Too Little, Too Late? On the Meaning and Consequences of the Recognition of the State of Palestine

[The following are remarks to be delivered by the author at the Sorbonne on 25 September 2025.]

For many. it will seem absurd that we should be gathering today to discuss the recognition of the State of Palestine by the French Republic at this particular moment in time. For, as I speak, the putative sovereign of that State – the Palestinian people – is facing its most serious existential threat ever. For the past 23 months, Israel has killed over 65,000 Palestinians and counting, two-thirds of whom women and children; tens of thousands or more are presumed dead under the rubble; over 1.9 million have been forcibly transferred (that’s almost 90% of the population), and all of them have been subjected to an unrelenting and planned campaign of carpet bombing, scorched earth and starvation as methods of war. In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) determined that Israel is plausibly committing genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. And both before and since then, numerous other UN affiliated bodies (e.g. here, here, and here), human rights organizations (e.g. here, here, here, and here) hundreds of international law and genocide specialists (e.g. here and here) the world over have concluded that not only is the Gaza genocide plausible, but that that ominous threshold has long been passed. 

Against this apocalyptic backdrop, one could be forgiven for wondering why recognition of the State of Palestine even matters. For the multitude of those – like me – who always questioned the wisdom and legitimacy of the Oslo process – what Professor Edward Said rightly called “the Palestinian Versailles” – any talk of recognizing the State of Palestine at this moment seems tone deaf and performative at best, cynical at worst. For many, recognition of the State of Palestine by certain western States has come too little, too late.

Despite sharing some of these misgivings, I come to encourage you to take a slightly more nuanced and realist view of how we should examine the issue of the recognition of Palestine in the present moment. It is informed by a number of sobering facts about the broader context of the question of Palestine in the world today and about which, in my respectful opinion, there can be little disagreement among reasonable observers. 

First, is the bitter truth, that although Palestine enjoys a level of political solidarity among the vast majority of States who see their own colonial histories reflected in it, this solidarity has largely been symbolic, at least for the time being. In material terms there is much daylight between the lip service paid by these States and the extent to which they are actually willing to back it up with action and hard resources. Some States have made important moves, including South Africa and Nicaragua at the ICJ. Still others, like Spain and Belgium have imposed limited sanctions on Israel. But if the last 23 months of genocide shows us anything, it’s that the vast majority of other States – friend and foe alike – are still either unwilling or unable to do what is required to save the Palestinian people, no matter how bad things get. 

Second, Palestine lacks the fundamental material, economic and human resources to defend itself. It has always been something of a mystery to me as to how so many gullible or unscrupulous people in the West seem to fall for or propagate the Israeli hasbara that it is only the Israelis, not the Palestinians, that deserve peace and security. It is as though the western world’s political and media elite believe that history started on 7 October, or that Palestinian troops, tanks, F35s, and helicopter gunships have been occupying and colonizing Israel for decades, torturing, killing, maiming and usurping the land of its Jewish inhabitants, rather than the other way round. Once again, if the past 23 months have demonstrated anything, it’s that the indigenous people of Palestine do not have the ability to physically defend themselves from a vengeful settler-colonial nuclear power armed to the teeth by another settler-colony, the United States, and who makes no secret of its plans to continue to displace and replace the Palestinian people in their own land – or eliminate those who have the temerity to survive. 

Third, despite these adversities, one cannot deny that Palestine now enjoys a level of popular global solidarity at the grassroots level never before seen. Propelled by the connectivity of social media, and in the face of the unwillingness or inability of global elites to act on the basis of principle, everyday people have taken it upon themselves to serve as the vanguard of a sustained and serious call for their governments to respect their own international legal obligations to hold Israel to account, including to prevent genocide. From the mouths of students, teachers, doctors, trade unionists, artists, farmers and millions of others, the cry ‘Free Palestine’ has now been brought to the attention of virtually everyone on Earth. And with every additional day that passes, the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – modeled on the one that led to the fall of Apartheid South Africa before it – is making gradual, but critical headway. 

