As Israel’s genocide in Gaza was going full scale, Arab and western governments, many of them complicit, have embraced the hollow gesture of recognizing a hypothetical Palestinian state, according to the Middle East Monitor.
This move comes while the Palestinian people endure systematic settler-colonial destruction, daily land theft and the threat of extermination.
Staged efforts to “revive” the sham of the two-state solution to establish a “pathway” through “urgent, concrete, irreversible steps” towards recognising a virtual state are presented as more urgent than halting widespread war crimes and crimes against humanity, starvation and a full-scale genocide.
Yet recognition or other diplomatic acts without concrete protections for the two indispensable foundations of statehood, its people and territory, are not only futile but a calculated deception that gives cover to the ongoing destruction of 2.2 million people before our eyes.
As governments fail to halt these crimes, the elusive framework of “peace” and the two-state solution is once again revitalized, allowing the world to look the other way while genocide unfolds.
Last year, Ireland, Norway and Spain spearheaded diplomatic efforts, jointly extending formal recognition of Palestine in May 2024 and urging others to follow suit.
A year later, in July 2025, Saudi Arabia and France co-chaired their first High-Level International Conference at the UN, as part of the same effort to revive the long-dead “peace process”.
Recognition without protecting people and land is a calculated deception that conceals the ongoing destruction of 2.2 million Palestinians
The conference led to the adoption of the “New York Declaration” on the two-state solution, which the General Assembly passed by 142 votes on 23 September. The declaration framed state recognition and full UN membership as “essential and indispensable” to achieving the two-state solution, ending the conflict and integrating and normalizing Israel into the region.
