“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” – Toni Morrison
The recognition of the State of Palestine is not a gesture of solidarity—it is my enemy. Most Palestinians disagree with a two-state solution, which is what all the recent moves to recognize a Palestinian state are contingent on. It is only the Palestinian Authority (PA) elite, who continue to subcontract the Israeli colonial regime, who embrace this recognition in order to fulfill their role in a sub-colonial project. They have accumulated wealth, status, and shallow control benefiting from neoliberal governance under military occupation, while internationally serving liberal imperialists who champion a two-state solution that unapologetically shrinks Palestine and grants Zionists more time to expand their settler-colonial project across historic Palestine.
Again, the recognition of the State of Palestine is not a gesture of solidarity—it is my enemy.
How deafening is the global silence in the face of the ongoing genocide, the brutal invasion of Gaza City, and the erasure of our core struggles—especially the right of return for refugees and Jerusalem. I write to assert our Palestinian right to define our own liberation. We must not allow French, Saudi, or other European powers—complicit in colonial histories and present inaction—to whitewash their failure to stop genocide with hollow gestures of recognition. Our liberation cannot be defined by those who have enabled our oppression.
I write to assert our Palestinian right to define our own liberation. Our liberation cannot be defined by those who have enabled our oppression.
This recognition does not halt colonization—it accelerates it. Hundreds of new military checkpoints and settlements continue to isolate Palestinians into increasingly besieged Bantustans. It is not a step toward justice but a maneuver of moral bankruptcy. It is legitimizing Zionism atop the ruins of my grandparents’ homes, from which they were ethnically cleansed in the Nakba in 1948 and now on top of our assassinated refugee camps in Gaza.
All refugees in Gaza share this history, alongside over 5.9 million Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA. And that’s only the official count—there are an estimated 1 to 1.5 million more Palestinians who remain unregistered and more. Will this recognition restore the right of return under Resolution 194 for all those refugees? Or will it once again undermine that right to serve Zionist interests and uphold Jewish supremacy over historic Palestine.
This recognition does not halt colonization—it accelerates it. It is not a step toward justice but a maneuver of moral bankruptcy. It is legitimizing Zionism atop the ruins of my grandparents’ homes.
This recognition does not restore our homeland—it erases it. It sustains and legalizes the theft of Palestine, declaring Jewish supremacy victorious atop the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and over a million who have been imprisoned for resisting the Zionist colonial regime since 1948. It offers unconditional self-determination to Zionists settlers but conditional self-determination to the Palestinians and our school books. This humiliation deprives us from our political agency without putting any condition on Israel.
The latest recognition was especially insulting. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who not only supported but actively armed and participated in the genocide in Gaza, cited the 1917 Balfour Declaration with arrogant pride—affirming his unapologetic support for Jewish supremacy and the Israeli state. People cheer as if the native people of Palestine need recognition from their colonizers, who are currently committing genocide in Gaza and have carried out repeated brutal assaults over the years, with documented crimes against humanity.
This recognition does not restore our homeland—it erases it. It sustains and legalizes the theft of Palestine, declaring Jewish supremacy victorious atop the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and over a million who have been imprisoned for resisting the Zionist colonial regime since 1948.
These same institutions and states continue to support a live-streamed genocide, affirming their backing of the settler-colonial project daily—without studying the facts, without hesitation, and without even revisiting the original partition plan that granted over 43% of historic Palestine to the Zionist movement. After the Oslo Accords in 1993, some Fatah Party elites agreed to just 18% of historic Palestine. Today, with over 700,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the PA controls less than 10% of the land. Even in those areas, Israeli colonial forces retain the freedom to jail, bomb, and raid—stripping any notion of autonomy or sovereignty from our so-called statehood.
This is the logic of colonialism. Anyone who accepts it without interrogating history is either hypocritical or complicit—serving hegemonic interests that ultimately enable full Zionist liberation while denying Palestinian liberation, or offering only a partial, hollow version of it.
