Cliff Notes
- The recognition of Palestine as a state arises from a backdrop of conflict and despair, rather than a productive peace process, highlighting significant gaps in reconciliation efforts.
- Ongoing issues, such as settlement expansions and control over disputed territories, continue to obstruct the viability of a two-state solution, further exacerbated by recent violence.
- Donald Trump is set to meet key Arab and Muslim leaders to discuss a new peace plan, which may influence Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza amid international scrutiny.
UN latest: Trump to speak at General Assembly after six more countries recognise Palestinian state | World News
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By Mark Stone, US correspondent
The moment could have felt so different. It should have felt so different.
It was supposed to come a long time ago, and it was supposed to be the outcome of a peace process, of reconciliation, of understanding, of coexistence and of healing.
If it had happened the right way, then we’d be celebrating two states living alongside each other, coexisting, sharing a capital city.
Instead, the recognition of Palestine as a state comes out of the rubble of Gaza. It has come as a last-ditch effort to save all vanishing chances of a Palestinian State.
Essentially, the countries which have recognised Palestine here at the UN in New York are jumping to the endpoint and hope now to fill in the gaps.
Those gaps are huge. Even before the horror of the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, there was almost no realistic prospect of a two-state solution.
Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and Netanyahu’s divide and conquer strategy for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza had made reconciliation increasingly hard.
The Hamas attack set back what little hope there was even further so too has accelerated settlement expansion by the Israelis in the West Bank since then.
The same questions which have made all this so intractable remain:
- How to share a capital city?
- Who controls Jerusalem’s Old City where the holy sites are located? If it’s shared, then how?
- What happens to the settlements in the West Bank?
- If land swaps take place, then where?
- What happens to Gaza?
- Who governs the Palestinians?
- And how are the moderates on both sides emboldened to dominate the discourse and the policy?
Right now, Palestinian extremism is holding out in Gaza with the hostages, and Israeli extremism is dominant on the other side, with Netanyahu now threatening to fully annex the West Bank as a reaction to the recognition declarations at the UN.
It all feels pretty bleak and desperate. If there is cause for some hope, it rests with Donald Trump.
Over the next 24 hours in New York, he will meet key Arab and Muslim leaders from the Middle East and Asia to present his latest plan for peace in Gaza. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan will all participate in the meeting.
They will listen to his plan, some may offer peacekeeping troops (a significant development if they do), some may offer to provide funding to rebuild the strip and, crucially, all are likely to tell him that his Abraham Accords plan – to forge ahead with diplomatic normalisation between Muslim nations and Israel – will not happen if Israel pushes ahead with any West Bank annexation.
Netanyahu will address the UN at the end of the week then travel to the White House on Monday, where he will tell Trump what he plans to do next in both Gaza and the West Bank.
If Trump wants his Abraham Accords to expand and not collapse – and remember the accords represent a genuine diplomatic game changer for the region; one Trump is rightly proud of – then he will force Netanyahu to stop in Gaza and stop in the West Bank.
He is the only man in the world who can.