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Observer
03-08-2025
- Politics
- Observer
Global shift towards recognising Palestine
The diplomatic landscape of the Israel-Palestine conflict is undergoing a major shift, following announcements by Canada, the United Kingdom and France to formally recognise a Palestinian state by September 2025. As longtime advocates of a two-state solution, this move by three G7 nations signals growing frustration with Israel's conduct and a revived international push for justice. While not a final resolution, it offers hope for a process long stalled by Israel's continued occupation and military aggression. The Palestinian demand for statehood is rooted in a history of dispossession. The 1947 UN partition plan, which proposed separate Arab and Jewish states, was accepted by Jewish leaders but rejected by Arab nations, triggering the 1948 war. What followed was the Nakba — a catastrophe during which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes. Israel exceeded its allotted territory, and scholars such as Ilan Pappé have described this as an act of ethnic cleansing. In 1988, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) declared independence, gaining recognition from much of the Global South. Western powers, however, withheld recognition, arguing that statehood must result from negotiations. This allowed Israel to entrench its occupation while avoiding meaningful accountability. A recent High-Level International Conference on the Two-State Solution, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia at the UN, reflected rising international discontent. The conference reaffirmed 'unwavering support' for Palestinian statehood. Yet Israel refused to engage meaningfully, and the US, under President Trump's renewed administration, dismissed the effort as 'unproductive and ill-timed.' Secretary of State Marco Rubio's response highlighted America's ongoing role in shielding Israel. The conference had been delayed due to Israel's intensifying confrontation with Iran, illustrating its destabilising role in the region. The new positions of the UK and Canada signal a departure from this status quo. UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has tied recognition to halting military operations in Gaza and freezing settlement expansion in the West Bank. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney, while supportive, has called for reforms within the Palestinian Authority. These conditions indicate a genuine effort toward a viable, sovereign Palestinian state. They reflect international frustration over Israel's repeated obstruction of peace and the severe humanitarian toll in Palestine. Failed peace efforts — sabotaged by settlement expansion and Israel's refusal to negotiate in good faith — make clear the need for a new path. The United States, by contrast, remains aligned with Israel. Rubio has criticised his allies' moves as 'clumsy' and imposed sanctions on the Palestinian Authority while continuing to send billions in military aid to Israel. This double standard enables Israel to avoid its obligations under international law and perpetuate occupation with impunity. Public sentiment underscores the urgency of change. A June 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that only 21 per cent of Israelis believe peaceful coexistence with a Palestinian state is possible — reflecting deep disillusionment. Still, other polls suggest most Israelis would support mutual recognition under a comprehensive peace deal. Among Palestinians, hope endures. A May 2025 PCPSR poll showed that 68 per cent believe an independent state will eventually be realised. Yet many also recognise that symbolic recognition without actual freedom from occupation is insufficient. What they seek is justice and liberation, not empty declarations. In the countries recognising Palestine, public opinion is largely supportive. A 29 July 2025 YouGov poll found that 45 per cent of Britons back UK recognition, compared to just 14 per cent opposed. Though recent polling is limited in Canada and France, their governments' decisions reflect wider humanitarian concern and political will. Human rights organisations have long championed Palestinian statehood as essential to international law. Reports from Human Rights Watch (A Threshold Crossed, 2021) and Amnesty International (Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians, 2022) conclude that Israeli policies meet the legal definition of apartheid and constitute crimes against humanity. This new diplomatic momentum is not a final solution, but it is a pivotal moment. For Palestinians, it renews hope and validates their struggle for dignity. For Israel, it delivers a clear message: the world is no longer willing to ignore its violations. If global pressure continues — and justice becomes the guiding principle — this could mark the beginning of a long-overdue reckoning. History teaches us the cost of silence. The question is whether the world is finally ready to act. Badr al Dhafari The writer is head of proofreading, translation at Oman Observer