Yet people cheer for any form of state recognition. Most political parties in Europe support it without critical pause, failing to see how such recognition not only undermines Palestinian political rights but also destabilizes the region.
All generations of Palestinians know this truth: such recognition will not liberate us, restore our homeland, or offer reparations. It renders us invisible, inferiorized, and deepens our mistrust in an international community that seems united against our dreams. They do this without ever looking at the map—without acknowledging how settler colonialism has expanded relentlessly from 1948 to today. They ignore how Zionist forces have besieged us, stolen our natural resources, and demonized our existence in collusion with orientalist Western elites.
This recognition is not a step toward justice—it is an escape from responsibility, part of the ongoing genocide and the escalating Nakba. This is liberal bankruptcy masquerading as solidarity.
The world must pause and decolonize its thinking. We will not accept a sliver of our homeland so that European, Russian, and American settlers can enjoy the rest. This recognition is not a step toward justice—it is an escape from responsibility, part of the ongoing genocide and the escalating Nakba. It abducts everything Palestinian again, including our ability to dream of a different kind of liberation—one that could include Jewish people, but not at the expense of native dreams.
This is liberal bankruptcy masquerading as solidarity. It convinces the world that something is being done for Palestinians, when in reality, we are being punished, violated, and silenced—while imperialist mouths speak only for themselves.
This state recognition is the most hypocritical, egocentric, Eurocentric way of escaping moral responsibility while continuing to support the white Jewish settler colonial superiority in Palestine. I will never accept any recognition that legitimizes the Zionist Israeli colonial regime or whitewashes Western imperialist complicity—especially from the UK. This recognition is not a solution; it is a distraction from ending the genocide and settler colonialism. The UK, like all Western powers, will continue its arms trade with Israel and conduct business as usual—participating in our genocide without shame.
After more than 23 months of live-streamed genocide, the only meaningful response should be sanctioning Israel and ending its impunity.
After more than 23 months of live-streamed genocide, the only meaningful response should be sanctioning Israel and ending its impunity. Yet, while a number of Western countries discussed sanctioning Israel, and Spain which canceled a third arms deal with Israel, the absence of most European countries taking action reveals how deeply Zionism and right-wing Western politics are intertwined.
I also reject the notion that Western leaders have any right to decide for Palestinians whether Hamas should be involved in Palestine’s future. That is a Palestinian political decision. Yet Western imperialists—true to their nature—assume they know better than us, the indigenous people of Palestine. I am among the most critical voices of Hamas, but I recognize that it has political legitimacy and a voter base. It is the largest Palestinian political party and must be respected as such.
Western imperialists want us to accept Zionism and settler colonialism across all of historic Palestine. The real betrayal lies in accepting these terms without demanding concrete steps to end the genocide, recognize it, and sanction those responsible. That must be our first demand—otherwise, it dishonors the sacrifices of Palestinians in Gaza, 80% of whom are refugees.
Therefore recognition of Palestine is a colonial mirage. A two state solution is not only fiction but also was born dead and is not a path to collective liberation. True recognition begins with acknowledging genocide, sanctioning Israel, ending impunity, and dismantling the colonial structures that have dispossessed us for generations. Anything less is not recognition—it is surrender. And I, like many Palestinians, will never accept it.
After the French Revolution, US Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson stated that our treaty agreements remained valid, because they were consumated beween peoples, not states. The USA has long-since recognized the people of Palestine and the existence of their state. That can only happen once, and it is irrevocable according to the Montevideo Convention and OAS Charter.
I’ve spent several years here explaining that Palestine already was recognized as a state with elected reprepresentatives in the Ottoman Parliament. It already had a nationality and right of transit long before the British War Cabinet and its French partner undertook their illegal conspiracy to subjugate the Arabs of Syria and Lebanon, Palestine, Transjordan, and Mesopotamia. They simply added them to the existing Protectorates in Egypt, Yemen, and Kuwait and the Colony in India. They took over the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) formed in 1912, and drew up the new Red Line Agreement of 1928 that established the Middle East oil cartel and monopolies. The British had to accept an additional legal undertaking in order to acquire the Palestine Mandate. The San Remo Resolution required the British to guarantee the existing rights of the Palestinians the Sultan had spelled out in Article 62 of the Treaty of Berlin. That British Oral Declaration noted in subparagraph (a) of the San Remo Conference remains legally binding, just like the oral declaration that surrendered Norway’s claims in Greenland to Denmark.