Fourth, and finally, in one of human history’s greatest ironies, Israel – a State branded as a phoenix rising from the ashes of the Holocaust, the perennial victim State with what purports to be the “most moral army in the world” – has, by its own hand, ensured that it will never be regarded as a ‘normal’ State again. For one does not simply absolve oneself from the stigma of genocide, as so many other perpetrators of the crime of crimes can readily attest. The damage done to the so-called ‘Jewish State’ will be generational. We are now witnessing the desperate and spectacular acts of a nineteenth century ethnonational political project that is spent. While Israel may easily win its military battles in the short term, it has now undoubtedly lost the legitimacy war in the long term. Political Zionism is now in its late stages of life and will never recover from the stain of its Gaza Genocide. 

Still – and perhaps most importantly – the realist in me must admit that old ideas die hard, as was the case with the fall of Apartheid in South Africa. So it is reasonable for us to expect that Israel and its friends in Washington, Paris, London and other metropoles will maintain their obstinance to the very end. And all of this will almost certainly come at a cost measured in the amount of Palestinian babies starved and blood spilt. It is clear that Israel remains the regional hegemon for now, and that it will not easily retreat from its fundamentalist policy course for the foreseeable future. It is now engaged in the logical culmination of a decades long process of destroying the Palestinian people as a national group in its native land. Israel rejects the notion of Palestinian sovereignty anywhere between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea, and is now showing us what its conception of the so-called ‘one state solution’ looks like: a state which presents the Palestinian people with the false choice between eternal subservience, forced exile or death.

Assessing the meaning and consequences of the recognition of the State of Palestine must, in my respectful view, be viewed in this cold realist context. As neither a means to save Israel from itself, nor as a means to resurrect the failed Oslo process from the dead. But rather as a tactical move, a holding operation, aimed at stopping the juggernaut in its tracks as it attempts to put the final nail in the coffin of the Palestinian people as a national group. In this sense, recognition by third States – not least, Israel’s closest western allies – makes the point: “here, and no farther; we shall never recognize Israeli claims to the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 within which only the Palestinian people is sovereign”. 

The History of Palestine Statehood

Against these opening remarks, it is useful for us to briefly consider the history of Palestine Statehood. A cursory glance at this history demonstrates it to be a perennial struggle between the desire of hegemonic imperial western power to block its emergence and the dogged determination of the Palestinian people to bring it to fruition, despite the odds. 

The State of Palestine – in the Westphalian sense – can be traced back to the 1919 League of Nations Covenant, and the Mandate system. Article 22 of the League Covenant resolved that the communities formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire (designated ‘class A’ mandates), including Palestine, had “reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone.”

But this recognition of the provisional independence of Palestine – whose population was then 90 percent Palestinian Arab – was never given effect by the British mandatory power. On the contrary, over the course of its 25-year reign in Palestine, and in contrast to its own wartime promises to the Palestine Arabs and the independence that emerged in other Class A mandated territories in the region in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Syria, the British used its mandate over the territory to facilitate European Zionist colonial settlement of Palestine and the establishment of the so-called ‘Jewish national home’ there. 

By the time the British handed the question of Palestine to the newly formed United Nations in 1947, the population of the country was 66 percent Palestinian Arab to 33 percent Jewish. In September that year, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) unanimously determined that “the peoples of Palestine are sufficiently advanced to govern themselves independently”, and that political “independence shall be granted in Palestine at the earliest practicable date”. Nevertheless, on 29 November 1947 the then western dominated General Assembly, driven with a desire to resolve its own self-described “Jewish question” in the aftermath of the Holocaust, voted to partition Palestine into an Arab State and a Jewish State. This was done in the most iniquitous terms and in flagrant violation of the self-determination right of the majority Palestinian population who did not consent. In the Nakba that immediately followed, over 80 percent of the Palestinian population of what became the State of Israel was expelled and denationalized by the Zionists, with their moveable and immovable property stolen in one of the biggest acts of organized theft ever recorded. It was through sheer force of arms that Israel established itself on the ashes of Palestine, a fact consecrated through UN membership in May 1949. As I have written extensively, the UN partition plan effectively legislated into UN law the so-called two state framework and, with it, the contingency and disenfranchisement of the Palestinian Arabs. 

