Read Ariel Seidman’s response to this Opinion piece here: ‘Challenging misconceptions with a closer look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’.
It is madness — indeed, morally absurd — for Western capitals to rush to “recognise Palestine” while the genocide is ongoing. The first duty is to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza before talking about anything else.
Recognition of a Palestinian state during or after a genocide is not justice; it is a lifeline thrown to Israel — a reward. It shifts the core question from stopping the genocide and holding Israel to account to managing its aftermath. In that sleight of hand, a false symmetry is manufactured between victim and perpetrator; Israel is upgraded to a “peace partner” and a co-architect of the “day after” the genocide.
Why this recognition is dangerous — five core points:
- Politically whitewashing the genocide: It repackages mass violence as a “solution”, easing pressure for sanctions and an arms cutoff, and diverting attention from legal accountability.
- Buying time on the ground: Under the banner of “peace”, annexation and settlement expansion proceed, while any Palestinian objection is branded “obstruction”.
- Cost-shifting to the victim: Palestinians are tasked with “good governance” on the rubble, while Israel keeps the levers of sovereignty; recognition becomes crisis management, not ending occupation.
- Locking the core files in the drawer: Return, Jerusalem and lifting the siege are kicked into the fog of “later”, as if the problem began with the absence of a flag, not the presence of a colonial structure of control.
- Criminalising legitimate resistance: Acts of resistance — explicitly protected for peoples under occupation — are recast as obstacles to “peace”.
Every time Israel commits atrocities against Palestinians, the world rewards it; every time it sinks deeper into Palestinian blood, a lifeline is thrown to it. Look at the record: whenever Israel imposes realities by force, the West closes the file politically and converts the crime into the management of its effects. From the Nakba to the genocide, the pattern is fixed: an Israeli colonial act followed by diplomatic laundering that buys time and consolidates control.
The Nakba (1948–1949)
Israel carried out organised ethnic cleansing: the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, the destruction of hundreds of villages, and the seizure of land by force. The “international community/West” rushed to recognise Israel and signed the 1949 Armistices, turning the Nakba into an aid file via UNRWA, instead of holding Israel to account or enforcing return. The result: refugeehood entrenched as a permanent reality, villages erased from the map, and a reality made by force legitimised instead of dismantled.
The 1967 War
Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem; imposed military rule; began systematic settlement, road networks and checkpoints; then declared the annexation of Jerusalem. The West issued the ambiguously worded Resolution 242 and pushed “talks” instead of sanctions, all while continuing to arm and normalise Israeli rule. Since then, Israel has never stopped devouring West Bank land, building settlements, and repressing people.
The First Intifada (1987-1993)
Israel escalated with brutal repression, killings, mass arrests, the policy of “breaking bones”, sweeping closures and expanding settlements under the banner of “security”. The international community/West pushed toward the Oslo Accords: a limited Authority, “security first”, and a donors’ fund — no accountability for repression and no brake on settlement. Settlement then doubled under the brand name “peace process”.
The Second Intifada (2000-2005)
Israel failed to implement anything meaningful from Oslo; it tightened the siege and strangulation of Palestinian life, controlling movement, resources and the economy, and assaulting religious sanctities — then built the separation (apartheid) wall. Palestinians rose up against this injustice. Again, the international community/West offered a “Road Map” and “security reforms”, indulged the apartheid wall as a “security barrier”, and blocked any serious accountability track for Israel. The result: the West Bank turned into an archipelago of isolated enclaves; the economy became hostage to permits; Gaza’s siege became permanent — while the “peace process” served as a cover for completing control.
Israeli assaults on Gaza (2008-2009, 2014, 2021)
Even though Israel “withdrew” from Gaza in 2005, it did not end the occupation — it restructured it more cheaply: a comprehensive siege and recurrent bombing campaigns that wiped out entire neighborhoods, killed civilians, journalists, and doctors, and crippled health and education. After each war, the international community/West settled for a temporary ceasefire, then donors’ conferences (e.g. Cairo 2014, $5.4-billion pledges), and a restricted reconstruction mechanism (GRM) that kept the keys in Israel’s hands. The result was a fixed loop: destruction → restricted, conditional rebuilding → ongoing siege. Gaza remained trapped in this cycle of violence, Israel kept escaping accountability, and “reconstruction” became a way to manage the siege rather than end it.