The book “War Is a Racket” was published by Smedley Butler, retired United States Marine Corps major general and two-time Medal of Honor recipient. It explained how the “Monroe Doctrine” and the illegal use of the U.S. armed forces throughout the Western hemisphere had been used to invade, colonize, and subjugate other peoples and their territories. The US protectorate of Cuba was established to prevent the self-determination and independence of its peoples, in exactly the same fashion that Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and dozens of other extortionate schemes were perpetrated.
FYI, the Roosevelt Good Neighbor Policy that promised to liberate Cuba as a member State of the League of Nations and one of the High Contracting State Parties to the Montevideo Convention always was, still is, employed to illegally occupy Guantanimo Bay through extortion. Cuba was a state, and so was the state of Palestine when our President and Congress ratified treaties with it in 1932.
In my view the ‘Two state solution’ is a mirage that prevents real liberation, … and it is similar to the ‘civilising mission’ that colonial states claimed around 1900. Of course the goal of this ‘civilising mission’, which promised independence, was to whitewash continuing inequality indefinite and deny independence.
Agree!
In my view the problem is racism, and the cure is ‘equal rights’, which include all the BDS demands
The illegality of the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine and the failure of the British government to obey its own treaty obligations was already outlined in the 2024 ICJ Case. See the YouTube video “Oral submission of the League of Arab States, by Dr Ralph Wilde, Senior Counsel and Advocate, in the “Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” Advisory Opinion Case before the International Court of Justice.”
You should also note the Letter from 45 members of Congress urging Trump to recognize the State of Palestine cited by Haaretz. It mentioned the fact that several other US administrations have previously recognized Palestinian statehood. FYI, that can only happen one time. See: Dozens of House Democrats urge Trump to recognize Palestinian state
“Dozens of House Democrats, led by California Representative Ro Khanna, urged the Trump administration to officially recognize a Palestinian state after several U.S. allies took a similar step.
In a letter penned to U.S. President Donald Trump, the 48 Democratic lawmakers said Palestinian statehood “has long been acknowledged by much of the international community and previous U.S. administrations,” along with multiple UN Security Council resolutions. A Palestinian state is vital for ensuring both the “national rights” of Palestinians and Israel’s survival, the letter added.”
The Montevideo Convention and the Charter of the Organization of American States are both still US treaties in full force and effect. They stipulate in part that recognition of Statehood cannot be subject to terms and conditions, and that it’s once and done – “irrevocable”
“ARTICLE 3
The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states. Even before recognition the state has the right to defend its integrity and independence, to provide for its conservation and prosperity, and consequently to organize itself as it sees fit, to legislate upon its interests, administer its services, and to define the jurisdiction and competence of its courts.”
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ARTICLE 6
The recognition of a state merely signifies that the state which recognizes it accepts the personality of the other with all the rights and duties determined by international law. Recognition is unconditional and irrevocable.
Recognition by these countries is utterly meaningless and performative, intended to cynically appease their domestic population. Where will this state exist? Gaza has been destroyed, with full material and diplomatic support of these countries. More WB land has been stolen, as has Lebanese and Syria territory (the latter with the approval of their new ally, a head chopping leader of al Qaida/ISIS).
These are the same countries that have brutalized, imprisoned and slandered Palestinian human rights advocates, including frail Holocaust survivors. They are faux democracies that prioritize human rights for some, but not others. And certainly not Palestinians. How can they be taken seriously when they’re still sending weapons that are burning Palestinian children to a crisp? The hypocrisy is nauseating.
What they hope to achieve is another endless peace process lasting decades until all Palestinian lands have been swallowed up by machine gun-toting thugs from London, Paris, NY and Toronto.