Three-quarters of UN members support Palestinian statehood - War on Gaza
The Israeli war raging in Gaza has revived a global push for Palestinians to be given a state of their own.
According to an AFP tally, at least 145 of the 193 UN members now recognise or plan to recognise a Palestinian state, including France, Canada and Britain.
Here is a quick recap of the Palestinians' quest for statehood:
1988: Arafat proclaims state
On November 15, 1988, during the first Palestinian uprising "intifada", Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat unilaterally proclaimed an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
He made the announcement in Algiers at a meeting of the exiled Palestinian National Council, which adopted the two-state solution as a goal, with independent Israeli and Palestinian states existing side-by-side.
Minutes later, Algeria became the first country to officially recognise an independent Palestinian state.
Within a week, dozens of other countries, including much of the Arab world, India, Turkey, most of Africa and several central and eastern European countries followed suit.
The next wave of recognitions came in late 2010 and early 2011, at a time of crisis for the Middle East peace process.
South American countries, including Argentina, Brazil and Chile, answered calls by the Palestinians to endorse their statehood claims.
This came in response to Israel's decision to end a temporary ban on Jewish settlement-building in the occupied West Bank.
2011-2012: UN recognition
In 2011, with peace talks at a standstill, the Palestinians pushed ahead with a campaign for full UN membership.
The quest failed, but in a groundbreaking move on October 31 of that year, the UN cultural agency UNESCO voted to accept the Palestinians as a full member, much to the dismay of Israel and the United States.
In November 2012, the Palestinian flag was raised for the first time at the United Nations in New York after the General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to upgrade the status of the Palestinians to "non-member observer state".
Three years later, the International Criminal Court also accepted the Palestinians as a state party.
2024-2025 new push
Israel's war on Gaza has boosted support for Palestinian statehood.
Four Caribbean countries (Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and the Bahamas) and Armenia took the diplomatic step in 2024.
So did four European countries: Norway, Spain, Ireland and Slovenia, the latter three EU members.
Within the European Union, this was a first in 10 years since Sweden's move in 2014, which resulted in years of strained relations with Israel.
Other member states, such as Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, had already done so in 1988, long before joining the EU.
On the other hand, some former Eastern bloc countries, such as Hungary and the Czech Republic, do not or no longer recognise a state of Palestine.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Monday that "Australia will recognise the right of the Palestinian people to a state of their own" at the UN General Assembly.
France said last month it intends to recognise a Palestinian state come September, while Britain said it would do the same unless Israel takes "substantive steps", including agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza.
Canada also plans to recognise a Palestinian state in September, Prime Minister Mark Carney said, marking a dramatic policy shift that was immediately rejected by Israel.
Among other countries that could also formally express recognition, Malta, Finland and Portugal have raised the possibility.
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Al-Ahram Weekly
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Ibada — naming the genocide in Gaza - World - Al-Ahram Weekly
If the Holocaust was an instance of genocide against Europe's Jews, let us give Israel's slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza the name of Ibada. Eight decades after the US dropped the first nuclear bomb on Japan, killing some 140,000 people, the past retains its resonance across the world to remind people of past atrocities. Last week, Japan marked the anniversary of the US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, which the Americans claimed were meant to bring World War II in the Far East to an end. The two atomic bombs probably transported humanity from one geopolitical era to another, but they also demonstrated the savagery of modern warfare, where the quantity of violence and death dealt out shows that more civilians can be killed than combatants. Humanity, however, never heeded that terrible lesson, and today the Palestinian people have to face a modern-day aggressor state that seeks to justify their subjection and glorify its occupation of their territories. The brutal ongoing war in Gaza, the starvation of its people, and the total destruction of the Strip when put within a broader historical framework amount to a calculated case of genocide shaped by a settler-colonial logic of elimination. Many instances of genocide happened elsewhere over the course of the last century, though the reference can only be used as a historical guide and not as a way of setting out a 'hierarchy of suffering' of the victims. The East African country of Rwanda suffered one of the most abominable events of the late 20th century, when over 100 days in 1994 members of the majority Hutu population slaughtered hundreds of thousands of their countrymen, mostly from the minority Tutsi group. The list of genocides witnessed in the last century also includes events in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cambodia, Darfur in Sudan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Burma, where millions of people perished in massacres largely because of one group's intentions to destroy others. The most famous instance of genocide, however, remains the systematic, state-sponsored murder of the European Jews and other ethnic groups by Nazi Germany during World War II. This was initially called the 'Holocaust,' but later it gained additional prominence through a discourse vehemently promoted by Israel and its supporters to specifically mean the Jewish