Britain and France talk of recognising a Palestinian state. What would it mean?
The announcements raise questions about what the recognition of a Palestinian state would mean and what it can actually do.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaks during a meeting with US President Donald Trump at the Trump Turnberry golf club in Turnberry, Scotland, on Tuesday. Photo / Tierney L. Cross, the New York Times
What is a state?
The criteria for statehood were laid out in an international treaty in 1933.
They include four elements: a permanent population; defined territorial boundaries; a government; and an ability to conduct international affairs.
Recognition is an official acknowledgement that a would-be state broadly meets those conditions. It can occur even if an element is in dispute, including territorial boundaries.
Like all legal questions, 'interpretation matters', said Zinaida Miller, a professor of law and international affairs at Northeastern University in the United States.
The criteria for recognising a Palestinian state have been met at a basic level, many experts on international law say.
A permanent population and land exist.
The borders, while disputed, are broadly understood to be in Israeli-occupied territories, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which was seized in 1967 in a war with a coalition of Arab states; as well as East Jerusalem, which Israel has effectively annexed.
The Palestinian Authority is a government body that administers part of the West Bank and represents Palestinians.
Its creation was authorised by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which represents Palestinians internationally.
While there are limits to what the Palestinian Authority can do, given the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Hamas' control of Gaza, foreign recognition of a Palestinian state would mean the establishment of direct diplomatic contact between the authority and the recognising nation.
Recognition would also send diplomatic and political messages.
It would acknowledge the Palestinian right to self-determination and reject the positions and actions of the Israeli Government that undermine that right, Miller said.
'A basis for added pressure.'
A major consequence of recognising Palestinian statehood is that it provides a basis for 'a complete revision of bilateral relations with Israel', said Ardi Imseis, an associate professor at Queen's University Faculty of Law in Ontario and a former United Nations official.
A country that recognises Palestine has to review agreements with Israel to make sure they do not violate its obligations to the Palestinian state.
This would include political and territorial integrity, as well as economic, cultural, social and civil relations, he said.
For example, if an aspect of trade aids or assists Israel in violation of the rights of a Palestinian state, then the recognising nation would have to cease that exchange.
'Practically speaking, recognition would provide a basis for added pressure to be brought to bear by civil society and lawmakers in the recognising state' to change policies and align them with other requirements, Imseis said.
A recognising nation would not have to stop all trade with Israel, said Paul Reichler, a lawyer who represents sovereign states and has argued for the state of Palestine at the International Court of Justice.
But if, for example, a country that recognises a state of Palestine imports agricultural products from farms belonging to settlers in occupied territories, those agreements would be aiding and abetting the commission of a wrongful act, he said.
International law experts note that an advisory ruling from the International Court of Justice last year concluded, among other things, that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories violated a prohibition on territorial conquest.
A UN majority for recognition already exists.
Most countries in the United Nations — 147 out of 193 — already recognise a Palestinian state.
Britain and France would be joining them, and their position has extra heft because they are permanent members of the UN Security Council, with the power to veto any substantive council resolution, including on the admission of new member states.
The two countries would be bolstering the stance taken by most other nations and sending a political message, but their shift would also have a practical effect.
They would join China and Russia in recognising a Palestinian state and leave the US as the sole permanent member of the Security Council with veto power that is holding out.
The state of Palestine currently has observer status at the UN, and that will not change if the US maintains its opposition to full membership.
Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo / Eric Lee, the New York Times
What is the goal of recognition?
It is part of a political, diplomatic, and legal push to reach a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict despite resistance from Israel's current government.
'There are two peoples living between the river and the sea, not one, and they are entitled to separate states in which each of these peoples enjoys the full panoply of civil and human rights,' Reichler said.
'The only solution is two states, and it so happens that is what international law requires and is reflected in UN resolutions and in determinations of the ICJ,' he said.
Although the declarations of Palestinian statehood may appear symbolic, 'small steps' like recognition 'make a contribution' to the goal of establishing two states, he said.
Some nations, like Norway, once held off recognising a Palestinian state in the belief that recognition would someday emerge from a negotiated peace process.
With such a process seemingly currently out of reach and outrage over Israeli policies growing, some countries have put recognition first in the hope that it would lead to a peace process.
Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said that the establishment of a Palestinian state would endanger Israel's security, and he has rejected the notion, particularly since the war in Gaza began.
