Every September, thousands of diplomats and hundreds of heads of state trek to New York City for annual United Nations General Assembly meetings. Starting this Tuesday, speeches will be made, major diplomatic initiatives will be announced and foreign policy analysts will get together to decry the U.N.’s incapacity to end some of the world’s worst conflicts.
French President Emmanuel Macron and some of his partners in Europe, however, aren’t waiting for the U.N. to gavel in before making diplomatic news. In July, Macron stated that France would recognize Palestine as an independent state. United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese followed in Macron’s footsteps over the weekend. “The hope for a two-state solution is fading, but we cannot let that light go out,” Starmer said in a video announcing London’s decision.
These moves come fewer than 10 days after the U.N. General Assembly approved by a vote of 142-10 the so-called New York Declaration, a seven-page plan that aims to end the nearly three-year-long war in Gaza, form a technocratic Palestinian administration there and establish “tangible, timebound and irreversible steps” leading to a secure Israel living in peace with the state of Palestine. This, coupled with the organization of a special conference on a two-state solution, is as much about getting the Palestinian question back on the international agenda as it is about actually resolving the world’s most intractable dispute.
It certainly looks as if there’s diplomatic momentum here. Yet what we’re seeing is essentially a diplomatic mirage. Despite the renewed attention from Europe’s most significant powers, a resolution to the Israeli-Hamas conflict, let alone the establishment of a Palestinian state, is so far into the distance that you can’t even see it. Countries can formally recognize Palestine all they want, but it’s the facts on the ground that will determine success or failure.
Nothing that’s occurring today can give anybody but the most delusional optimist any confidence that the Middle East’s longest crisis will end anytime soon.
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