Decolonization and the rise of the Third World in the UN allowed Palestine to mitigate the unjust events of 1947 – but only partially. Through the 1970s and 80s, the expanded General Assembly recognized the Palestinian people as a juridical people, with the right to self-determination – but only in the remnants of their historical patrimony, namely the occupied Palestinian territory (being the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip; or OPT). The 1988 recognition of Israel by the Palestine Liberation Organization resulted in greater levels of recognition of Palestine by other States. At the UN, this ‘historic compromise’ resulted in permission to use the designation ‘Palestine’ instead of the PLO, a right to participate in debate at the General Assembly, and, following Palestine’s unsuccessful 2011 application for full UN membership, upgraded status as a non-member observer state in 2012. In so doing, the Assembly invoked reports “which determined that Palestine is above the threshold for a functioning State.”  

Of course, none of Palestine’s modern history has been fair to its people. Far from it. But that doesn’t make it any less true. Would that it were the case that the Palestinian people had the material capability to reverse it all, we might not be in the position that we are in today. But, contrary to what some might believe, we are not now experiencing the end of history. History is, in fact, unfolding before our very eyes. And tactical decisions need to be made. We are compelled to take the long view. As the old Zionist slogan ironically put it, success will be had “one dunam, one goat” at a time.

Palestine is Already a State

It is clear that today, the State of Palestine already exists as a matter of both State practice and law, with or without recognition by France and other western States.

As noted, the State of Palestine is today recognized by 160 other States, it enjoys membership in a host of inter-governmental organizations, and it engages in activity on the international plane open only to States. On 31 October 2011 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (‘UNESCO’), whose membership is limited to States, voted to admit Palestine to full membership of the organization. This wasn’t just any admission, as it facilitated Palestine becoming a party to multilateral treaties as per the so-called “Vienna formula” contained in Article 81 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Palestine is now party to all major international human rights, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law treaties. It is also a party to major treaties on the environment and law of the sea, as well as more general international law treaties. As an example of the importance of this treaty practice, but for the juridical existence of the State of Palestine and its 2014 accession to the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court, the Court would not have been able to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on 21 November 2024, with more similar arrest warrants likely on the way. 

In addition to the International Criminal Court, Palestine is also a full member of several other international judicial bodies including the Permanent Court of Arbitration (‘PCA’) and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (‘ITLOS’). Palestine has also actively participated in proceedings before International Court of Justice, as only States and international organizations may do. This includes a number of advisory proceedings, including the 2004 Wall advisory opinion, the 2024 Advisory Opinion on Israel’s illegal occupation, the 2025 Advisory Opinion on Climate Change, and present advisory opinion proceedings concerning the legal obligations of Israel in the OPT which will soon be rendered by the Court. It also includes contentious cases, including the 2018 case against the United States concerning the move of the US embassy to Israel to Jerusalem, and the 2024 case brought by South Africa against Israel under the Genocide Convention. 

In addition to this practice, the Statehood of Palestine is evinced by Palestine’s fulfillment of the four criteria for statehood under general international law as codified in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States. These are: (1) a permanent population; (2) defined territory; (3) a government; and (4) the capacity to enter into relations with other States.

First, Palestine has a population of 5.8 million, excluding Palestine refugees and displaced persons who are forced to live outside the occupied territory of the State of Palestine. The population of Palestine is permanent in the sense that it is ethnically homogenous and has inhabited the territory of Palestine from time immemorial.

Second, Palestine possesses a defined territory consisting of what is commonly referred to as the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, otherwise known as the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). As has been noted by the ICJ, “from a legal standpoint, the Occupied Palestinian Territory constitutes a single territorial unit, the unity, contiguity and integrity of which are to be preserved and respected.” The fact that the border between Israel and the State of Palestine is the Green Line established by the Armistice Agreements of 1949 has been nearly unanimously recognized by States, and the General Assembly of the United Nations. However, if Palestine’s borders with Israel were to be considered insufficiently defined, Israel, which is a Member State of the United Nations, would find itself in exactly the same situation as regards its borders with Palestine, and there has been no credible suggestion that this affects Israel’s claim to statehood.

Third, Palestine has a government. Although it is forcibly prevented by Israel from exercising the full range of its governmental authority in the territory of the State of Palestine, this does not negate or diminish the fact that there is a Palestinian government sufficient to fulfil this criterion. This is illustrated by State practice during the period of decolonization when many former colonies were recognized as States and admitted to the United Nations in pursuance of the right of self-determination of their peoples despite facing challenges in fully exercising effective government. 