His governing coalition includes far-right ministers who are settlers and staunchly opposed to a Palestinian state, and he risks their abandoning the bloc if he indicates a willingness to consider it.
In a statement yesterday, Netanyahu said Britain's announcement 'rewards Hamas' monstrous terrorism and punishes its victims'.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Ephrat Livni
Photographs by: Saher Alghorra, Tierney L. Cross, Eric Lee
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Victim in Epstein case decries ‘political warfare' in effort to release grand jury transcripts
By Casey Gannon , CNN Two victims of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse have filed letters to the court condemning the Justice Department's request to unseal grand jury testimony and cited the lack of respect they feel has been showed toward them by President Donald Trump and his administration. Both of the victims remained anonymous in their writings sent on Monday, with one calling the latest handling of the so-called Epstein Files "political warfare." "Dear United States, I wish you would have handled and would handle the whole 'Epstein Files' with more respect towards and for the victims. I am not some pawn in your political warfare. What you have done and continue to do is eating at me day after day as you help to perpetuate this story indefinitely," one of the victims wrote. Another victim argued that priority has only been on protecting "wealthy men." "(I) feel like the DOJ's and FBI's priority is protecting the "third-party", the wealthy men by focusing on scrubbing their names off the files of which the victims, "know who they are,'" one of the victims wrote. While neither letter outwardly requests federal Judge Richard Berman in New York to keep the transcripts under seal, both strongly urge him to take all necessary precautions in concealing victims' identities. One of the victims suggested that a third party review the release of the documents to ensure that no information related to the victims is revealed. The other victim told the judge that it is an "upmost priority" for any information regarding identify of the victims be redacted. Both emotional letters submitted to the judge showed clear frustration towards the administration's handling of the files. "I appreciate your time reading my short thoughts and feeling and my anxiety and frustration is NOT aimed at you, obviously. It is aimed at the very government here, the ones asking to release these transcripts, exhibits, etc., of which the victims are not privy to while they have concluded that there is nothing more to see on the files they hold. Yet no one has seen them, but them," one of the letters read. "I am beside myself." Victims in the case were asked to respond to the government's request to release grand jury transcripts by August 5. - CNN
NZ Herald
3 hours ago
- NZ Herald
On tariffs Malaysia finds itself caught squarely between the US and China
United States President Donald Trump wants to stop that trade. Last week he unveiled a new layer of tariffs — set at a global rate of 40% — on all goods that move through a third country before they get to the United States. The tariffs are aimed at stopping transshipment, a practice the Administration says has allowed Chinese-made goods to skirt punitive tariffs. The policy landed with a thunderbolt in Southeast Asia, where Chinese investment has helped the economies of poorer neighbours grow more quickly. A crackdown on transshipment will be an economic blow. It also complicates the supply chain in Southeast Asia, which depends heavily on Chinese raw materials and components. From Vietnam to Cambodia to Indonesia, officials and executives are rushing to assess the consequences. The new tariffs raise hard questions for countries that have long used Chinese components to make the final products they ship to the US. Does the Trump Administration, which has yet to detail how it would enforce the new transshipment tariffs, want to tax it all? One country offers a case study others could follow for what to do next: Malaysia. Over the past decade, Malaysia rose to become one of the world's biggest makers of solar panels. Ten companies, most of them Chinese, shovelled US$15 billion ($25.3b) into factories around the country, creating tens of thousands of jobs. Then, under President Joe Biden, the US put tariffs on solar equipment coming from Malaysia of as much as 250%. Today, just two solar panel makers remain and one of them has ceased much of its production. The upheaval has been a wake-up call for Malaysia, a nation of more than 35 million people that is rethinking how to power its future economic growth. 'We're trying to think about ourselves not just as recipients of investment, but actually creators of technology,' said Liew Chin Tong, the deputy minister of investment, trade and industry. 