War makes bystanders feel powerless. Throughout the so-far 22 months of brutal conflict that began with Hamas’s slaughter and abduction of Israelis in October 2023, Europeans have looked and felt impotent.
This has only partly been because they have also been divided; mainly, it has been because their words, brave or not, proved irrelevant. The question now is whether the decision by France’s President Emmanuel Macron to join 11 other EU countries in giving diplomatic recognition to a Palestinian state will be yet another demonstration of European powerlessness and irrelevance.
There is a chance that this French initiative could prove different. That chance does not depend much on European unity or disunity, but rather on whether France and others can build a partnership with Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, that is powerful and determined enough to force Israel and the United States to change course. The chance currently looks a small one, but it may be worth taking.
The timing of President Macron’s announcement was no accident. On July 28-29, France and Saudi Arabia are scheduled to co-chair a ministerial conference at the United Nations in New York on the Palestinian question, which is intended to be followed by a conference of heads of state in New York in September, alongside the UN General Assembly.
The French initiative is intended to inject momentum and an air of diplomatic seriousness into a process that otherwise looked destined to fail. It may still fail. But the small chance that it could make progress depends on France and others convincing the Arab leaders, especially Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, that by working together, they might be able to make the Americans take them seriously.
Which really depends on Saudi Arabia’s crown prince showing the courage and determination to press America’s Donald Trump to take the idea of a Palestinian state seriously.
The terrible truth about the past 22 months of conflict, chiefly in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, is that none of the powers involved — neither the Hamas militia, which has governed Gaza since 2006, nor Israel nor Israel’s main arms-supplier, the United States — has shown that it cares much about the fate of the roughly 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza nor the roughly 3 million living in the other Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, known as the West Bank.
The 60,000 Palestinians who have died in the conflict have just been seen as collateral damage by everyone concerned.
Last week, Israeli and American negotiators withdrew from ceasefire talks with Hamas held in the Arab state of Qatar. It is not yet clear why the talks broke down, but it appears that in return for releasing the 50 remaining Israeli hostages that it holds (of whom 20 are thought to be alive, and 30 dead) Hamas demanded the release by Israel of a large number of Palestinian prisoners. The fact that all sides are delaying a ceasefire over a mere numbers game suggests a lack of seriousness about stopping the fighting.
Amid that lack of seriousness, an already deep divide over the idea of a separate Palestinian state has deepened further. The notion of a “two state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dates back many decades, but for a long period beginning in the 1990s it took on an aura of consensus, with the main issue being one of how the Israelis and Palestinians could come to an agreement on borders, on the sensitive status of Jerusalem, and on how the Palestinian state would be governed.
However, in recent years, but especially since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, the very idea of a two-state solution has come into question. Previous American administrations, including that of President Joe Biden at the time of Hamas’s attacks, had continued to say they were in favor of a Palestinian state even without doing anything serious to advance the idea. But now the Trump administration no longer even talks about it.
The divide now is between, on one side, those who argue that creating a sovereign Palestinian state within Gaza and the West Bank represents the only path to a sustainable peace, for it would at last allow Palestinians to govern and police themselves and end their colonial status.
And on the other side those, led by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who argue that the experience of Gaza shows that a Palestinian state would be a recipe for perpetual war, as it would provide a base from which Hamas-like militias could and would seek to destroy their Israeli neighbors.
In reality, both of these propositions contain truth, as does a third proposition, that the status quo of Israeli occupation is itself unsustainable. It is always going to be hard for Israelis and Palestinians to live peacefully alongside each other having fought almost constantly since Israel was founded in 1948, whether in one state or two. The prospect for a more peaceful future must depend on how both states are governed and policed.
This is where the rich Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, could play a crucial role. But it is a role they have sought to avoid until now. If Gaza is to be rebuilt and if any Palestinian state is to be viable, Arab money and intervention will be essential. Yet in the past, the Arabs have been just like the Europeans: powerless bystanders offering words but few actions.
Unless and until the United States decides again to promote the idea of a Palestinian state and therefore to pressure Israel to take the idea seriously, there is little prospect of such a state being created. Diplomatic recognition by France, like the earlier recognition by Ireland, Spain and others, will not change the reality, which is that a Palestinian state does not exist.
The only thing currently that could stand a chance of changing that reality would be if Saudi Arabia were to make a serious effort to change America’s view, perhaps by making the re-adoption of a two-state solution a condition for any other deals Trump wants to make with the Arab states. With their old enemy Iran now severely weakened, this could be a moment when the Saudis feel able to take a diplomatic risk.
Which is why President Macron has made his own move, in the hope of strengthening the Saudis’ nerve. Other Europeans, including Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, should offer him support. The point is worth repeating: it is a small chance, but one that is worth taking.
This article first appeared on Bill Emmott’s Global View Substack and is republished with kind permission. Read the original here.
