Is Palestine a state? And what does it mean when countries say it is?

Ireland, Norway and Spain have said they will recognise Palestine as a state, breaking from a consensus within Western Europe and the US that Palestinians should achieve statehood through negotiations with Israel. Already, a great majority of countries – around 140 – recognise a Palestinian state. The declarations have symbolic value for Palestinians, and they serve to diplomatically isolate Israel, whose government opposes a Palestinian state. But they do not mean that the Palestinians have a state, in the full meaning of the word. 

What does it mean to be a state?

Under the Montevideo Convention of 1933, which established the conventional definition of a state under international law, such an entity must meet four qualifications. The West Bank and Gaza Strip meet the first one – a permanent population – but fall somewhat short on the other three: a government, defined territorial boundaries, and an ability to enter into agreements. Under the peace agreements of the early 1990s between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), an entity called the Palestinian Authority was tasked with limited Palestinian self-rule, but it has never had control over all of the West Bank. It lost control of the Gaza Strip entirely to militant Islamist group Hamas in 2007. Since then, there were effectively two Palestinian governing entities. And the Israelis continued to control Gaza’s airspace and maritime territory. 

The accords commit the two sides to negotiating a permanent settlement of their conflict, which was widely understood to mean the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The territorial boundaries were to be mutually agreed upon. In the meantime, the accords limit the Palestinians’ ability to make agreements with other states in the economic, cultural, scientific and educational realms.

Putting international law aside, what Palestinians want is to command their own destiny. To achieve that requires more than declarations. It requires Israel giving up control of at least much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

What do the recognitions do for the Palestinians?

They lend legitimacy to the cause of Palestinian statehood. The PLO, which claims to represent all Palestinians, first declared a Palestinian state in 1988. Over the years, more and more countries recognised it. The UN General Assembly in 2012 voted to give Palestine the status of a non-member observer state at the world body. This allows the Palestinian delegation to participate in proceedings, but not in votes in the UN’s main organs. To become a member state requires the approval of at least nine of 15 countries in the UN Security Council, and any of its permanent members – China, France, Russia, the UK and US – has a veto. The US, so far, has opposed recognition of a Palestinian state outside of a peace agreement with Israel.

What’s the history here?

The Holy Land, part of the Ottoman Empire from 1517, came under British governance when World War I victors divided control over the losers’ territory. The first so-called two-state proposal dates to the 1937 Peel Commission, which recommended partitioning what was then called British Mandatory Palestine to stop Arab-Jewish violence. The UN embraced a different partition plan in 1947, but the Arabs rejected both, leading to Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948 and the first Arab-Israeli war. That period produced an estimated 700,000 Palestinian refugees. In a 1967 war, Israel captured, among other Arab territories, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, putting residents under military occupation and fanning Palestinian nationalism. After a Palestinian uprising that began in 1987 claimed more than 1,200 Palestinian and 200 Israeli lives, secret negotiations produced the landmark Oslo peace accords in 1993. The limited self-rule Palestinians gained under them was meant to be an interim measure. 

Why did the peace accords fall short?

The military occupation, Israeli settlement building and violence continued, as the two sides repeatedly failed to resolve issues standing in the way of a promised final agreement. A second Palestinian uprising, from 2000 to 2005, was especially bloody. Stumbling blocks in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations included where to draw borders, how to share Jerusalem, and the status of Palestinian refugees. Israel acted alone in 2005, withdrawing its troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip, while largely sealing the frontier and later imposing a blockade after Hamas wrested control of the territory from the Palestinian Authority in 2007. Gaza subsequently became a launchpad for sending rockets, mortars and Palestinian fighters into Israel.

What do Israelis and Palestinians think of a two-state solution?

Polls of Israelis and Palestinians have found a fairly steady decline in support for the idea over the past decade. Opposition to the two-state solution among Palestinians stood at 52 per cent in a March 2024 survey. In a mid-February poll, 55 per cent of Israelis said they opposed the creation of an independent Palestinian state, even if it was demilitarised. 

What are the alternatives?

Many Israelis support the idea of extending Israeli sovereignty to at least part of the West Bank, where Israeli settlement-building has continued. Supporters of annexation say Israelis have a right to remain permanently in the West Bank, which they call by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria – the cradle of Jewish civilisation. If Israel ultimately took full control over more Palestinians in the West Bank, it would have to choose between offering them citizenship – thereby diluting the country’s Jewish majority – or keeping them stateless, reinforcing accusations of apartheid.

In a joint survey of both sides conducted in December 2022, 37 per cent of Israeli Jews said they would like to see a solution involving a single non-democratic state in which Palestinians did not have equal rights. Thirty per cent of Palestinians said they wanted a single, Palestinian-dominated state. Smaller minorities on both sides supported a binational state with equal rights for everyone. BLOOMBERG