genocide and to ignore the massacres of others. The paradox in Gaza today is not that such massive catastrophes are still possible in the contemporary world, but that the persecuted have today become the persecutor, inflicting upon the Palestinians a similar tragic cycle of violence and atrocities suffered by the European Jews under the Nazis. Israel has been committing genocidal massacres against the Palestinians in Gaza, starving them to death and preparing plans for their ethnic cleansing and relocation. In piecing together what has occurred in Gaza over the last 22 months, there appears to be a resemblance to what happened in Nazi concentration camps and Jewish ghettos in occupied Europe during World War II. Under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is defined as any of 'five acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.' Many of the founding fathers of this document, like the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin who coined the term 'genocide,' emphasised the intent or effect of the crime and underplayed the numbers massacred. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has yet to issue a final ruling on the government of South Africa's appeal regarding claims that Israel has violated the convention. In an initial ruling, the ICJ held that the Palestinians were recognised to have a right to protection from genocide. It ruled that the claim of genocide in Gaza was 'plausible' and acknowledged 'the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.' The court ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of acts of genocide, to prevent and punish incitement to genocide, and to allow basic humanitarian services, aid, and supplies into Gaza. It also ruled that Israel should allow unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza and take measures to stop and prevent starvation in the Strip and the forcible transfer or deportation of all or parts of its population. Furthermore, it said that Israel should respect the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in and the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks and immediately stop the extensive destruction of property and infrastructure in the Strip. The UN Special Committee set up to investigate Israeli practices said in a report in November 2024 that Israel's war on Gaza is consistent with the characteristics of genocide, with mass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions intentionally imposed on the Palestinians. Evidence gathered by humanitarian organisations and the media also abounds to the effect that since the war on Gaza started Israel has deliberately imposed conditions to bring about the Palestinians' physical destruction as part of its ongoing genocide. Indeed, as much as the Holocaust was deliberate, organised, and state-sponsored by the Nazis and their collaborators, the Gaza genocide also seems to be systematic, institutionalised, and broadly supported by the Israeli public. Since 7 October 2023, Israeli officials and politicians have engaged in rhetoric suggestive of genocidal intent in Gaza, providing hardliners and extremists with psychological and ideological weapons to massacre the Palestinians. At the onset of the conflict, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked violent verses from the Jewish scriptures used by the far right to justify the killing of the Palestinians. The verses call for the Israelites to completely eliminate their enemies, with one text reading 'blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.' Sharon Halevi, wife of former Israeli chief of staff Herzi Halevi, revealed in a podcast on 7 August that her husband had told her when leaving home that 'Gaza will be destroyed' after kissing a mezuzah, a small parchment scroll inscribed with verses from the Torah placed in a decorative case and affixed to the doorposts of Jewish homes. One of the most obvious examples of the complicity of Israeli state institutions in the crime of genocide in Gaza is the Israeli Supreme Court's ruling to deny a request to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, which is itself part of the perpetration of genocide against its people. Apart from the state institutions and practices that are hostile to the Palestinians by nature, the complicity of Israeli citizens in the genocide is widespread, not only by denying the Palestinians human rights but also by being an essential link in the occupation enterprise. In a poll conducted by the Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute issued at the end of July, the vast majority of Israeli Jews – 79 per cent – said they are 'not so troubled' or 'not troubled at all' by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza. Like the German Nazis, the Israelis are not acting alone. Countries that send weapons to Israel and have been reluctant to raise their voices against the atrocities against the Palestinians are strategically implicated in Israel's actions despite the world's leading human rights groups agreeing that what is going on Gaza is indeed genocide. Then there is the Western media's complicity in the mass slaughter in Gaza and its whitewashing of Israel's intentional destruction of the Palestinian people and their historic homeland. As mass atrocities in Gaza unfold, with Israeli plans to take over large chunks of the Strip paving the way for a wider occupation and an unstoppable genocide, the world should not remain a mere bystander while the Palestinians suffer a new Holocaust. While the Israelis believe that they can crush the Palestinians militarily, they also know deep in their hearts that they cannot achieve victory and that the Palestinians' determination to build a future on their land is solid and their consciousness remains intact. With Gaza apparently in ruins and its population starving, the Israelis are losing the battle for world public opinion, and their political discourse, symbols, and slogans drawn from Jewish religious narratives and myths are clearly being undermined. The Palestinians are gaining support and sympathy around the world, and their fight for justice appears to be assuming the character of a struggle for freedom and resistance. Given the gravity of the