The Promise and Peril of Recognizing Palestine

In June, the United Nations planned to convene a conference on the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Led by France and Saudi Arabia, the assembled nations were expected to agree to recognize a Palestinian state and call for a renewed peace process, presumably based on the 2002 Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative, which proposed full peace between the Arab states and Israel after the creation of a Palestinian state.

Israel repeatedly condemned the conference, and the United States was less than enthusiastic. “We are urging governments not to participate in the conference,” read a cable sent in June by the State Department in Washington to U.S. embassies around the world, according to Reuters. “The United States opposes any steps that would unilaterally recognize a conjectural Palestinian state, which adds significant legal and political obstacles to the eventual resolution of the conflict and could coerce Israel during a war, thereby supporting its enemies,” the cable stated.