Palestinian State and Peace
Gaza is a fulcrum on which two approaches to world affairs are competing. On one side are the nations who believe that peace will be attained by making Palestine a sovereign empowered State, as Israel became in 1948. On the other are those who believe the way to peace is to crush the Palestinian resistance to Israeli domination, at best tolerating an impotent fractured Palestinian state.
At present Gaza is being crushed in what is widely seen as a campaign of genocide. 94% of structures have been damaged, including all schools and hospitals. The Occupied Territories in the West Bank and Jerusalem are being shredded by violent colonisation and apartheid. This has at long last pushed one side into action. To the intense annoyance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 11 allied countries including Britain and France announced that they will recognise Palestine as a sovereign state.
By the end of September 2025, some 158 governments will have recognised Palestine, including 4 of the 5 Permanent Members of the UN Security Council. I believe those 158 governments have the wisest approach, and I am working to enlist everyone I can in the struggle for the recognition of Palestinian statehood and beyond. We need networks that will support all the peoples of the Middle East to build peaceful societies based on respect and justice rather than domination.
The only merit of Trump’s 20-point plan (of 30th September) is to stop the killing and destruction. It leaves Israel with control over many details of any Palestinian state, and military hegemony over the region. It seems to deny the rule of International Law with respect to war crimes or genocide. The world has observed an international democratic genocide supported by a democratic population of Israelis and equipped by international accomplices. These actors must one day face their responsibilities.
Palestine will only be universally recognised as a State when the United Nations Security Council approves, and at present the USA could use its veto to prevent this. The more the countries that recognise Palestine, the more likely it is that USA policy will change. Many could take steps to help Italy, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Finland, Switzerland switch to recognition. The same is true for Pacific states like Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Nauru, Fiji, Samoa. But Palestine recognised Israel 30 years ago!
PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD
Historically, the West has lacked respect for the Arab nations. Too often Western policy has been characterised by blatant racism and arrogance. Britain’s Foreign Minister Lord Balfour wrote 100 years ago “I am quite unable to see why Heaven or any other Power should object to our telling the Muslim what he ought to think.”. In 1947 the Australian Foreign Minister, Herbert Evatt, chaired the UN subcommittees which, pressed by President Truman, voted for the creation of Israel but rejected the French motion that the Arabs should be consulted. In 2001, Benzion Netanyahu, father of the Israeli Prime Minister, said “the Bible finds no worse image than that of the man from the desert (the Palestinian)”.
Since 2014 a group of Israeli ex-diplomats, academics and others, calling themselves the Policy Working Group (PWG), have worked for structures that would ensure mutual justice and security, particularly the recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state. They acknowledge that the 1993 Oslo Agreement failed in part because it was negotiated between a state and an authority, not between two sovereign states. The PWG has concluded that the Middle East will only know peace when Palestinians have their own empowered state. Then, despite gaping inequalities of power and wealth between Israel and Palestine, the two nations can negotiate on an equal footing – a term known in diplomatic circles as Parity of Esteem. When, understandably, there is zero trust on both sides, the international community can compensate with respect and cooperation.
“What does living together mean?” asks Bertrand Badie of Science Po Paris. “It means recognizing the other person's right to exist, to exist humanly, socially, economically, culturally, and politically. If you do not recognize the right of others to be who they are politically, that is, the right to have their own city and community, you are in a situation that one author (an Israeli!) has called ‘politicide’, meaning killing the political rights of others.” One hundred years ago the Mandate of the League of Nations to the British included nurturing the Palestinians to representative institutions. But Britain betrayed this commitment, as Peter Shambrook1 has shown in Policy of Deceit: Britain in Palestine 1914-39, preferring to nurture a Jewish-led state.
EMPOWERMENT AND CONSTRUCTION
The Palestinian people need to be empowered to rehabilitate their nation. The Paris Call for the Two State Solution (13 June 2025) brought together 450 “builders” with intimate knowledge of Palestine’s West Bank – diplomats, businesspersons, negotiators, politicians, peace-workers, NGO-staff – some of whom have worked for years on the “nuts and bolts” of the state’s finances, health, education, water supply and security.
