Opinion Support for Palestinian statehood is growing. But will it matter?

Or, in a less optimistic light: The only two nations with the power to do anything.

Israel, of course, has complete control over both the bloody occupation of Gaza and the militarily enforced apartheid state in the West Bank. If Israel had a viable one-state solution, it could implement it tomorrow. It has not done so since its conquest of these territories nearly 60 years ago, because no such solution exists: Israel can’t integrate seven million Palestinians without surrendering its ethno-religious identity (an option it will never accept). For its part, the US is Israel’s primary supplier of security aid, military hardware, and the guarantee of protection against all potential enemies; it has enough clout to powerfully shape Israel’s decisions on Palestine — a power it has almost never been inclined to use.

US Presidents Joe Biden and Trump didn’t agree on much, but in their unwillingness to use American leverage over Israel, they walked in lockstep. I staffed Biden for nearly a decade, so it pains me to write this, but it is undeniably true. The policy goals of the current and former president were quite different: Biden championed a two-state solution, while Trump has effectively called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (at least from Gaza) and the confiscation of much (perhaps all) of their homeland. In advancing their quite different positions, however, both presidents steadfastly refused to place any meaningful pressure on Israel whatsoever.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has done more than anyone in at least half a century to set back Palestinian aspirations, could not have asked for a better outcome. He began his first term in 1996, sandwiched between two predecessors (Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres) and a successor (Ehud Barak) who were firmly committed to forging a two-state solution. The plans they presented were far from ideal: The statehood they offered was a patchwork of impoverished reservations, largely disconnected from each other, and enjoying something less than full international sovereignty (the entity envisioned would be permanently demilitarised, with Israel retaining de facto security control).

That would have been a tough deal to sell to the Palestinian people, but the terms presented in their most forward-leaning form at Taba in 2001 were the best ones offered up to that point — and very likely the best that will ever be available. The Palestine Liberation Organisation never engaged in the hard work necessary to build support for an outcome that fell far short of the group’s maximalist goals: Yasser Arafat (who led the Palestinian movement until his death in 2004) was perhaps the only figure with the stature to build popular support for such a deal, and he failed to do so. The Palestinian people have suffered greatly at the hands of Israel, but also at the hands of their own leadership. As Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once put it, they “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

As the Taba negotiations were ongoing, Prime Minister Barak was fighting an election campaign against hard-liner Ariel Sharon. Two months after the talks broke down, Sharon took office and slammed the door to a two-state solution firmly shut. Netanyahu had been lukewarm to a negotiated settlement in the 1990s, and since returning to office in 2009, he has done everything in his power to make statehood a fantasy. Perhaps the most important policy he and members of his hard-line Likud Party have implemented has been the construction of militarised Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank, thereby carving the territory up in ways almost impossible to ever undo.

Given these impediments, why do an overwhelming (and growing) majority of nations support Palestinian statehood? And why does this support matter? Simply because, as much of a long shot as a two-state solution may be, it’s still the only solution even remotely imaginable. Israel isn’t going anywhere, and (barring a war crime of unimaginable proportions) neither are the people living in the occupied territories. The status quo is unbearable for the Palestinians, and (as demonstrated by the horrific terrorist attack of October 7, 2023) provides no lasting security for Israelis. Eventually, Israel will come to realise this. It will do so, someday, with or without American pressure. The declarations at the UN in the coming weeks may help bring that day a little closer.

The writer is the author of Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Retracing the Ramayana Through India and Mullahs on the Mainframe: Islam and Modernity Among the Daudi Bohras