Recognizing Palestine Is Symbolic. It Still Matters.

"The countries recognizing Palestine have insisted that Hamas should have no role in its governance, but pious pledges do not change the fact that the terrorist group remains the dominant Palestinian power in Gaza-and still holds dozens of Israelis hostage, despite the Gazan population's desperation for the war to end. These inconvenient complications suggest that recognizing a Palestinian state that does not actually exist, governed by people who are not currently in charge, is not a solution but rather a restatement of the problem."

"A cynic might end the story here. But there is more to this moment than mere symbolism. International recognition of a theoretical Palestinian state alongside Israel does little for Palestinians today, but it sets the stage for a full-blown clash in the future between Israel's government and the wider world. That's because recognition is a fundamental rejection of the reality that Israel's settler right has worked to impose on the conflict-one in which Israel has the unilateral ability to forever foreclose Palestinian sovereignty."

Several Western countries formally recognized a Palestinian state ahead of a UN conference on a two-state solution, yet the recognitions offer little immediate relief to Palestinians in Gaza or those threatened in the West Bank. The declarations neither halt de facto annexation under successive Israeli governments nor address Hamas's dominance in Gaza or its holding of Israeli hostages. While recognition is largely symbolic now, it fundamentally rejects a settler-imposed reality that forecloses Palestinian sovereignty and may set the stage for a future clash between Israel's government and the international community. The effort exposes tensions between diplomatic symbolism and on-the-ground political and security realities.

Read at The Atlantic