Several countries join a growing list whose recognition of a Palestinian state will ironically shut them out of the future Middle East.
T he U.K., Canada, and Australia jumped on a crowded bandwagon over the weekend. Following French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement of an intention to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state at this year’s U.N. General Assembly, these Commonwealth countries made their own official recognitions, in a glitzy coordinated media campaign. Joined the same day by Portugal, their declarations follow those of Spain, Norway, and Ireland in May of last year, and all come as some flavor of semblant rebuke toward Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.
Across Europe and the Anglosphere, these pronouncements may feel like low-risk opportunities to stake a claim on global developments, and maybe even do some good by ushering in an early end to a grinding war. However, despite the bearers’ geopolitical perceptions or righteous collective self-image, their recognitions reveal less about Middle Eastern trajectories than about their own diplomatic sidelining, frustration, and decay.
European power brokers, quite simply, were long used to punching above their weight in international affairs, especially in the developing world. Once, this was through colonization. As that went out of style, and the continent looked to reclaim its moral high ground, it shifted into “Global Crisis Manager” — the savvy mediator who would save the (third) world from itself, through a combination of humanitarian assistance, diplomacy, and scolding.
In reality, it didn’t seem to work, and the EU and its ilk have found themselves heavily marginalized in the Middle East, especially throughout this current conflict. Cognizant of their glorious pasts, they have likely looked on with a degree of jealousy at others’ outsized roles in all manner of developments.
The truth is that today’s Middle East is a theater in which the U.S., the Gulf monarchies, and to some degree Turkey dominate the stage. Washington and Doha lead hostage negotiations. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are entrusted with envisioning (and bankrolling) Gaza’s future. Meanwhile, all that European and Anglosphere middle powers can seem to muster is statements issued from the sidelines.
Once, French and British consuls strutted through Beirut and Jerusalem as if they owned the place — because, for a time, they did. But Europe hasn’t parceled out African or Middle Eastern borders for quite a while. Their declarations represent less of a coherent foreign policy than a nostalgic daydream.
And ironically, in trying to claw their way back to relevance, these nations are ensuring their own absence from the negotiating tables of tomorrow’s Middle East. When the rebuilding of Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon slowly commences, in tandem with a reawakening of the Abraham Accords, local players will prioritize partners ready to clamp down on terrorism and invest in expanding Israel’s circle of peace. These Palestinian statehood announcements, as per Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sent rather a different message: hardening Hamas’s negotiating position enough to scuttle cease-fire talks, thus extending the war and delaying broader regional peace.
Sooner or later, the Israel-Hamas conflict will end, though Middle Eastern leaders won’t easily forget these sanctimonious recognition performances, which ignored both Hamas’s October 7 atrocities and its continued terror war. Israel will be fine on its own and will pick its partners judiciously. In parallel, any Palestinian leader genuinely interested in building a viable state will eye Europe and the Commonwealth more coolly, too. They know they’ll need Gulf money, Israeli security cooperation, and American backing. Ottawa and Canberra may deliver stirring statements, but they won’t be paying salaries, policing borders, or underwriting reconstruction. They’ll be footnotes.
As for the Gulf states, their reaction will be disdain and a shaking of the head; they know firsthand the need to cut off all oxygen from the Muslim Brotherhood and its jihadist cousins. They also understand realpolitik. At the most beneficial moment, they joined (or will soon join) the Abraham Accords, and thus Washington’s good graces. They know the Europeans traded leverage for a press release. And now they know whom to leave off the guest list when serious talks begin.
Driven by colonialist yearnings, jealousy of new global power dynamics, and a lingering superiority complex, London and its peers have tried to ram themselves back into the Levantine spotlight. But in doing so, they have written themselves out of the script. Symbolic gestures make fine headlines, but in the brutal math of the Middle East, they buy nothing — and cost everything.