This September, major Western governments - including two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the UK and France - alongside Australia and Canada, are preparing to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations. Not because of tangible institutional progress in Ramallah or Gaza, but as a punitive measure against Israel for its military campaign in Gaza.
Such a move profoundly distorts the concept of state recognition. In international law, recognition is not a symbolic gesture or a political bargaining chip. It is a legal act that acknowledges the objective existence of a state that meets established criteria. Politicizing this process in response to battlefield developments sets a dangerous precedent: it reduces international law to a tool of momentary pressure, rewarding those who reject peace and punishing those who seek security.
The 1933 Montevideo Convention outlines four essential criteria for statehood: a defined territory, a permanent population, a functioning government, and the capacity to engage in foreign relations. As of today, Palestine falls short on all counts.
Territorial borders remain undefined, with Gaza and the West Bank separated both geographically and politically. There is no unified government: Hamas rules Gaza as a terrorist enclave, while the Palestinian Authority governs the West Bank in name only, absent elections or meaningful reform since 2006. Both entities lack control over all their claimed territory, cannot guarantee security, and often operate in direct conflict with each other.
What’s more, there is no evidence that either faction currently upholds the most basic obligation of statehood: a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Hamas has explicitly rejected this in favour of armed aggression - a strategy that culminated in the October 7 massacre and continues in the form of rockets and cross-border tunnels. Qatar-based senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad in August 2025 openly claimed that these atrocities were not a setback, but a diplomatic catalyst: “The initiative by several countries to recognize a Palestinian state is one of the fruits of October 7. We proved that victory over Israel is not impossible, and our weapons are a symbol of Palestinian dignity.”[1]
This is not a movement for peace or governance - it is armed propaganda, and now, it is being rewarded.
To recognize Palestine under current conditions would not be to recognize a functioning state - it would be to ratify dysfunction. It would validate a fractured proto-state sustained by foreign aid, paralyzed by factionalism, and manipulated by foreign powers, especially Iran.
The Palestinian Authority clings to power without public legitimacy, evading democratic accountability. Hamas, meanwhile, has turned Gaza into a launchpad for Iran’s regional ambitions, treating its own population as human shields while feeding a narrative of perpetual conflict. Hamas in Gaza and the PLO/PA in the West Bank operate authoritarian regimes that suppress political opposition, rigorously control civil society, and maintain policies such as payments to families of "martyrs" killed or imprisoned for violence, while women’s rights and democratic freedoms are routinely curtailed under both governments. In any other case, the democratic governments of the West would not be in a rush to recognise a state that barely holds any semblance to rule of law.
Compounding this dysfunction is the issue of Palestinian refugee status - a legal anomaly in international law. Unlike most global refugee cases, where status applies only to those who have personally fled conflict or persecution, the Palestinian refugee designation is uniquely hereditary. Anyone born to a Palestinian refugee also inherits that status, even if they have never lived in or been displaced from what is now Israel. As a result, UNRWA today reports over 5.9 million Palestinian refugees - descendants of roughly 700,000 individuals displaced in 1948. This count includes more than two million people who currently hold Jordanian citizenship, as well as a large number who reside in the West Bank and Gaza. Thus, millions are considered refugees from a state in which they already reside and are politically represented.
This unprecedented and inherited refugee system perpetuates a protracted crisis, sustains unresolved return claims, and entrenches statelessness across generations. It also stands in sharp contrast to the lack of functional state institutions or governance structures elsewhere in the Palestinian territories. Recognition that ignores this legal and humanitarian complexity only deepens the deadlock.
Recognition now would signal to these factions - and their backers in Tehran and Moscow - that governance, peace, and compromise are irrelevant. All that matters is pressure, optics, and violence.
Some governments have attempted to justify recognition as “conditional” - offered if Israel fails to meet certain ceasefire terms or settlement freezes. But that logic reverses the basic function of recognition: it turns the diplomatic spotlight away from whether the aspiring state is ready, and onto whether the existing state is sufficiently scolded.