'We want to think of ourselves not as a production site, but also as a consumer site with a sizeable middle class.' Officials in Malaysia, who had been trying to work out a trade deal, had said they were ready to work with the Trump Administration to stop companies from passing off Chinese-made goods as their own. But they learned they would be hit with a base tariff of 19%. An additional 40% would be added for any goods deemed to have originated in China. Those are set to take effect this week. The country finds itself caught squarely between the United States and China. Malaysia believes that Chinese solar companies can play an important role in its attempts to increase renewable power sources. Its goal over the next five years is for half of the country's energy consumption to use clean sources like solar power. Warehouses are stuffed with solar equipment that can no longer be exported to the US, and the Government wants companies to sell it to local solar farms. One challenge for Malaysia is that it still needs China's solar industry on its side. More than 75% of the solar panels that Malaysia uses locally are imported from China, where prices are much cheaper because of Beijing's industrial policies that encourage exports. Longer term, Malaysia wants the Chinese companies to restart their mothballed factories to make solar panels for the domestic market. More than any other region, Southeast Asia has felt the brunt of the trade war between the US and China that began in earnest during Trump's first presidency. Southeast Asian countries profited as Chinese and global multinationals relocated their factories out of China to avoid Trump's first-term tariffs. For Malaysia, the aim now is to blunt the collateral damage from the battle between the world's two largest economies. 'I don't like to see us just having to choose between US and China,' Liew said. 'I want to see us strengthening ourselves.' Both superpowers have loomed large in Malaysia. American tech companies Nvidia, Intel and Texas Instruments built huge facilities to make semiconductors, seeing the country as a good location to hedge against the risks of doing business in China. More than 600 American companies invested in Malaysia last year, said Siobhan Das, chief executive of the American Malaysian Chamber of Commerce. Chinese investment has shaped Malaysia's manufacturing sector, and China has ranked as a top investor in the country for the past decade. Malaysia's imports from China have nearly doubled over the past decade, according to Lee Heng Guie, executive director of the Socio-Economic Research Centre, a Malaysian think-tank. It was also about a decade ago when Chinese solar companies began to invest in factories in Malaysia. The factories made everything for export to the US and other major markets like Europe. 'We knew we could not compete with the Chinese companies in the long run,' said Lisa Ong, chief executive at Malaysian Solar Resources, a solar company that shut its panel production facilities in 2013. After seven years, the company found it was being outperformed on price and production capacity. Today it has switched its focus to building solar farms and importing panels from China. After the Biden Administration initiated an investigation into unfair practices by Chinese solar companies in Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, Chinese companies began to slow some of their operations. The investigation led to steep tariffs on a handful of Chinese solar companies operating in these countries and prompted most of them to abandon their factories in Malaysia. The only Chinese company still making some solar panels in Malaysia is Longi, an industry giant. When it opened its third Malaysian factory on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur in 2023, it heralded the opening as a 'pivotal moment in Longi's global endeavours'. Its executives boasted of creating 900 jobs and promised to increase the openings to 2000. Instead of expanding, Longi has shut down several production lines at the facility. Today, much of the space at Longi's plant is unused. On one weekday last month, the parking lot was less than half full. Longi declined to comment for this article. Longi has met Malaysian officials to discuss how to support more of the local supply chain, according to Justin Sim, the president of the Malaysian Photovoltaic and Sustainable Energy Industry Association. He is pressing the Government to rebuild a domestic solar panel industry by harnessing the knowledge of Chinese companies like Longi. 'All the Chinese companies came here when there was not really any capacity or interest in building the local market,' Sim said. 'And then they all went bust or left because they were hit with tariffs from the US and Europe.' Ong of Malaysian Solar Resources said she would not rule out her company going back to solar panel manufacturing, especially after the Chinese Government announced plans to scale back subsidies to companies. Still, she is hesitant, citing the intense competitiveness of Chinese firms. 'I'm worried and a bit concerned about our future,' she said. 'Many Chinese nationals are migrating to Malaysia and they are a lot more industrious than many of us.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Alexandra Stevenson and Zunaira Saieed ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
NZ Herald
3 hours ago
- NZ Herald
The 109-year-old pact that looms over European moves to recognise a Palestinian state
To many Arabs, who view it as a great betrayal, it seeded a legacy of strife and bloodshed in the Middle East. The real-time crisis unfolding in the Gaza Strip — the starving children, the Israeli restrictions on aid, the Palestinians killed as they try to collect food — undoubtedly had a greater impact on Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain and President Emmanuel Macron of France than the stains of the past. Yet their momentous decisions have cast a light on the shadowy roles of both countries in a region where they once vied for influence. 'The history is so relevant,' said Eugene L. Rogan, a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Oxford in England. 