To Recognize or Not to Recognize – is That Really the Question? On State Recognition Amid Genocide

[Jinan Bastaki is an associate professor of legal studies at New York University, Abu Dhabi, and a visiting fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford]

On the 19^th of July 2025, Keir Starmer, the UK’s Prime Minister, threatened Israel with recognizing a Palestinian state if Israel did not end the ‘appalling situation’ in Gaza. While the UK is effectively making recognition – a declaration of an existing fact – conditional upon an aggressor state’s minimal compliance with international law, almost 150 states have already recognized the State of Palestine, around 75% of the UN General Assembly. The State of Palestine is party to a number of treaties, including the Rome Statute. Yet, the genocide and annexation are not simply ongoing, they are accelerating.

Would the opposite of that then mean that if, miraculously, Israel stopped its genocide in Gaza and annexation of the West Bank, the UK would not recognize Palestine? What is peculiar about the UK’s use of state recognition as a proverbial stick (and a floppy one at that) against Israel is its sidelining of actual concrete actions it must take in order to stop the ongoing genocide. These concrete actions are not acts of charity, but rather legal obligations regardless of whether a state recognizes the State of Palestine or not. As we have clarified before, the UK and all third-states have a legal obligation under the Genocide Convention to prevent genocide and must “employ all means reasonably available to them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible,” (Bosnia v Serbia, para. 430, emphasis added), particularly those states with “the capacity to influence effectively the action of persons likely to commit, or already committing, genocide,” (para. 431). Not doing so can make them in violation of their obligation to prevent and suppress genocide, if not being actively complicit in it, just as Serbia was held responsible for failure to prevent in 2007 by the ICJ. Serbia was responsible because it “could hardly have been unaware of the serious risk” of genocide (para. 436), and the ICJ then cited an available UN report identifying that risk. 

Almost two years into the genocide, several independent human rights organizations, UN reports, and states have come to the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide – it is not merely a risk, but it is already underway. Furthermore, international humanitarian law also imposes obligations upon States. In the 1986 Nicaragua case, the ICJ recognized that the obligation in Common Article 1 entails that the parties should not encourage, aid, or assist violations of the 1949 Geneva Conventions by parties to a conflict (Nicaragua v. USA, para. 220). UN experts had warned as early as February 2024 that transfer of weapons to Israel that would be used in Gaza is likely to violate IHL, and the Human Rights Council called for an arms embargo a mere two months later. Yet the UK has approved hundreds of licenses for military exports to Israel, a violation much more urgent to halt and remedy.

Regarding the occupation more broadly, the ICJ’s 2025 Policies and Practices Advisory Opinion rendered Israel’s presence in the OPT illegal. The ICJ emphasized “the obligations violated by Israel include certain obligations erga omnes” (Policies and Practices AO, para. 274), including the right to self-determination, which is a peremptory norm. This means that states should cooperate to bring to an end to the unlawful situation, as well as refrain from recognizing as lawful the situation created by the unlawful act, nor render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation. Moreover, the Court highlighted the “duty of distinguishing dealings with Israel between its own territory and the Occupied Palestinian Territory” including “the obligation to abstain from treaty relations with Israel in all cases in which it purports to act on behalf of the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” (para. 278). The “obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” (para. 279) can be read to include revising the State’s overall relationship with Israel, since it is Israel that is occupying Palestine, and its whole economy is implicated in the maintenance of the occupation. Trade deals, military licenses, academic cooperation, and the like, reward the State instead of making it costly to maintain its violation of the peremptory norm. As the UN General Assembly asserted, “[e]very State has the duty to promote, through joint and separate action, realization of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples…” (GA Res 2625 (XXV)), which is viewed as an expression of customary law (See Nicaragua case, para. 191.)

These obligations are independent of state recognition and States must urgently abide by them. However, it is not that state recognition is empty of any value, as statehood is one expression of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. State recognition more broadly then respects the Palestinian people’s right to establish their own state and would reaffirm Palestine’s sovereignty, including its rights to territorial integrity and political independence, as protected by customary international legal norms. Under Article 51 of the UN Charter, States have an inherent right to individual or collective self-defense in the event of an armed attack. While a people under occupation also have the right to resist foreign occupation, the rules of individual and collective self-defense are more well-developed. The State of Palestine may be able to call upon other recognizing States to help it to repel Israel’s attack (see Nicaragua case, para. 195), just like Kuwait enlisted the international community to repel the Saddam regime’s invasion in 1990. The act of recognition also reaffirms the rejection of any claim by Israel to exercise exclusive or unilateral control over the borders or access points of the State of Palestine. 

The Policies and Practices AO also brought to the fore the issue of differentiation, as mentioned above. While this was again an obligation upon States regardless of whether they recognized Palestine as a state, the act of recognition affirms the responsibility on the part of the recognizing state to conduct a comprehensive review of its bilateral relations with Israel. This includes assessing whether any aspect of that relationship – such as trade arrangements, security cooperation, or legal agreements – may be contributing to or facilitating violations of Palestine’s territorial integrity or political independence. Where such implications exist, international law obliges States to take corrective measures to avoid complicity in internationally wrongful acts.

In conclusion, recognizing Palestine reaffirms the rights Palestinians already have, the obligations States have towards them as a people, and can be a positive step in contributing to the remedying of Israel’s violation of the right to self-determination. Yet with the ongoing genocide, the spectacle of recognition appears to serve not merely as a distraction, but a substitute for existing State obligations, enabling States to pat themselves on the back while the genocide rages on. The obligation to suppress the genocide through all legal means, to prevent war crimes, and to end the occupation, including through sanctions, arms embargos, and expelling Israel from the UN, are the most urgent, most uncontestable, and are unrelated to the issue of statehood. As Gaza is being collectively starved, States merely push for allowing more aid in or debate suspending trade deals. Few have done more than suspend a minimal number of military licenses, and none have imposed sanctions. Business continues as usual.

Today, the UK’s recognition only adds to the already existing consensus outside of Europe and North America, which already speaks volumes about the colonial divide. Perhaps the most egregious part of the UK’s recognition threat is related to its own role as the previous colonial power and Mandate holder, which completely nullified the wishes of the indigenous Palestinians that it was mandated to respect. While a wholly colonial and racist instrument, even by its own standards, the League of Nations Mandate recognized Class A Mandates’ “existence as independent nations” which could be “provisionally recognized.” For this reason, there are strong arguments for reparations to be made by the UK to the Palestinian people and the State of Palestine.

With almost 150 States already recognizing the State of Palestine, the UK’s recognition threat is too little too late. It must be in tandem with individual and collective action to effectively end the occupation and the genocide. In fact, while an overwhelming majority of the UN’s General Assembly has recognized the State of Palestine, this has done very little to advance the Palestinian right to self-determination – in terms of actually having sovereignty over their territory and the ability to effectively determine their political future – and end the occupation, precisely because the States with the most power are unwilling to do anything meaningful. Settlements have continued to expand and a genocide has been underway since October of 2023. While recognition is important, it should not be used as a substitute for accountability and State responsibility.