The meeting in New York on Palestine chaired by Saudi Arabia and France aimed “to achieve, through concrete actions, as rapidly as possible, the realization of an independent, sovereign, economically viable and democratic State of Palestine.” This is contrary to Israel’s policy since 2000 to systematically weaken the Palestinian economy (and notably agriculture), leaving it structurally dependent on Israel and international aid.
Netanyahu is firmly opposed. As political analyst Susie Becher writes in The Times of Israel blog: “After two years of flattening Gaza and striking at anything that moves, after two years in which the cover of the war on Gaza has been exploited by extremist settlers to advance ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, after two years of Netanyahu torpedoing every ceasefire arrangement that had a chance of success, there is no doubt that the peaceful settlement he’s looking for is one in which the Jewish people have exercised their ‘exclusive and indisputable right to all parts of the Land of Israel’, as stated in the coalition government’s guiding principles” - totally contrary to international law.
Change of policy will not come from inside Israel. Pro-Israeli establishments around the world will support the Israeli government. They don’t care if it acts contrary to international law. Which option wins will be decided by the action or inaction of the international community, and of the many dissident Jews. My Israeli friends plead with the international community to raise the pressure.
RESPONSIBILITY
When protagonists cannot sit at the same table, members of the international community must lead negotiations and guarantee agreements. This is an intrinsic fault in Trump’s scheme – no Palestinian negotiators.
More involvement of the international community is needed at all levels. Following October 2023, many NGOs engaged in campaigns for a ceasefire and release of hostages. These campaigns soon lost media attention. A ceasefire call by Amnesty International and a dozen other NGOs in front of the Eiffel Tour was censured in the French media – only the Egyptian news picked it up. Western governments have allowed Israel to dismantle NGOs, notably UNRWA which has served the 6 million Palestinian refugees ever since the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) as it is known in Palestine when 80% of the population was dispossessed, displaced or fled. Across the world, we need a new commitment from citizens to work for a ceasefire, return of hostages and prisoners, humanitarian aid and an arms embargo.
The world gave their support to black Africans under apartheid. The struggles of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu were supported, notably by the young, who maintained a boycott when the governments of Britain and the USA compromised. Citizens now need to engage their leaders in a similar manner. Today, America will no doubt maintain its commerce with Israel. Thus, the sanctions that might make Israelis question themselves are rather in the areas of sport, culture, science and investment. The Norwegians are disinvesting. The Spanish are imposing sanctions. Greta Thunberg, and hundreds of young campaigners, are sailing towards Gaza in defiance of an Israeli blockade. We need a tsunami of action. In 1948 the West broke the Berlin Blockade by Soviet forces with a 10-month airlift of food and supplies. In 2025, why not in Gaza?
RESPECT, LAW, AND HUMAN RIGHTS
My old friend Jacob lost his mother in the Shoah. Year after year he would visit family in their haven, Israel. Then from 2000 came the 700 km West Bank Wall separating Palestinians, followed by apartheid-type regulations and massive colonisation of Palestinian land by illegal settlers, often Zionists financed from the USA. When Jacob travelled from Australia to Israel to participate in a “global march for unity and equal rights”, only 16 marchers appeared. Then came ethnic cleansing under the force of bulldozers in areas like Silwan, a neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Jacob realised that Israelis had been blinded by their achievements, their trauma, their supremacy and their belief that God had given them this land. He predicted that “we will inflict upon others the suffering that we have known”. He was right.
The urgent need is to stop the violence and end the famine. A recent two-page brief from the Britain Palestine Project entitled Recognition is the beginning formalises the practical steps already raised.
A French Jewish philosopher has said: the key to morals is action. The agencies of the United Nations, imperfect, battered, and in need of reform, are never-the-less an attempt to establish value-based functions rather than power-takes-all. They are (imperfect) channels for citizens’ participation and ground-roots action. They are (imperfect) statements to challenge our inhumanity or prejudice, through Human Rights, Child Rights and so forth. They are (imperfect) tools for translating morals into law i.e. the International Court of Justice and now the International Criminal Court.
