Why recognising a Palestinian state is not enough - article by Chris Doyle in Middle Easy Eye, 22 September 2025
If Starmer thinks he has bought himself some breathing space on Palestine, he should think again. Only ending the genocide and impactful sanctions on Israel will do
Back in 2014, the British House of Commons voted in a non-binding motion to recognise the state of Palestine.
Over the weekend, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Britain's recognition of a Palestinian state over a decade later, one can only wonder what might have happened if such an announcement had been made then.
Back then, Palestinians would have been celebrating the world over. There would have been parades and parties. Optimism and hope would have been all enveloping.
So why is this not the case today? Where are the cries of happiness and joy? Why will this not really bother Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu much at all despite his public pronouncements?
The tragic reality is that this recognition is accompanied by a genocide.
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As Britain finally recognises what 149 other states had already done, this "Palestinian state" is being obliterated through bombs, starvation and land theft. Britain is accepting a birth certificate as Israel is carrying out its funeral rites.
Gaza is meant to be a core constituent of such a state. Yet Israel’s genocidal war has only intensified. Those few structures that remain standing have only a brief life expectancy, and that may sadly be the case for much of the population. Much of Gaza is enduring a man-made famine and disease brought about by the declared state policy of the government of Israel.
If Britain, Canada, Australia and others truly want to bring about a viable independent Palestinian state, then they should understand recognition was never the obstacle. Calling it a Palestinian state today will not change anything on the ground.
It is just words.
The Foreign Office travel advice no longer refers to occupied Palestinian territories but Palestine, omitting the fact that this state is still under Israeli occupation.
Recognition could have had an impact if it was allied with effective and impactful sanctions on Israel.
For starters, these states could be taking further action to follow through the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Netanyahu. But these states are fearful of taking such steps, no doubt always checking out for the reaction from the White house.
Starmer, Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, and Antony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, would look like diplomatic giants - not minnows - if in recognising a Palestinian state, they had also announced joint sanctions, which would have included a complete end to all military and security ties with Israel, as well as restrictions on trade.
All these measures constitute legal obligations given Israel’s genocide in Gaza, something the UN’s commission of enquiry found to be the case in a report published last week.
As these countries welcomed and embraced new Palestinian ambassadors in freshly minted embassies, Israeli ambassadors should have been hauled in for a dressing down.
The Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotevely, has left the country, not because she was expelled as the situation demanded but because it was the end of her time in London.
These western leaders are also deluded into thinking that this announcement will put equal pressure on Israel.
Netanyahu - of course - has rejected this recognition in his typical hubristic and zealous fashion, even arguing - as his coterie does - that recognition is a reward for Hamas, after having spent years telling the world that Hamas rejects a two-state solution.
Netanyahu knows he has secured US President Donald Trump’s backing and that the Europeans simply are too disunited and weak to stop him.
Netanyahu knows the real question is what these states will do when the mega settlement project of E1 is implemented, one that by design will split the Occupied West Bank in half and sever the crucial city of Jerusalem from its Palestinian West Bank hinterland.
He knows that this will not stop his plans to decimate the West Bank, as he has Gaza, and to annex the majority of it to the state of Israel. Amazingly, Netanyahu is simply untroubled by Israel’s increasing isolation, perhaps one of the few elements of this moment that Palestinians can take heart from.
The absence of any pressure whatsoever will only encourage the Israeli leadership to go forward with these plans. Netanyahu must be chuckling at how incompetent, cowardly and feckless these leaders are.
All of this amounted to futile misdirected diplomacy. Starmer announced conditions that Israel had to meet to avoid recognition back in July. It was an absurdity that a decision to recognise one state should be linked in any way to the behaviour of a third.
Recognition is about recognising realities and rights. Palestine is a state albeit under occupation, and Palestinians have a right to self-determination.
Yet, any observer of any standing could have told Starmer that Netanyahu’s government would never agree to a ceasefire, to push for a two-state solution, or to allow unimpeded access to aid into Gaza.
Netanyahu has even bombed the Hamas negotiating team in Doha to prevent any deal, a clear reminder that the release of Israeli hostages is far from his priority. His whole coalition platform is based on denying any Palestinian state. And his government’s policy is to starve Gaza in order to coerce the Palestinian population to leave.
Should he backtrack on any one of these issues, his coalition would fall apart.
Britain has a consistent track record of mistakes and failures on Palestine and its treatment of the Palestinian people.
Time and time again, it has landed on the wrong side of history. In theory, recognising a state of Palestine by the country that authored the Balfour Declaration, that was the mandatory power for a quarter of a century, and left Palestine in tatters, should have mattered.
It could have been the start of a corrective process to heal those historic wounds.
It could yet be an historic move but only if the Starmer government revamps this misdirected diplomatic effort.
If this recognition is to have any positive impact, Starmer will have to divest himself of the view that Israel is anything but a rogue state and that Britain and its allies need to treat it in much the same way as it did Putin’s Russia and Assad’s Syria.
To bring that about will require further intense pressure within the UK and within the Labour Party in particular.
If Starmer thinks he has bought himself some breathing space on Palestine, he should think again. Only ending the genocide will do that.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