Mail & Guardian
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
Middle East's masked hegemonies: Tyrants wrestle in the name of salvation
Israel and Iran are rival expressions of authoritarian impulses. What unfolds today in the Middle East is not a conventional clash of nation-states pursuing divergent interests. Rather, it is a confrontation between two competing eschatologies — each seeking to monopolise meaning, to remake the symbolic and political architecture of the region in its image. Israel and Iran are not true opposites; they are rival expressions of authoritarian impulses, each armed with its own mythologies, institutions and metaphysical claims. The Zionist project is not simply security-driven nationalism but a colonial modernity that positions itself as the centre of global civilisation while relegating the Arab, the Muslim — and even the Mizrahi Jew — to the margins of personhood. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not behave as a statesman in a pluralistic democracy but as a high priest of an exclusionary creed presiding over a militarised state that performs structural violence under the guise of 'the only democracy in the Middle East'. The West persists in presenting Israel as a neutral political arena, one where diverse identities engage in liberal dialogue, as if statehood were a card game played fairly in a cosmopolitan club. This is fiction. As Israeli historian Ilan Pappé reminds us, Israel remains a colonial enterprise, morphing from overt military occupation into a subtler regime of epistemic domination and structural control across historical Palestine. Jewish philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz once described Zionism's mutation into a civil religion — an idolatry of state and army, converting identity into weaponry. From Syria to Lebanon, Gaza to Tehran, Israeli power extends not as a defensive necessity, but as a project of domination. In this vision, 'security' becomes a permanent rationale for violence and 'the enemy' a theological constant that justifies endless expansion and subjugation. Yet Israel's core anxiety towards Iran is not rooted in the Islamic Republic's 'revolutionary' character, but in the fact that Tehran disrupts the liberal-Western narrative and exposes the hypocrisies of post-Sykes-Picot legitimacy. But Iran does not offer a liberationist alternative but rather a mirrored authoritarianism — a theocratic state that exports revolution instead of reform and marginalises non-Shiite constituencies instead of embracing pluralism. Despite internal dissent and mounting international pressure, Iran's ruling elite — anchored in the Revolutionary Guard and velayat-e faqih — has doubled down on its own messianic supremacy, excluding minorities, women and secular voices alike. As Iranian philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush cautioned: 'When religion becomes a state, both lose their essence — faith becomes police and power becomes a fatwa.' Amid this strategic delirium, the real choice is not between an Iranian bomb and Israeli bombardment, but between two worldviews, one rooted in coercion and dogma, the other in historical justice and emancipatory rationalism. What truly unsettles both regimes is the emergence of a third paradigm — a post-sectarian, post-colonial vision that dissolves the myths both sides depend on to maintain symbolic power. The end of Zionism as an imperial structure does not require Israel's annihilation, but the dismantling of its exclusionary logic. And the end of Iranian tyranny will not be brought about by assassinations or sanctions, but by liberating the state from the militarised grip of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and returning it to the civic hands of its people. Such a future will not be born from geopolitical brinkmanship or theological absolutism, but from a democratic, secular and decentralised reimagination of statehood — one that acknowledges cultural and ethnic rights, and ties citizenship to historical redress, rather than tribal belonging. This is not a fantasy. It is the only serious alternative to an endless cycle of apocalypse masquerading as salvation. The 'New Middle East' cannot be a nuclear pact or a lopsided deal crafted by impervious elites. It must be a vision of dignity, placing the human — not the hegemon — at its moral and political centre. It must transcend false binaries — 'resistance' versus 'capitulation' and 'faith' versus 'reason' — and demand the dismantling of both colonial and clerical despotisms. We stand today not between East and West, Sunni and Shiite, but between two visions of power — one that serves itself through myth and machinery, and another, yet to be born, that speaks for the people, in the name of justice, freedom and truth. Dr Waleed A Madibo is a Fulbright scholar, as well as the founder and president of Sudan Policy Forum.