current situation in Palestine and Israel's insistence on its hegemonic discourse, it is time to take the Palestinian narrative more seriously and to apply proper moral standards. Engaging with the Palestinian narrative means taking their perspective on the way they describe their experience seriously by construing it on its terms rather than as an object of Western and Israeli discourse. It is time to consider using the Arabic term Ibada to emphasise the nature of the genocide in Gaza, given that the perpetrators and their supporters insist on propagating their own version of history. The word is derived from the Arabic root bada, which means completely vanished, eliminated, annihilated, or exterminated. It carries a similar idea to that conveyed by the English expression genocide but with a Palestinian identity. The coinage has a precedent in Arabic, especially in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that can serve as an example representing the Palestinians' struggle for their homeland. Immediately after 1948, the Arabs started using the phrase Nakba to refer to the Palestinians' losing their country to the Jews and the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Palestinians and the destruction of their homes and villages. The coinage is attributed to Syrian scholar Constantine Zurayk, who used it in his famous book Maana al-Nakba, or 'The Meaning of the Catastrophe,' which was published after the Arabs' defeat in the 1948 War. The Arabic word Intifada, which translates to 'uprising,' also came into use following the widespread protests, acts of civil disobedience, riots and rock-throwing carried out by Palestinians in Israeli-Occupied Palestine. The Intifada was largely coined in Middle East newsrooms to describe periods of intense Palestinian protests against Israel during the First Uprising from 1987 to 1990 and the Second Uprising in June 2025. Today, we frequently hear the chant 'globalise the Intifada' in anti-Israel demonstrations around the world, tying the world's quest for liberation and justice to that of the Palestinians. The use of the word Ibada for the current Israeli genocide against the Palestinians could become iconic at a time when global progress on human rights seems to be faltering, as seen in the failure to stop the savagery in Gaza. * A version of this article appears in print in the 14 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
Al-Ahram Weekly
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Killing the messengers in Gaza
Israel eliminated a group of key Palestinian journalists this week as part of its campaign to silence reporting on its genocidal actions in Gaza. Despite the shockwaves that spread across the world as a result, there was no surprise in Israel's target-to-kill operation on Monday that eliminated Aljazeera correspondent Anas Al-Sharif along with four other staff and two other journalists in a direct military strike on a tent where the reporters had assembled. Israel has been working systematically to prevent all forms of reporting of its genocidal war on Gaza. Since the start of its war on Gaza, in which tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed or gravely wounded, Israel has killed over 130 journalists. It has also been killing the families of Palestinian journalists. In January 2024, Aljazeera viewers were shocked by the news of the killing of Hamza, the son of its Gaza correspondent Wael Al-Dahdouh, who had continued live reporting for the channel until he was hit and wounded in an Israeli strike. Israel has been denying Arab and international journalists access to enter Gaza and has been sending direct and indirect warnings to major news channels and agencies against sending their correspondents to Gaza or recruiting Gazans to report for them. According to a journalist who covers the Middle East for a prominent European daily newspaper, 'the Israelis basically told our embassy [in Israel] that any Palestinian whose name appear on the pages of the paper would be considered a direct target for [the Israeli strikes in Gaza].' Another journalist who worked in the earlier phase of the war for a prominent radio and TV news channel in several languages said that by the beginning of last year, 'it had become clear that Israel did not want any reporting on what is happening in Gaza.' A decision was taken not to reveal the names and identities of freelance journalists in order to protect them. The protection measures, she added, included finding ways to pay the journalists without having them exposed to the tight screening system that Israel has been using to expand its list of targeted journalists. Both journalists said that it was clear that Israel wanted to execute its genocide away from the eyes of the world. They agreed, too, that the reporting of correspondents from Israel showed that one of the problems that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been facing during his push to keep the war going is related to the image of the country in the rest of the world, with much of the criticism of the war being focused on the idea that it hurts the 'sympathy' some other countries feel towards Israel. According to the journalist who works for a reputable European daily, it is now not unusual for a journalist like herself who has reported from Israel during the war to hear a politician, a commentator, or just an ordinary citizen saying that 'Israel has lost the social media war.' The criticism related to the impact of the management of the war, she added, and is also coming from within military circles in Israel, with top brass generals complaining that the coverage of the war is coming at a cost to the image of the Israeli Army. 'Some generals have been discussing the possible legal consequences of their role in the war, which could be easily tracked due to the press coverage,' said a senior analyst who works for a prominent Western research centre. 'It is an open secret that there is currently a dispute among the top ranks in the Israeli Army on who should do what for fear of legal consequences, including accusations of committing war crimes and/or crimes against humanity,' he said. 