France, Canada, and the UK announced their official recognition of Palestine as a state starting in September. The UK said it would recognize Palestine if Israel did not take “substantive steps” to end the war, while France and Canada did not have that condition. The US has not made any moves to recognize Palestine as a state and “strongly rejected” the decision made by the countries. However, President Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have expressed concern about the crisis in Gaza, with Rep. Greene calling the situation a “genocide.” Israel announced it would initiate intermittent ceasefires to allow humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians in the Gaza strip, on Sunday.
Currently, the State of Palestine is recognized by more than 140 of the 193 member states of the UN. However, several significant Western countries, including the US and Germany, have not recognized a Palestinian state.
Since May 2023, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces while trying to get food in the Gaza Strip, mostly near aid sites run by an American contractor, according to the UN. Reports on X also allege Hamas is preventing aid from reaching civilians by beating individuals while they try to retrieve the aid. According to the World Health Organization, 63 Gazans have died of malnutrition in July.
Some voices on the left called the recognition of Palestine by Western countries an ineffective symbolic gesture but maintained the need for action against the crisis. Voices on the right argued that the crisis in Gaza is the fault of Hamas, and that an independent Palestinian State would not be viable.
An article in Bloomberg (Lean Left bias) read, “These decisions [the recognition of Palestine] are not as they’re being sold. They aren’t considered foreign policy measures, crafted to push Israel’s government to end the war, flood Gaza with food and medical aid, and kickstart a political process that would give hope for a future settlement. Suspending military aid to Israel might possibly help with that. Threatening to recognize a state of Palestine won’t.”
The Washington Examiner (Lean Right) published an opinion that read, “An independent Palestine will be a disaster for Palestinians. Should the international community cudgel Israel into accepting a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem, the result will be a morass of misery…If Palestine gets its independence today, the most optimistic scenario would be a South Sudan on the Mediterranean. In all likelihood, it could be far worse.”
A guest columnist in the New York Times Opinion (Left) wrote, “I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one… The continued denial of this designation by states, international organizations and legal and scholarly experts will cause unmitigated damage not just to the people of Gaza and Israel but also to the system of international law established in the wake of the horrors of the Holocaust, designed to prevent such atrocities from happening ever again.”
Bret Stephens (Lean Right) wrote in the New York Times Opinion (Left), “If genocide… is to retain its status as a uniquely horrific crime, then the term can’t be promiscuously applied to any military situation we don’t like… The war in Gaza should be brought to an end in a way that ensures it is never repeated. To call it a genocide does nothing to advance that aim, except to dilute the meaning of a word we cannot afford to cheapen.”