Fourth, Palestine conducts foreign relations with other States and International Organizations without constraint. It is not required to obtain the assent of any State in order to make decisions pertaining to its international relations and no State is authorized to veto any such decision. In this respect, it clearly acts as a State with unrestrained power in the conduct of foreign relations. 

Beyond Symbolism: How to Ensure Recognition Pays 

All of this begs the question: if Palestine is already a State under international law, why does the recognition of that State by Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and others even matter at this point in time? What are some of the problems with the manner in which recognition has been extended by some of these western holdouts? And how might we find a way to push back constructively?

First, the problems. 

Each of France, Canada and the United Kingdom, for example, have extended recognition but only, it would appear, on certain degrees of condition or qualification, some of which are express, some implied.

Canada’s recognition “is predicated” on so-called “reform” of the Palestinian Authority, the “holding of general elections in 2026”, ensuring that Hamas takes “no part” in those elections and plays no part in the future governance of Palestine, and that Palestine be a “demilitarized” State. 

Likewise, the United Kingdom’s recognition of the State of Palestine was given only because the Israeli government failed to take “substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire and commit to a long-term, sustainable peace reviving the prospect of a two-state solution”. The UK affirmed that Hamas must play no part in the governance of Gaza.

Finally, France has restated the Canadian position, but not as conditions as such but rather as undertakings allegedly given by President Mahmoud Abbas. “In light of these commitments”, France has recognized the State of Palestine. 

For any student of international relations, the problems with these express or implied conditions will be self-evident. As an international lawyer, for me they signify a continuation of the west’s long held reluctance to take Palestine and Palestinians seriously, in accordance with the most basic principles of equality and morality, leave aside logic. For instance: 

• How can the Palestinian Authority engage in “reform” or even hold elections in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in East Jerusalem, if Israel continues its unlawful presence in the territory including a ban on use by that Authority of its own tax revenues, or the holding of Palestinian elections in the city of Jerusalem? Does this not place Israel in a position of holding a veto power over the recognition of the putative State of Palestine by Canada and France?

• Upon what authority do these western states assert a right to dictate to the Palestinian people who they may or may not vote for or be governed by? Is that not a choice solely for the Palestinian people, who each of these western States have long recognized have a right to political self-determination? 

• In the face of an actual ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people (to say nothing of the decades-long apartheid regime that has given rise to it), by what legal, moral or political authority do these western states assert that the State of Palestine ought to be demilitarized? What of their so-called commitment to ensure that Never Again will such atrocity crimes be committed?

• And how is it possible, in the case of the UK, that recognition can be held out as punishment for Israel’s failure to respect its own obligations under international law? This is particularly galling in view of the historical responsibility for the Palestine problem that the British themselves have. 

If you, like me, are enraged by these apparent conditions or qualifications, the question arises what can be done about it? In the realist world in which we live, recognition by these western States is going ahead. But what might we do to ensure that a principled course correction is adopted?

Contrary to what you might think, it is possible to push back. In my view, at least two things need to be considered. First, we must encourage clear application of international legal principles concerning statehood, sovereignty and use of force by the western powers now recognizing Palestine. Second, we need to read the so-called New York Declaration in light of those principles. I shall take each of these in turn. 

Relevant International Legal Principles

On the international plane, the highest form of subjectivity is statehood. States are legal persons with rights and obligations. They create the law through State practice and are said to enjoy sovereign equality between one another. Except in limited circumstances as set out in the UN Charter, States do not have the authority to sit in judgment of each other without consent of the State being judged. Against this backdrop, three fundamental principles of international law must be borne in mind when considering the apparent qualified western recognition of the State of Palestine. These principles are interconnected and relate to or qualify as jus cogens or peremptory norms of international law, derogation from which is not permitted under any circumstances.

First, is the principle of non-intervention. This principle holds that no State may concern itself with the internal affairs of other States. This is restated nicely in Article 2(7) of the UN Charter as follows: 

“Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII.”

While the principle of non-intervention has been challenged in recent decades, most particularly with the notion of the so-called responsibility to protect (a “responsibility”, I should add, that has miraculously been forgotten by its western authors when it has come to Gaza), there is no doubt that it prohibits foreign States from dictating how and by whom other peoples govern themselves. In this respect, any suggestion by Canada, France and the United Kingdom that recognition is subject to certain conditions being undertaken by the Palestinian people vis a vis how and by whom they govern themselves is a clear violation of international law and does not bind Palestine in any way on the international plane.