'Despite all the atrocities we have been seeing during the past 22 months of the war, I think that the next phase is probably going to be the ugliest,' he added. He said that with Israel openly saying that it is planning a military occupation of around two thirds of Gaza, there is bound to be much bloodshed and more forced evictions. 'With the unstoppable wave of international sympathy for Gaza and the political consequences thereof, including the decision of several European governments to recognise a Palestinian state, it was predictable that Israel would start targeting journalists ahead of its upcoming disaster in Gaza,' he said. An Aljazeera source said that the channel has been aware of the threats facing its teams on the ground since the May 2022 killing of Shireen Abu Akleh while wearing a blue press vest and covering a raid on the Jenin Refugee Camp in the Israeli Occupied West Bank. A widely followed correspondent, Abu Akleh was a US national. The source said that with fewer and fewer satellite channels adopting the editorial policy of dedicating considerable airtime to live coverage of the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, Israel is out to silence as many voices as it can. He said that the Doha headquarters of Aljazeera has been sharing information with journalists on the ground on the possible threats against their lives and those of their families. All journalists, including Al-Sharif, had shrugged off the warnings and insisted that they would keep on reporting, he said. 'They perceived themselves as the voice of their people who are being crushed every single day by the Israeli war while the world is watching,' he said. He added that the live coverage of Aljazeera has been 'the nightmare' of the Israeli government and the Israeli military. Al-Sharif in particular was well aware that he was on the Israeli target-to-kill list, but he still was determined to keep on reporting, he said. In remarks following the killing of Al-Sharif and his colleagues, Aljazeera said the attack was 'a desperate attempt to silence voices in anticipation of the occupation of Gaza.' 'It is the easiest thing in the world for Israel to claim that Al-Sharif and the other journalists were Hamas operatives, but everyone knows that Israel is lying out right,' the source said. 'Abu Akleh was in the West Bank, she was a Christian Palestinian, and still Israel killed her,' he added. Sara Quda, Middle East and North Africa Director at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said that Israel had not provided any evidence for its claims associating Al-Sharif with Hamas. 'Israel's pattern of labelling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,' she stated. Similar to the killing of Abu Akleh, the killing of Al-Sharif has prompted international outrage, with several organisations including Reporters Without Borders calling on the international community to intervene. Al-Sharif and his colleagues were buried on Sunday in a massive funeral loaded with pain and anger. The bodies of the journalists were wrapped in traditional white sheets at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza before the start of a funeral procession that ended at the Sheikh Radwan Cemetery in Gaza. * A version of this article appears in print in the 14 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
Al-Ahram Weekly
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- Al-Ahram Weekly
15 technocrats to govern Gaza under PA oversight: Egypt FM
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said Tuesday evening that the Gaza Strip would be administered by '15 Palestinian technocrats under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority (PA)' for a temporary six-month period, affirming 'the organic unity between Gaza and the West Bank.' He noted that the arrangement is part of existing transitional understandings within the PA framework, but did not name any technocrat candidate. Speaking to accredited foreign media in Cairo in response to a Sky News Arabia question, Abdelatty rejected any expansion of military operations in Gaza or attempts to forcibly displace Palestinians, condemned the use of starvation as a weapon of war, and called for the urgent, unimpeded entry of humanitarian and medical aid. On calls for Hamas to disarm, he said: 'Creating a political horizon to realize the Palestinian state is what guarantees unity and the exclusive possession of arms by the state.' He added that Egypt is working 'in full cooperation with the Qataris and the Americans' to revive an initial proposal for a 60-day ceasefire, along with the release of some hostages and Palestinian detainees. Abdelatty stressed that Rafah crossing is open from the Egyptian side, but that Israel—as the occupying power—must allow aid through the Palestinian side, which it controls. He also outlined preparations for Egypt to host an International Conference on Early Recovery and Reconstruction of Gaza once a ceasefire is reached, to mobilize support for the Arab-Islamic plan and enable Gazans to remain on their land. The minister opened the meeting by outlining Egypt's foreign policy principles: support for the nation-state and its institutions; respect for sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity; non-interference in internal affairs; and adherence to international law and the United Nations (UN) Charter. He said these principles guide Cairo's efforts to promote security, build partnerships, and strengthen regional stability. Abdelatty also addressed other regional issues. On Sudan, he stressed the need for a ceasefire and support for state institutions. On Libya, he called for simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections, the dismantling of militias, and the withdrawal of foreign forces, fighters, and mercenaries. Regarding water security, he reiterated Egypt's concerns over the Ethiopian dam, rejecting unilateral measures and calling for cooperation under international law on shared watercourses. He also highlighted Egypt's engagement in the Sahel, West Africa, Somalia, and the Horn of Africa. He stressed the strategic priority of securing the Red Sea and maritime navigation, linking both directly to Egypt's national security and economy. Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