'It shows there's always a chance for historical actors who screwed up in the past to make up for their mistakes.' Rogan praised the moves towards recognition for reasons both past and present. On its current course, he said, Israel was opening the door to unthinkable treatment of the Palestinians: expulsion from Gaza or worse. Recognising a Palestinian state does Israel a favour by opening the way to 'a form of cohabitation that is sustainable', he said. Speaking at the United Nations, the British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, cited another century-old document in arguing that recognition would redress a historical injustice: the Balfour Declaration, issued a year after the signing of Sykes-Picot, which endorsed 'the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people'. It had a proviso that 'nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine'. After 21 months of relentless Israeli attacks in Gaza, with the spectre of famine across the enclave, Lammy said that Britain had a responsibility to act on behalf of the territory's long-oppressed Palestinian population. 'His argument is that it's time to make good on the second half of that promise,' said Rogan, whose books include The Arabs: A History. 'At the time of the Balfour had a worldwide empire, which in 1917, they could not imagine losing. David Lammy is operating in a postcolonial, post-EU Britain. But he's using history as a legitimating factor.' Lammy said that Britain could be proud that it 'helped lay the foundations for a homeland for the Jewish people'. Yet the country's motive in backing what later became Israel was less moral than strategic, Rogan said. It was seeking a client community in Palestine that would prevent the territory from falling into enemy hands. London feared the territory could be used as a launchpad for attacks on the Suez Canal, which was then controlled by Britain. Moreover, Britain backed away from its pro-Zionist stance as it found it hard to reconcile a Jewish state with preserving relations with the Arab world. In a later document, the White Paper of 1939, Britain proposed that the Jewish homeland would be created within a majority-Arab Palestinian state and that Jewish immigration to Palestine be limited to 75,000 for five years. 'Israel was not created because of the Balfour Declaration; it was created in spite of the Balfour Declaration,' said Michael B. Oren, an Israeli American historian who served as Israel's ambassador to Washington and later as a deputy minister in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Oren argued that the decisions of Britain and France to recognise a state would not hasten an end to the conflict in Gaza but prolong it. By offering this concession to the Palestinians now, he said, the West had given Hamas even less incentive to agree to a ceasefire. He chalked it up to a bid for relevance by two postcolonial powers. 'These are former Middle Eastern powers that want to feel like Middle Eastern powers,' said Oren, who wrote Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. 'There's a pathetic quality to it.' Others argue that if these moves had no impact, they would not have drawn the furious reactions they did from Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. The addition of Britain and France — plus Canada and Malta, which said last week that they, too, would back recognition at the United Nations General Assembly in September — means that more than three-quarters of the UN's 193 member states will have recognised a Palestinian state. France had a less direct stake in Palestine than Britain did after ceding its claims in the Sykes-Picot treaty. But its move towards Palestinian recognition represents another fateful turn in its relationship with Israel. From 1945 to 1967, France was Israel's biggest backer in the West. Part of that was rooted in its wrenching experience with decolonisation. In 1954, France faced an anti-colonial uprising in Algeria, where the nationalists were backed by Egypt's nationalist president, Gamal Abdel Nasser. France, viewing Israel as a bulwark against Nasser, drew close, supplying the country with Mirage fighter planes and nuclear technology that became the foundation of its undeclared nuclear weapons programme. But in 1967, days before Israel launched a military strike against Egypt, de Gaulle, then France's president, imposed an arms embargo on Israel and shifted his gaze to the Arab states. Gérard Araud, who served as France's ambassador to Israel from 2003 to 2006, said that rupture cast a long shadow. 'I felt there was always a sense of 'Don't trust the French,'' he recalled. By supporting Israel in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, the United States had in any case supplanted France as its No. 1 ally. France went on to become the first Western country to develop close ties to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which represents Palestinians internationally and is led by the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. The decision to recognise a Palestinian state nevertheless carries significant political risk for Macron, Araud said. France has both the largest Jewish and the largest Muslim communities in Western Europe. It has been scarred by a string of Islamist terrorist attacks. In recognising Palestinian statehood, historians said, France and Britain would do well to recognise their diminished sway over a region they once ruled. Such recognition was sorely lacking for decades after the authors of Sykes-Picot divvied up the Middle East, with lasting consequences. 'Neither country understood that the age of colonialism was over,' Araud said. 'They behaved as if they were still all powerful. It's not the most glorious page of history for either country.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Mark Landler Photographs by: Saher Alghorra ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