Second, is the principle of territorial integrity and political independence of States. This principle holds that all States enjoy territorial sovereignty in a single territorial unit, over which it exercises sovereignty to the exclusion of all other States. This includes the land, air and territorial sea. Political independence refers to the sovereignty exercised in the internal affairs of the State with respect to its institutions, freedom of political decisions, policy making, and in matters pertaining to its domestic and foreign affairs. This principle is restated in what is probably the most important provision of the UN Charter, Article 2(4), which provides that: 

“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

As should be readily apparent, the conditions or qualifications of the western states now recognizing Palestine do not hold up against the principle of territorial integrity and political independence that inheres in Palestine. 

Third, is the principle of self-defence. This customary principle holds that all States possess an inherent right to use force in self-defence if subjected to an armed attack by another State in violation of article 2(4) of the UN Charter. As codified in Article 51 of the Charter: 

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. 

Such unlawful uses of force include illegal foreign military occupation and regimes of alien domination, subjugation and exploitation such as that which Israel has imposed on the Palestinian people at least since 1967. 

Because each of these fundamental rules relate to or qualify as jus cogens norms of general international law derogation from which is not permitted, they impose binding legal obligations on all States to ensure their protection. So fundamental are these norms, that all States are said to have an interest in ensuring their respect, erga omnes. This means that to the extent that the western powers now recognizing Palestine – including France – have purported to impose conditions or qualifications on their recognition that violate or aid or assist in the violation of these principles, those conditions have no legal validity whatsoever. 

It also means that recognition without sustained and serious sanctions imposed on Israel will render such recognition merely symbolic. In this respect two recent holdings of the International Court of Justice are of particular importance for the western States now recognizing Palestine. 

On 19 July 2024, in a case that derives in part from my own research and in which I had the privilege to serve as legal counsel to Palestine in, the ICJ determined that Israel is not sovereign in the OPT, and that it’s continued settlement of the territory among other policies and practices violates three other peremptory norms of general international law: namely, the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force, the obligation to respect the right of peoples to self-determination, and the obligation to refrain from imposing regimes of racial segregation and apartheid. The Court accordingly determined that Israel’s presence in the OPT is in and of itself unlawful and that it is required to withdraw from the OPT unconditionally and “as rapidly as possible”. The Court further determined that all States have an obligation to bring Israel’s presence in the OPT to an end, not to recognize Israel’s continued presence in the OPT as lawful, and not to aid or assist Israel in the maintenance of its unlawful presence and actions in the OPT. This echoes the principle, affirmed in UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016) that all States have an obligation to distinguish in their relationship with Israel between Israel, on the one hand, and the OPT, on the other.  

In practical terms, this means that third States are under an obligation to completely alter their bilateral relations with Israel. If Israel is unable to reasonably demonstrate that the subject matter of said relations has nothing to do with its continued illegal presence in the OPT (a very high threshold, given the extent to which Israel has effectively annexed the territory), the obligation to alter those relations extends to the whole of Israel itself, and not merely Israel in the OPT. This is particularly true of States, like France, Canada and the UK, who have close ties with Israel and who continue to trade or furnish it with political, military, economic and cultural assistance and cooperation. The fact that recognition has been extended by these western states to the State of Palestine has now added weight to the pressure that can be brought to bear on them to abide by their obligations not to aid or assist Israel in maintaining its illegal presence in Palestine. 

Additionally, third States – including France, Canada, and the UK – cannot continue to justify Israel’s unlawful presence in the OPT with any arguments based on self-defence. As far back as 2004, the ICJ determined that Israel may not rely on Article 51 of the UN Charter to respond to attacks that emanate from within the OPT. Because Israel’s presence in the OPT, including the Gaza Strip, has now been determined by the Court to be a violation of article 2(4) of the UN Charter, it qualifies as an aggression. One result of this is that the occupation cannot be justified by arguments of self-defence. Under international law, there is no self-defence justification for aggression, full stop. Quite the contrary. If any State enjoys a right of self-defence in this situation it is the State of Palestine, not Israel. Because Palestine enjoys an inherent right of self-defence and is the subject of an ongoing 58-year illegal use of force against it, it can seek assistance from other States to help defend it from Israeli aggression, including those now recognizing it. Now, I am not naïve enough to think that under the present political climate France, Canada and the UK would send arms, materiel and troops to Palestine if the latter exercised its sovereign right to request aid and assistance to defend itself from Israeli aggression as the Ukrainians have vis a vis Russia’s aggression. But, in principle, recognition of the State of Palestine opens the possibility for the argument to be made. And in this context, the legitimacy of the use of force – not only how force is used – is a particularly important matter.  

