movement premised on equality, and humanity. People may think there is no future in which the Jewish and Palestinian populations live peacefuly together, but that is exactly why we have to double down on that idea! because Democracy and humanity is the only way out of the current problems.
Is the Algerian model even be possible ? it would mean endless rivers of blood and destruction. As a Palestinian, I want a country my children and grandchildren can live in with freedom and dignity, Not a country without Jews. And that means not just liberating Palestinians but also liberating Israelis from horrid conditions . It's about humanizing both the colonizer and the colonized. because Colonialism isn't just brutal to those colonized, but also to the soul of the colonizer. A decolonial movement can be led by the colonized, but it has to build for the future of both peoples.
There is one paradigm of partition, segregation and domination which is premised on an idea of ethnic nationalism. There's another paradigm of integration, equality and coexistence, which I think is the only realistic way forward.
The path in front of us now, post-October 7th, is one of unending crisis, in which anything Israelis get, they get by taking away from Palestinians, and anything Palestinians get, they would have to take from Israelis. That nihilist strategy is a reflection of the cycle of trauma we've become locked into. the Current politicians, and movements who are locked in this old way of thinking, are only going to give us is more of the same. More bloodshed, more conflict, violence, more war... and palestinians being starved, and bombed, with their backs to the wall, feel like the only thing they can do is to fight back.
We have two possible paths. but one one is actually blocked by a future of just endless destruction. The other path is about integration and is inter-generational and it's going to be very hard, and take a lot of work, but at least that way can get us someplace.While the ideal of democratic self governance still has massive appeal.
this current phase of israel and palestine's history is defined by ethno-nationalism, but thats just one temporary chapter. The history of the Jewish people is a very long well documented and very proud history. I want Jewish people to thrive in the Middle East, in their native region, for a very long time.
Maybe the way to insure that is to give up this idea of ethno-nationalism, and instead to accept each other without questioning who belongs and who doesn't anymore... Such a change will take generations, but the truth is we have a very long collective history in the middle east, with many phases, and much time ahead of us.
The problem of a democracy having a population imbalance can be adressed in many ways.
( Israeli jews now have an average birthrate of 2. 1 children, while palestinians now only average 2.6 children). if the population grows too lopsided there are institutional methods to insure equal and just reprisentation for all, and a fair share of economic participation… one obvious element of that solution creating a "confederation" structure, comprised of many regional authorities, similar to how The united states works. We forget the US founding fathers also had to create a fair system which could balance and be supported by people of very opposing beleifs and faiths... & Particularly the opposition those who opposed or beleived in slavery. What makes us think todays problems in israel/Palestine are any more difficult ? Its almost the same problem , and calls for a similar solution
Any solutions should also consider the role of "DEI" - diversity and inclusion. The 2024 Nobel prize for economics went to “studies of how institutions structure effect a nation's prosperity” That research clearly showed 'inclusive' democratic institutions are consistently more economically successful, and politically stable. this particularly applies to all studies of "post colonial" structures…. "Inclusive" economics, and political, institutions give incentives for talent and creativity, and invariably generated more lasting social stability, primarily due to how they help to generate greater and more widespread wealth, and shared prosperity".
Nope.
Not settler colonialism. Not a Nakba either.
https://substack.com/@reubensalsa/note/c-141201891?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=1tuvbn