The genocide (2023-2025)
Israel escalated to full-scale genocide and engineered starvation: comprehensive bombardment, mass displacement, open dehumanisation, the killing of thousands of children and systematic destruction of hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure. Confronted with a genuine moral crisis and intense public pressure for sanctions, the international community/West raised the volume of “concern” while continuing to supply Israel with weapons and diplomatic cover — then sprinted to recognise a Palestinian state as a cheaper “political solution” than cutting arms or enforcing court rulings.
The debate was shifted from cause to effect: political and military control whitewashed without being dismantled; more time bought for annexation and settlement; the victim asked to administer rubble instead of regaining rights. By this logic, the new recognition does not save Palestinians; it is a fresh lifeline for Israel — boosting its moral stock, buying time to expand annexation and settlement and closing the genocide’s chapter with a tidy headline.
Is the “two-state solution” possible?
I even agree — ironically — with US delegate Mike Waltz’s brazen line at the Security Council on 24 September 2025: “Unilateral recognition statements do not alter the reality on the ground — there is not a Palestinian state to recognise.” The inescapable truth is this: Israel’s “withdrawal” from the West Bank is not boundary-drawing; it is dismantling the very structure of colonial control on which the system rests. Such a move would be existentially destabilising and risks internal confrontation.
In Israel’s official narrative, the West Bank is “Judea and Samaria”, the heart of identity and history. Giving it up is not a map tweak; it is a rupture with a founding creed.
On the security axis, doctrine since 1967 is built on depth and control of highlands and the Jordan Valley; withdrawal flips that doctrine and demands redefining security without held land.
Legally, ending occupation means collapsing the dual legal regime (civil for settlers, military for Palestinians) and acknowledging it as a system of discrimination that must end — opening the gates to accountability.
Politically-economically, settlement is a web of interests, electoral bases, religious associations and private security; dismantling it shakes ruling coalitions.
Practically, withdrawal entails evacuating settlements and outposts and their protective road networks, dissolving the Civil Administration and military orders over Area C, removing checkpoints and surveillance grids, handing over crossings, the population registry, airspace, water and energy, and unlocking East Jerusalem to function as a real capital.
That scale of dismantling is combustible: armed settler constituencies, mobilised religious-national movements, precedents of insubordination (from Rabin’s assassination in 1995 to the 2005 Gaza pullout), and potential rifts inside the army and police. In short: inside the dominant blocs, “withdrawal” is perceived as pulling the screws out of the project itself. Absent that reckoning, “two states” stays a cosmetic label — and withdrawal remains politically taboo and system-threatening.
The Zionist project did not pour billions, build a ring of settlements and walls and bypass roads, and erect a dual legal order plus a military-administrative apparatus to abandon it at the stroke of a “recognition” press release. What Israel has forced on the ground is engineered to last.
Put plainly: the West is selling Palestinians an old illusion in new packaging. The same loop since 1948 — a crime, then a political “solution”, then managing rubble under Israeli control. They want applause for symbolic recognitions and floodlit flags in European squares. That is spectacle. What matters is removing checkpoints, dismantling settlements, and restoring borders, sky, sea, and resources to Palestinian control. Until that happens, every “recognition” is a political farce that prolongs domination.
And after this performative recognition, the Palestinian will be left alone — again — to run a life hemmed in by checkpoints, permits, siege, humiliation and death. Then, when the fury explodes tomorrow — in an 8 or 9 October of some future year — the same chorus will brand it “terrorism”, erasing, once more, the structure of terror that made it inevitable. DM
Daily Maverick offered the government of Israel an opportunity to respond. Read the response by Ariel Seidman Chargé d’affaires at the Israeli Embassy South Africa here.