Another relevant ruling of the ICJ was its binding determination of 26 January 2024 in South Africa v. Israel, that Israel is plausibly engaged in genocide in the OPT. This triggered the obligation of all States parties to the Genocide Convention (and indeed all States on Earth given the customary nature of the prohibition on Genocide) to do everything reasonably within their power to prevent genocide. Of course, these obligations already bind the western states now recognizing the State of Palestine. But by extending recognition, the scope of their obligations to do everything reasonably within their power prevent genocide against the Palestinian people as a national group in their native land necessarily increases. They must therefore do much more to adjust their relationship with Israel than merely recognize Palestine. 

All this to say, in view of these cases, and the erga omnes obligations they impose on all third States, the recognition by western States like France, Canada, the UK and others has actually opened up a window of opportunity. Recognition has increased avenues for pressure to be brought to bear on these western States to alter their relationship with Israel. Now is precisely the time for all of us to press even harder for western States that have recognized Palestine to impose full sanctions on Israel, diplomatic, economic, military, cultural, academic and in other areas. Recognition has not in and of itself produced these legal obligations of third States vis a vis Israel. But there is no denying that recognition has increased the avenues of argument, both legal and political, that can help realize the change that is needed. They need to be exploited to the fullest.

One final point on which I shall conclude, concerns how we should read the declarations given by the French republic and even the text of the New York Declaration critically. A close read indicates they may not be as bad as is generally perceived. 

For instance, as previously mentioned, technically speaking France’s recognition of Palestine has not actually been made subject to conditions but rather only in relation to certain “commitments” of the President of the State of Palestine. But, as the Elysée Palace knows full well, States are sovereign and it is only they who determine how they govern themselves. If Palestine were, for instance, to feel it within its national interest to one day develop a standing defence force in order to protect its national security and citizenry, there would be nothing in international law that would justify French violation of its obligations to respect the principle of non-intervention, territorial integrity, political independence, and the inherent right of self-defence of the State of Palestine.

In this respect, when it comes to the point of demilitarization, it is worth looking at the actual terms of the New York Declaration. In paragraph 20 of the document, 142 Member States – including the western States now recognizing Palestine – noted that: 

“We also welcomed President Abbas’ statement that the Palestinian State should be the sole provider of security on its territory, but has no intention to be a militarized State and is ready to work on security arrangements beneficial to all parties, in full respect of its sovereignty and as long as it benefits from international protection.”

For clarity sake, I must confess my revulsion at the very suggestion that Palestine should be demilitarized. Given the long history of persecution of the Palestinian people and the clear and present danger they now face to their continued existence, any such suggestion is both demeaning and immoral. But my reading of this passage of the New York Declaration shows that the Member States who drafted it have made two things clear: (1) they acknowledge merely the intention of President Abbas that Palestine not be a militarized State, nothing more; and (2) that such intention is subject to the qualification that Palestine’s sovereignty is fully respected and it is able to benefit from international protection at its request. These provisions make it clear that Palestine has neither forfeited its right to develop a standing military if, in its sovereign decision, it one day determines that such a force is required to help maintain its territorial integrity and political independence and it cannot rely on benefits of international protection forthcoming from elsewhere.

Sovereignty is a curious thing. But as France so intimately knows from its own attempt to limit its application before the Permanent Court of International Justice in the 1927 Lotus Case, States have the perfect right to do whatever is not prohibited by international law. State sovereignty remains king on the international legal plane, and it is very clearly circumscribed by the three legal principles I have outlined today. Such is the meaning and consequence for the recognition of all States, including the State of Palestine.

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Photo by Aveedibya Dey on Unsplash