European recognition of the Palestinian state still shows us a power that counts

The recognition of Great Britain and France of a state of Palestine at the United Nations is a historic moment in the Centennial Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But it is also a diplomatic bet illustrating how the great European powers believe that the conflict has reached the point where it forces them to make such an unprecedented decision.

Faced with the current disaster in Gaza and condemned both Israel and Hamas, the French president Emmanuel Macron said that “the law should prevail over the could”.

Its move, coordinated with the United Kingdom and under Saudi sponsorship, is supposed to keep the solution to two states on support for life.

They believe that this long -standing international peace formula is the only way to a fair and shared future for the two companies.

The alternative, the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, told a United Nations conference in New York, was a “state” solution, which means Israeli domination and the “subjugation” of the Palestinians.

Nothing, he said, could justify their collective punishment, their famine or any form of ethnic cleaning.

Israel is furious and threatens to answer.

He sees the United Nations Conference – as well as the recognition of a Palestinian State by the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia and others – as a reward for Hamas after its attack on Israel and its hostage taking of October 7, 2023.

Some Israeli ministers want the response to be an annexation of annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank, forever excluding a viable Palestinian state in the territory.

The Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Prime Minister, including far -right personalities whose admitted policy is to expel the Palestinians and build Jewish colonies in their place, intends to put the plug on a two -state solution.

President Donald Trump’s administration continues to support his Israeli ally, rejecting the Europeans’ decision, punishing the President of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas.

This prevented him from attending the conference in New York and he rather spoke via Video Link.

The Palestine conference and the reaction of the Trump administration mark the deepest ever separate between Washington and its European allies on how to resolve the Middle East conflict.

But Europeans believe that they had little choice given the situation on the ground.

Israel now deploys a third division of the army in the city of Gaza, with dozens of Palestinians killed every day; Hamas continues to contain nearly 50 hostages, many of which died; While the West Bank is under the influence of the expansion of Israeli regulations and the violence of the colonists.

All this almost two years after the attacks of October 7, with few signs according to which new military pressure will oblige the surrender by Hamas that Israel is looking for.

Macron’s strategy is an attempt to show that diplomacy offers a viable alternative.

First of all to obtain an endless end to war in Gaza, followed by a longer -term solution in the form of two Israeli and Palestinian states.

European countries argue that Israel’s strategy has failed, which has only resulted in new civil suffering and endangered the remaining hostages.

Above all, the United Nations Conference was also led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the Arab League.

The French argue that this show that its form of diplomacy can have a lever effect on Hamas because the main Arab countries of the conference have now called the group to disarm, put its arms back to the AP, adding that it can have no leadership role for the Palestinians.

Macron believes that the process therefore creates an incentive to Israel, while it also maintains the door open to a normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia – a long desired objective for Netanyahu and Trump.

But the decision to recognize a Palestinian state against Washington’s wishes is equivalent to an important diplomatic game.

Looking at Macron on the podium in front of the United Nations, you saw a president trying to play a role of world leadership to find a way to get out of the “nightmare” of Gaza, as the UN secretary general said, and find an Israeli-Palestinian shared future.

But, speaking in terms of raw power, he was not the bad president.

Without the United States, there is not the same type of significant pressure that only Washington can assert all sides.

And the Trump administration continues to reject the approach of Europeans.

Trump goes to the UN on Tuesday where he will speak and then met Arab leaders, entirely separately from their work with Europeans on Monday.

This lack of coordination between key countries adds to the feeling of dysfunction, while Qatar as a previous mediator between Israel and Hamas refuses to get involved again after Israel has attacked Hamas leaders on its soil earlier this month.

Macron and Starmer mentioned the colonial legacies of their country in the Middle East.

They recalled how, after Great Britain withdrew from historic Palestine in 1948, the international community recognized the State of Israel.

Now they said, they recognized the equal law of the Palestinians to their own state.

The Palestinians welcome their recognition of European nations, but they also know that these are the superpowers of the past.

Their decisions do not count as they did once.

The Palestinian state only becomes possible if it is supported by today’s superpower, the United States.

And so far President Trump has had other ideas so far.