The Recognition of Palestine: What It Does, What It Doesn’t Do, and Why Now

PALESTINE ISRAEL GAZA GENOCIDE, 29 Sep 2025

Qassam Muaddi | Mondoweiss - TRANSCEND Media Service

The recognition of Palestine as a state is more of a symbolic gesture than a act, like imposing sanctions on Israel would be. Still, it shows that even meaningful Israel’s allies have been forced to take action as Israel’s genocide in Gaza deepens.

22 Sep 2025 – The United Kingdom, Canada, Portugal, and Australia officially recognized the State of Palestine in a series of separate but coordinated statements on Sunday, September 21. Other European and Western nations, including France, Belgium, New Zealand, and several other key allies of Israel, are expected to join the chorus of recognitions at today’s UN General Assembly meeting in New York. The summit is based on a joint Saudi-French initiative to revive a two-state solution called “the New York Declaration,” which was first issued at a conference on September 12. The conference was boycotted by the U.S, which opposed the summit.

In Sunday’s initial announcements of recognition, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that “we are acting to keep alive the possibility of peace and a two-state solution,” adding that the ongoing Israeli bombardment campaign in Gaza, as well as its starvation of the Palestinian population, were “utterly intolerable.” Starmer also decried Israel’s acceleration of settlement building in the West Bank, which he said has caused the “fading” of hope in the two-state solution.

In light of the wave of announcements, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel’s response would come after he meets with U.S. President Trump on September 27, adding that he has “worked for years to prevent the establishment of this state of terror in the face of enormous internal and external pressure.”

The Israeli PM said that he has “doubled Jewish settlement in the West Bank,” vowing to continue, while condemning all nations recognizing a Palestinian state after October 7 as “rewarding terrorism.”

Meanwhile, the United States derided the countries that declared their recognition of Palestine as engaging in “performative gestures.”

“Our priorities are clear,” a state department official told AFP on Sunday. “The release of the hostages, the security of Israel, and peace and prosperity for the entire region that is only possible free from Hamas.”

The recognition comes as Israel ramps up its annihilation campaign in Gaza City, which has resulted in the leveling of broad swathes of the ancient city’s eastern neighborhoods as the army sends in decommissioned armored personnel carriers rigged with explosives to destroy entire residential blocks.

Israel is also openly discussing plans for the annexation of the West Bank. One such plan, presented earlier in September by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, would see the annexation of 82% of the West Bank, including Bethlehem. This annexation plan would leave Palestinians with nothing but six isolated enclaves that make up less than 18% of the West Bank.

Israel has also accelerated the approval of the building of ambitious settlement projects, which aim to split the West Bank in two and “bury” the prospects of a Palestinian state, as articulated by Smotrich in mid-August.

What the recognition does

The recognition is a political act, and it has political implications.

Primarily, it opens the way for higher levels of diplomatic relations between Palestine and other countries that now recognize the occupied Palestinian territories as a part of Palestine’s national soil. This politically highlights the already-established illegality of Israel’s settlements in these territories.

Finally, the recognition of a Palestinian state preemptively regards Israel’s planned annexation of the West Bank as illegitimate.

What it doesn’t do

However, this recognition does not imply any additional legal obligations on the part of the recognizing states to take action to ensure the establishment of the Palestinian state or to end the occupation of its territories. Those obligations were already enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, which define the obligations of states that are signatories to them in cases of occupation.

One of those legal obligations is for states to refrain from engaging in any action that aids the annexation of occupied territory. Yet these same countries have been dealing commercially with the Israeli state’s settlement economy for years, despite their existing obligations.

Moreover, the aforementioned countries are members of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant. These states are under the obligation to aid in their arrest, whether they recognize Palestine as a state or not.

Why now?

The worldwide Palestine solidarity movement has continued to expand in the same countries that have recently recognized Palestine, reflecting a marked shift in public opinion, driven largely by Israel’s increasingly graphic and devastating genocidal assault on Gaza. Politically, it has become untenable for many Western governments to remain passive, and the pressure to signal a position that diverges from their long-standing unconditional support for Israel has become impossible to ignore.

But rather than respond to the pleas of the public with material sanctions against Israel, European and Western states have largely opted to adopt this symbolic recognition and pro forma support for a two-state solution. Meanwhile, on the ground, Israel continues to engage in annexation measures that are meant to render these recognitions meaningless.

How will Israel respond?

The immediate changes on the ground are expected to come through Israel’s response to the wave of recognitions. Palestinians now brace for intensified crackdowns, including more arrests, raids, checkpoints, and further restrictions on movement.

Yet the most anticipated Israeli step is the formal annexation of parts of the West Bank, most likely the Jordan Valley and the larger settlements, such as Maale Adumim east of Jerusalem. Such a move would bring about new layers of restrictions on Palestinians’ daily lives.

The official annexation of any part of the West Bank would likely impose new draconian restrictions on Palestinians seeking to move in and out of the annexed areas. Instead of simply being cut off from other Palestinian localities through a network of checkpoints and iron gates that are opened and closed by the Israeli army at will, they might soon be required to apply for special entry permits to move throughout the West Bank, as is currently the case for Palestinians wishing to visit Jerusalem.

Palestinians might also become subject to more intense restrictions on their freedom to build homes, access services, and work, intensifying the engineered hardship meant to push them to leave their homes altogether. More rural communities, and possibly entire towns, could be forcibly expelled by settlers or demolished by the Israeli army.

These are scenarios Palestinians have already lived for years in areas effectively annexed — whether officially, as in East Jerusalem, or de facto, as across much of Area C. But Israel could depart from this pattern, as it has in Gaza, and push annexation to new levels, seizing as much land as possible with as few Palestinians as possible. “Maximum land, minimum Arabs,” as the old Zionist adage has it, most recently repeated by Smotrich.

Still, if any of these scenarios materialize, they will not be the direct outcome of Palestine’s recognition as a state, but rather of Western governments reducing that recognition to symbolism, while avoiding any real action that could force change on the ground.

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Qassam Muaddi is the Palestine Staff Writer for Mondoweiss.

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