It makes statehood a stick to beat Israel, not a prize for Palestinian responsibility. Worse, it creates perverse incentives: the more obstructionist or violent Hamas becomes, the more international momentum builds for recognizing a Palestinian state “regardless of circumstances.” This is not law. It is appeasement disguised as diplomacy.
It is worth remembering here that the original 1988 Hamas Charter explicitly called for the destruction of Israel, and the “softened” version - the Hamas’s 2017 policy document - still rejects Israel’s legitimacy and maintains the goal of full “liberation of Palestine”, mainly still understood as the abolishment of the State of Israel.
It’s not as if the Palestinians have lacked opportunities for peace. They have repeatedly been offered statehood - often with nearly all the land they now claim - only to walk away. The 1937 Peel Plan, the 1947 UN Partition, Camp David in 2000, Taba in 2001, and the 2008 Olmert plan all offered statehood on generous terms, including shared sovereignty over Jerusalem.
Each time, the answer was no. The pattern is unmistakable: statehood has been less desirable to Palestinian leaders than preserving the conflict, and with it, the goal of eliminating Israel.
Even Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, which should have allowed for independent Palestinian development, was met with the election of Hamas and years of terror. What followed was not state-building, but state-destroying: rockets, kidnappings, tunnels, and ideological warfare.
Contributing to this destructive trajectory is the role of radical education. EU institutions have expressed concern over incitement in Palestinian Authority textbooks, citing antisemitic content and glorification of violence. Several European Parliament resolutions have condemned the use of EU funds to support such curricula and demanded alignment with UNESCO standards of peace and tolerance. While some EU-commissioned studies have sought to contextualize the materials within the broader conflict, the consistent link between hate-filled education and youth radicalization cannot be ignored. An education system that valorises martyrdom and demonizes Israel lays the ideological groundwork for ongoing conflict, not reconciliation. The legacy of 2005 is not one of missed opportunity - it is one of institutions actively reinforcing rejectionism.
Palestine already enjoys widespread symbolic recognition. It has UN observer status. More than 140 countries treat it diplomatically as a state. Yet none of this has translated into democratic governance, institutional development, or credible peace proposals. Meanwhile, billions in international aid have flowed to Palestinian authorities and institutions with little accountability. Corruption has flourished. Terrorism has been financed. And the self-perpetuating refugee status remains unresolved - a legacy issue that, instead of narrowing, continues to expand.
Symbolism does not feed people, disarm militias, or build rule of law. Nor does it curb Hamas’s extremism or create a reliable partner for peace.
Full UN membership remains, currently, unattainable for good reason - because symbolism, in the absence of substance, merely entrenches stalemate. As full UN membership demands a vote at the UN Security Council, it stands to reason that, at least with the current U.S. administration, the recognition vote would be vetoed by the United States. And recognition now would give the illusion of progress while leaving the root problems untouched.
A Palestinian state, created now, would serve as an instrument - not of national independence - but of Iranian influence. Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad: all are arms of a broader strategy to isolate and ultimately destroy Israel. These are not nationalist movements seeking sovereignty. They are ideological actors serving Tehran’s regional ambitions.
To reward this architecture with statehood is to underwrite Iran’s proxy war. It is to empower a regime whose goal is not Palestinian flourishing but perpetual instability.
Peace requires partners, not proxies. If Palestinians want a state, they must prove capable of running one. That means holding elections, consolidating power, ending incitement, disarming militias, and recognizing Israel’s right to exist.
Recognition must be conditioned on these realities - not sidestepped in a fit of international frustration. Otherwise, we are not creating a path to peace - we are pre-emptively undermining one.
The two-state solution remains, in principle, a viable endgame. But it must be grounded in law, not symbolism. In readiness, not rejectionism. And in accountability - not appeasement.
To recognize Palestine prematurely is to abandon those standards and invite greater instability. Those pushing for the recognition of Palestine must ultimately decide: does they stand for peace built on principle - or illusion built on political expedience?
