Former US secretary of state Antony Blinken argued Monday that the growing number of Western countries planning to recognize a Palestinian state in September are well-intentioned but are going about the effort in the wrong way.
“With the Gaza crisis still unfolding, this focus on recognition seems totally beside the more pressing realities. Amid the suffering of Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages—and Israel’s announced plan to occupy all or part of the enclave—averting famine, recovering the hostages and ending the conflict in Gaza are the priorities. Talk of two states can wait,” he wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
Blinken assessed that Israel has achieved two of its three war goals in Gaza, namely destroying Hamas militarily and killing those responsible for the October 7, 2023, massacres. But the third, freeing the hostages, “is unlikely to be met by fully occupying Gaza,” and Israel “has failed to develop a plan to withdraw from Gaza and prevent Hamas from taking over again.”
A plan to recognize a Palestinian state is therefore “necessary,” he reasoned, to secure the support of Arab states in providing security forces and aid to help Palestinians govern the territory while excluding Hamas.
However, “unconditionally recognizing Palestine won’t produce a Palestinian state or end suffering in Gaza. Failing to require that Palestinians commit to steps to ensure Israel’s security in return for recognition would fortify proponents of terror on the Palestinian side and rejectionists of Palestinian statehood on the Israeli side,” he argued.
“There’s a better way forward. France, the UK, Canada and Australia should adopt, and the US should embrace, a time-bound, conditions-based path toward recognizing a Palestinian state. Start and end points are a must, because no one will accept an endless process. Palestinians need a clear and near horizon for political self-determination,” Blinken said.
“Recognition should also be conditions based. While Palestinians have a right to self-determination, with that right comes responsibility. No one should expect Israel to accept a Palestinian state that is led by Hamas or other terrorists, that is militarized or has independent armed militias, that aligns with Iran or others that reject Israel’s right to exist, that educates and preaches hatred of Jews or Israel, or that, unreformed, becomes a failed state,” he continued.
He suggested these issues should be addressed over a three-year period that would show “that an independent Palestine will be focused on building a state, not destroying Israel.”
Blinken’s remarks came after Australia announced Monday that it will recognize a Palestinian state in September at the United Nations General Assembly. The announcement followed declarations by multiple Western countries that they may do the same.
Israel has condemned these announcements as a “reward for terror,” and in a press conference Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the “prevailing assumption” that the creation of a Palestinian state would solve all issues was “absurdity.”
The Trump administration is also against the planned recognitions. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that ceasefire-hostage talks with Hamas broke down the day French President Emmanuel Macron announced plans to recognize Palestinian statehood, which the top US diplomat said emboldened the terror group. The French announcement was the first of the recent series of countries declaring they will recognize a Palestinian state.
The Gaza war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led a devastating invasion of southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, and during which terrorists abducted 251 as hostages to the Gaza Strip. Of those, 49 remain in captivity, with only 20 of them believed still alive.