Our leaders and enterprises need to hear that our humanitarian values are not negotiable, whatever the cost in trade, commerce, culture, comfort, disinvestment. That our choice is for human rights and international law, girded by rapid action and sanctions as necessary. We need to stand up for values in this power game. This means sanctioning high profile advocates for the settler movement, including some members of the Israeli Cabinet, and executing international arrest warrants for those accused of war crimes. Dual nationals who have served with the Israel Defence Forces may be subject to prosecution when returning to our countries if the International Court of Justice determines that war crimes have been committed.
COURAGE AND RISK
In the present international discourse, there needs to be more engagement and less appeasement. The youth of the world called for an end to the Vietnam war, but the bombing continued for years. The people of Europe overwhelmingly opposed the invasion of Iraq, but our leaders ignored us. We cannot let this carry on.
At every level of our communities from the grassroots, unions, faculties, homes, media, associations, synagogues, mosques and churches, the demand for humanitarian action must continue to rise. Returning to Bertrand Badie: “What steps could be taken to rehumanize international relations, build social energy, and give substance to human rights?” Each citizen can reflect on this question in the home, in the workplace, in the classroom, in the way one spends money. Some villages will organise twinning with other communities in Lebanon, Palestine or Israel. Some will set up correspondence between schoolkids in these countries. Others will work through NGOs to help those in need. Another is preparing a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem next February, a massive march of humanity in the spirit of non-violence. And the French parliamentarians have created their cross-party Amitié France-Palestine.
Let us stand alongside the courageous leaders who reject violence or manipulation from either side, working for solutions. This is a way to help those of us in our comfortable democracies, in the Arab nations, around the Mediterranean, in “distant” Asia, in the Global South that has known colonisation.
Let us ask for an investigation of Israel’s role in the killing of journalists who record the atrocities. So far 209 journalists have died in Gaza, mostly young men and women. Half of these deaths were since the ceasefire of 2024, which should have terminated with the release of all hostages, but the warmongers chose to continue.
You can find the photos of these journalists here.
“CARING MATTERS MOST”
These were the words spoken – and lived – by my school chaplain in the USA. Caring and activism are distinct gestures. Are we faithful to the people we know? Especially those on the ground who wonder if tomorrow will exist. What of our local communities? France has deep cultural ties with Lebanon, and the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in Western Europe. Both are in anguish. Both feel insecure. Both are struggling with their own internal dialogue and humanity right here. Yet both could contribute to bridge-building “over there”, but bridges need solid foundations “within their own community”.
At present, powerful forces are sowing generations of domination and hate. In this ocean of trauma on all sides, long years of dialogue and accompaniment will be necessary, by professionals, educators, artists, students, and ordinary citizens. In the remarkable evolution of Europe since WW2, the investment of citizens, their aspirations for peace, have been essential alongside a committed leadership. This constructive matrix of humanity, can we offer it in solidarity to the peoples of the Near East after decades of neglect or compromise? My Australian uncles flew bombers over Germany – but then one of them went to live for years in rough conditions in the Ruhr in solidarity with the workers rebuilding their industry, communities and families.
ESPÉRANCE AND CONFIDENCE
Are we realistic concerning the task which lies ahead? In these tortured lands, what logic, what spirit, can nurture hope in those who suffer? One day the wall of hate, terror, violence, domination, arrogance, crass materialism and bigotry will crack, and those who have invested in living together will come to the fore. In these first days of October, the Concluding service of Yom Kippur reads:
Lord our God, we turn now to You once more
to cry out our longing
and the longing of all men and women
for a beginning of that wholeness
we call peace.
Ever and again, we now admit,
We have turned our backs on You,
And on our sisters and brothers:
Forsaking Your Law,
Denying Your truth,
Ignoring Your will,
Defacing Your beauty.