The Herald Scotland
18-05-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Diaspora gather for Europe's first Palestinian art museum in Edinburgh
A small collection box inside the main entrance of the non-profit, volunteer-run gallery offers a reminder: "It's not just human lives being erased in Palestine - art and culture are also targets." The date is significant: May 15 marks Nakba Day, when Palestinians commemorate the loss of their homes, lands, and sometimes lives in the creation of Israel. Read More: The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was adopted in 1947, splitting the land into the new Jewish state and a Palestinian one. Around 56% of what was then British Mandatory Palestine was to be allocated to Israel, despite Arabs making up two-thirds of the population and, at the time, owning roughly 90% of the land. The plan was rejected by the Palestinians and neighbouring Arab states, and its adoption led to a bloody civil war which went largely unchecked by the British. On March 10 1948 this time Haganah, the main Zionist paramilitary group, implemented Plan Dalet to establish control of key areas by expelling Palestinians and destroying their villages. Soldiers were given lists of settlements, along with a detailed description - access roads, quality of land, water springs, main sources of income, level of hostility - and its fate: destruction, occupation, or expulsion. Ilan Pappé, an Israeli historian, wrote: "The plan decided upon on 10 March 1948, and above all its systematic implementation in the following months, was a clear case of what is now known as an ethnic cleansing operation." Israel declared its independence on May 14, and the following day a coalition of neighbouring Arab states invaded. By the time of the armistice in March 1949 Israel controlled around 78% of what had been Mandatory Palestine, with more than 700,000 Palestinians forced out of their homes. They call this 'al-Nakba', the catastrophe. A short film is shown with a timeline of the fate of more than 600 Palestinian villages. Hamada Elkempt, Under Observation, 2024 (Image: Hamada Elkempt) Faisal Saleh, founder of Palestine Museum, says: "To the refugees in the room, watch for your village - mine is April 25." On the floor is a map of historic Palestine, showing the destroyed villages and the sites of close to 50 massacres. News of mass killings, such as those at Deir Yassin, greatly added to the number of Palestinians fleeing their homes. One of the refugees stands on the map, gesturing to the north and the coast of the Mediterranean sea: "They wanted control of the farming areas. The Zionist slogan was 'a land without a people for a people without a land' and this is what they tried to create." The Palestinians were overpowered, he says, with only one or two rifles per village. As for the Arab coalition, they were focused on stopping the Palestinians fighting. Jane Frere, who runs a community project which sews the names of the dead in Gaza onto banners speaks after a short film about the work. In it, the final name she places onto the banner is the husband of a woman who left for Lebanon to deliver their baby. The child's father, a doctor, was killed in Gaza. The art in the gallery, however, is altogether lighter. A landscape painting of an olive grove, kites flying in a clear blue sky, a woman in a headscarf standing in the sun-kissed sea. Nabil Anani, In Pursuit of Utopia, 2020 (Image: Ziad Anani/Zawyeh Gallery) On one wall are pictures drawn by children from Gaza, bright, crayon drawings. As Mr Saleh told The Herald: "There are not a lot of gory scenes and scenes of violence whatsoever. It's just regular, the kind of art you'd see in a typical modern art museum. We are trying to show that Palestinians are human, just like everyone else. "In general, we really are not very political." Some things are, of course, hard to ignore. When a speaker thanks Mr Saleh for his hard work in establishing the space he waves a hand and says: "Please, we are hanging out and having a good time - people are dying in Gaza." This is not an attempt to bring down the mood, but rather an example of the deep connection those of the diaspora, most wearing keffiyehs and other traditional clothing, feel to the land. Many wear keys around their necks, a symbol of the hope to return to their former homes. One of the speakers is a Palestinian woman who was forced from her village at the age of four. Speaking in Arabic, with translation by Mr Saleh, she explains: "The Arab countries told the Palestinians, 'go out and we'll take care of everything'." Her family left their home with little more than the clothes on their back - "like you see them now" - and fled to Gaza. There were no houses for them to go to. Initially there weren't even tents. That winter it snowed in Gaza. At the age of 81 she's seen every year of the conflict. She recounts praying in her home as a missile shattered the window above her, the screams of her children, the deaths of friends and family. Things now are worse than she's ever known. The diaspora, men and women, old and young, are sobbing as she tells her story. "What you see from Gaza now is only the areas where the journalists can go," she says. "And they are killing most of the journalists." The woman was able to leave on a visa to visit family in Scotland, and she thanks the nation for its hospitality and solidarity. She ends with two sentences: "May God bless you. May God never show you the things we have seen."
