The Palestinian Statehood Drive Is a Despicable Sham
Western countries rush to recognize Palestine so as not to stop genocide but to solve a political problem. They offer colonial lies disguised as liberation.
The other day, I saw a photo of a corpse of a Palestinian, broken down since there was only one spine and ribs. The bones rested against the broken earth of Gaza, testimony to what becomes of international law when applied to the Palestinian flesh.
The answer from the so-called “rules based on rules” to this crime and to other crimes that Israel commits against the inhabitants of Gaza was not to reduce sales of arms, to end diplomatic ties or to support boycotts and sanctions. Instead, many of the most powerful countries in the world have been coded around something else: to recognize the Palestinian state.
Even it comes with warnings. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced last week that Canada will recognize a Palestinian state in the United Nations in September, but only if the Palestinians accept “demilitarization”. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised British recognition unless Israel accepts a cease-fire and “long-term peace”. Emmanuel Macron spoke of France’s historic commitment to justice while French companies are quietly delivering millions of military components for the “defense” of Israel.
As it is kind of our butchers to offer remains while sharpening their knives.
These announcements arrive precisely as bodies accumulate, while famine reaches a point of return, because international law becomes a draped funeral shroud in Palestinian corpses. And they do not speak of a real desire to help Palestine or put an end to the genocide, but rather to the need to solve a political problem.
Western governments are faced with unprecedented national opposition to their support for Israeli apartheid. University campuses revolt. Unions withdraw the pension funds. Citizens require arms embarrassments. The carefully constructed story of Israeli victimization collapsed under the weight of the live genocide. Thus, Canada, France, Great Britain and others offer the Palestinians the same poisoned chalice that they have offered for decades: recognition without sovereignty, State without power, liberation without freedom. They offer us their idea of liberation while ensuring that we are never really free, because a free Palestinian, in their mind, is dangerous.
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Think of the request for Palestinian “demilitarization”. A people under 77 years of occupation must promise to remain defenseless as the price of recognition. The Palestinian authority must hold elections in 2026 while Israeli forces prevent the movement between cities. We have to engage in democracy while living under the military regime which has moved 40,000 Palestinians from Jenin and Tulkarem since January only, and who, at the very least, murdered 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
Starmer will only recognize Palestine if Israel stops killing the Palestinians publicly. If Israel kills us quietly, out of the world, then Palestine receives nothing. It is the “long -term peace” which they speak of (“peace”, when discussed by the colonizers, is only a other word for submission). The British government has returned the Palestinian state to the Israeli behavior, as if our right to exist depends on the will of our oppressor to be more discreet about our elimination.
The Oslo agreements promised a Palestinian state of state by negotiation. Instead, they have delivered 30 years of extent of the colonies, deepening apartheid and the systematic erasure of Palestine. Oslo was signed by men who did not represent the Palestinian people and sealed with the blood of Yasser Arafat, murdered by the very forces which continue to govern Israel. The agreement taught Israel that he did not need to overcome the Palestinian struggle; It was only necessary to delay it long enough for the world to forget that the Palestinians were never free.
It is the colonial game book perfected over the centuries. The United States has promised Amerindian tribes of sovereignty while forcing them to reservations, stripping their children of the language and culture and violating each signed treaty. South Africa has offered Bantustans to black South Africans, calling for fragmented and poor countries of origin while keeping white supremacist control over the economy and the military. France has promised the autonomy of Algeria while extracting its resources and maintaining colonial domination. The colonizer’s promise is always a lie enveloped in the language of liberation.
Now, they intend to do the same in Palestine: promise a state of state while building colonies, promise peace while widening the occupation. Over the past seven decades, Israel has built nearly 200 illegal colonies, housing more than 600,000 settlers; In May 2025, Israel approved 22 new additional colonies. Negotiations never consist in putting an end to Palestinian suffering but managing it, containing it, making it invisible to the world. This state reader follows the same script, only the stakes are higher and the charade more transparent.
However, Great Britain, Canada, France and others expect the Palestinians to accept this hollow recognition – to forgive the incredible, to negotiate with those who resemble “good guys” in the corridors of history. Too bad, the story heard Hind Rajab’s call. They have spent the last two years to force us to internalize the dehumanization that we are witnessing daily, cries of false anti -Semitism while nourishing the illusion that history began on October 7, 2023. Everyone seems to think that they can dictate the future of Palestina without Palestin. But we will be those who will determine how we are looking for release and what we do with this freedom.
The Palestinian state, like helping, cannot be a bargaining currency. Waiting that Israel has annexed almost all of Palestine to offer a state is the same logic as waiting for the fifth stage of the famine to Airdrop Aid. Offering a state now is an attempt by these countries to move their guilt, their complicity, because they are guilty. These countries want to claim moral authority while having actively participated in the Palestinian genocide. All this occurs because these countries do not recognize Palestinians as humans who deserve rights in the first place.
However, if these actors think that the law is salvation, they must also accept that legal architecture already exists for the Palestinian liberation. The UN has recognized the occupation and apartheid of Palestine for many years, two crimes against humanity. In response, the United Nations resolution 3236 affirms the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self -determination, national independence and sovereignty – “by all necessary means”. The same international community that invokes “responsibility for protecting” when the practice now looks at the Palestinian genocide taking place in real time, their suddenly absent doctrine when the aggressor is his favorite customer state. These same governments actively violate their legal duties to ensure Israeli respect for international law.
The biggest crime of all, the genocide, should be well wrapped while they consolidate power for their continuous expansion. These states want public forgiveness not to really resolve the Palestinian “problem”. But the dead cannot forgive.
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The two -state solution has died with the 18,000 Palestinian children who died in Gaza, with each displaced family in Jenin, the world has looked at the genocide and called it “self -defense”. What emerges will not be the neutral statle that these governments envisage, but Palestine that we create by resistance, by firmness, by the simple fact of continuing to exist when existence itself becomes a revolution.
I denounce the contemptible idea that the Palestinian state replaces justice, that we should accept land just to dance on buried corpses.
Welcoming this imposture of a two -state solution would be to dishonor the tens of thousands of martyrs whose death was the price paid for the indifference of the world to the Palestinian blood. What is necessary now is a complete recognition of Palestinian rights: the right to decide our future, until freedom can be seen in all directions. What is necessary now is that the world imposes sanctions, to intervene – for the billions which testify to this genocide to have the spine of a single Palestinian.
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