British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emanuel Macron have announced that their nations are considering unilaterally recognizing Palestine. At first glance, this might seem a powerful symbolic move: a gesture to remind Israel’s benighted government that the disenfranchisement of millions is morally indefensible and strategically unwise.
But, at this time, the move would be disastrous.
Israelis will not withdraw from any land until Hamas ceases to be a threat — and recognizing Palestine now will strengthen the group, just as most Arab states are finally calling on it to disarm. There can be no more self-defeating action than to perpetuate the presence of this jihadist mafia organization, which has brought disaster upon Palestinians and Israelis both, and which is currently much diminished by the war.
With Gazans suffering immensely, might recognition not spur change? Well, consider the fact that almost 150 countries have recognized Palestine, but that has proven meaningless in the face of a reality in which there is no agreed territory, no settled borders and no unified Palestinian government capable of exercising authority.
Hamas, one of the two relevant Palestinian factions, rejects peace outright and has consistently used terror against Israelis to derail diplomacy. The other, Fatah, which controls the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, is corrupt and incompetent, but saintly by comparison. Yet Fatah too has failed to embrace peace offers that would have created a Palestinian state on about 98 percent of the territory they seek, the last one coming in 2008.
Israel pulled out of Gaza completely in 2005, and Hamas forcefully expelled the Palestinian Authority from the territory two years later. Hamas has used Gaza ever since as a launching pad for attacks. The Oct. 7, 2023 invasion and massacre was just the most horrifying episode. Sadly, the attack succeeded in derailing what looked like an incipient Israeli-Saudi normalization deal — and has also convinced Israelis that they cannot afford to grant the Palestinians any more land.
Major powers recognizing a Palestinian state now would signal to Palestinians that the most barbaric variant of terrorism pays the highest dividend and has indeed brought them over the line. Support for Hamas would soar, despite the group sparking a war that left much of Gaza flattened, hundreds of thousands displaced and tens of thousands killed.
To imagine Israel then pulling out of the West Bank — with Hamas perhaps primed to take that area over too — is fantasy. This area, where the Palestinian Authority controls pockets of “autonomy,” borders the very heart of Israel.
Tel Aviv lies just 25 miles from Qalqilya, and Jerusalem is surrounded on three sides. An Oct. 7-style invasion from the West Bank would be exponentially more devastating. Israelis will not and cannot agree to a Palestinian state unless this existential fear is addressed and resolved.
That means one thing above all: Hamas must be gone. Not weakened, not partially sidelined, but gone, at least as an armed outfit, and completely delegitimized. Until that happens, any serious negotiation involving the West Bank is politically impossible in Israel.
Moreover, any future Palestinian state must be demilitarized. That means no armed militias, no rocket factories, no independent chains of command. A future government — presumably a reformed Palestinian Authority — must hold a monopoly on the use of force, just as any legitimate state must. Hamas would never agree to this.
Sidelining Hamas would be also in the interests of Palestinians. Hamas is a theocratic militia that has turned Gaza into a miserable prison and turned Israelis against the two-state solution. The Arab world, if it seeks Palestinian independence, must cut off Hamas’s funding, deny it refuge and arrest its leaders-in-exile — and then grant maximal assistance of every kind to Palestinian leaders willing to coexist with Israel.
I say all this not as an opponent of Palestinian independence, but as someone who indeed believes partition is essential to Israel’s survival as a Jewish and democratic state.
About 15 million people live between the river and the sea, split roughly evenly between Jews and Arabs. Without partition, Israel will either cease to be Jewish or cease to be democratic.
This would seem to be so obvious that Israelis who support the occupation are caricatured as religious zealots, racists or idiots. But many are none of those things — they’re simply scared. They remember the 1990s bombings after the Oslo Accords, the bloodshed of the Second Intifada after the Camp David Summit in the early 2000s, and now the slaughter of Oct. 7. This fear cannot be ignored, even if the occupation is cruel and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank indefensible.
Palestinians deserve dignity, rights and even statehood — if they can agree to demilitarization. But none of that will happen if Hamas remains in place. What is needed now is maximal pressure on Hamas to disarm. A corollary of all this is that Israel’s government will in turn have to be pressured to reengage with the Palestinian Authority, which Netanyahu has foolishly demonized. But recognizing Palestine now would probably stiffen right-wing forces in Israel.
Recognition should be used not as a reward for terrorism, but as an incentive to abandon it. The promise of statehood should be conditioned on Palestinian unity under moderate leadership, the dismantling of armed factions and credible steps toward peaceful coexistence. Only then can recognition serve its intended purpose: to support a lasting peace.
France and the U.K. no doubt mean well. And outlining a roadmap would be helpful. But an unconditional recognition would embolden Palestinian extremists, alienate Israelis and make a two-state solution harder to achieve. Macron and Starmer need to think more carefully.
Dan Perry is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe-Africa editor of the Associated Press, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem and the author of two books.
