Fourteen nations join France in push to recognise Palestinian state
The New York Call, which was published by the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, on Wednesday, said that signatories 'have already recognised, have expressed or express the willingness or the positive consideration of our countries to recognise the State of Palestine'.
The signatories include Andorra, Australia, Canada, Finland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Portugal and San Marino, each of which has not yet recognised an independent Palestinian state. They also include Iceland, Ireland, Malta, Norway, Slovenia and Spain, which have. Emmanuel Macron last week said that France would recognise Palestinian statehood in the near future.
The statement, which was published before the conclusion of a three-day UN conference set on reviving a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, also said the states would 'reiterate our unwavering commitment to the vision of the two-state solution where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognised borders'.
It stressed the 'importance of unifying the Gaza Strip with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority'.
The remarks come amid growing pressure on Israel to end its military campaign in Gaza, which began in October 2023 in response to a Hamas raid that led to the deaths of 1,200 people, mainly Israelis, and the taking of more than 250 prisoners. More than 60,000 people have died in Gaza in the ensuing conflict, according to the Hamas-led health ministry in Gaza.
Keir Starmer on Tuesday said that the United Kingdom would recognise the state of in September 'unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire and commit to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution'.
Related: Why is UK preparing to recognise Palestinian statehood?
Donald Trump had initially said he didn't 'mind [Starmer] taking a position. I'm looking for getting people fed right now.'
But later he condemned the decision to recognise a Palestinian state, saying onboard Air Force One that 'you could make the case that you're rewarding Hamas if you do that. I don't think they should be rewarded. So I'm not in that camp, to be honest … because if you do that you are really rewarding Hamas. And I'm not about to do that.'
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said this week that he wanted to time a recognition of Palestinian statehood to help deliver a breakthrough in negotiations.
'What we're looking at is the circumstances where recognition will advance the objective of the creation of two states,' Albanese said on Wednesday.
'My entire political life, I've said I support two states, the right of Israel to exist within secure borders and the right of Palestinians to have their legitimate aspirations for their own state realised. That's my objective.'
Canadian state media have also reported that the government under the prime minister, Mark Carney, is also weighing whether to recognise Palestinian statehood but that no decision has yet been made. Carney plans to hold a virtual cabinet meeting on the Middle East on Wednesday, Canada's national public broadcaster reported.
Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Damon, condemned the declaration.
'While our hostages are languishing in Hamas terror tunnels in Gaza, these countries choose to engage in hollow statements instead of investing their efforts in their release,' said Damon. 'This is hypocrisy and a waste of time that legitimizes terrorism and distances any chance of regional progress. Those who truly want to make progress should start with an unequivocal demand for the immediate return of all the hostages and the disarmament of Hamas.'
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First, GHF was very much pitched not as additive, but as a substitution, as an alternative. At the same time, the Israeli government is facilitating and really working kind of hand in glove with GHF. GHF even seems to operate like an extension of the IDF and the Israeli presence; they coordinate very, very closely with the IDF in Gaza. That is also being used then as a rationale by the Israeli government for suppressing the rest of the humanitarian system in Gaza. The GHF just has orders of magnitude less capacity and less reach than the traditional aid architecture had. It's not in any meaningful way, a replacement or substitution. It's run by people who are not humanitarian professionals and don't, frankly, have a background, or qualifications, or knowledge or expertise to really do that effectively. The second complaint would be that the model of the GHF puts Palestinians at enormous risk. 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They need clean water, both for their own drinking, sanitation, hygiene, and of course, to prepare the food. They need really specialized nutritional support, including inpatient malnutrition treatment therapies for people who reach an advanced stage of malnutrition. The pictures that have been coming out of kids in an advanced state of severe, acute malnutrition, those kids can't eat the food that GHF is distributing. Their bodies would not tolerate it at this point. And then finally you need robust health care because we know from famines past, that sometimes a majority, and certainly a large share of the people who die in famines die of disease before starvation takes them. Last week, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said that GHF delivers more than a million meals a day. Does this align with what you're hearing on the ground, and what is in these dried food packs? There's not a lot of transparency about how they're reaching that number, about what's in the food packs, and about how they're calculating what constitutes a meal, even if you take that entirely at face value. I don't know, for example, what's the denominator of what they consider a meal. Is that 800 calories? How much food are they considering constitutes a meal? Of course, normally, a person needs three meals a day, and there's around 2 million people in Gaza. If you look at it that way, a million meals a day, even at face value, is maybe a sixth of the food needs that Gaza has. So, it's not remotely sufficient. It has been widely reported that thousands of aid trucks are waiting outside Gaza. What are the obstacles stopping that aid from reaching Gazans? The principal obstacle is Israeli government policy. 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If humanitarian groups had access and were not being impeded from doing their work, they could scale up a very robust response, really rapidly. But the limiting factor is political obstruction of their ability to do that. If that were removed, what they would then ramp up the distribution of appropriately nutritious food and alongside that, you scale up nutrition support programs. And of course, sanitation and hygiene are really important. If no significant changes are made, what do you see as the trajectory of the humanitarian crisis? It will continue to get worse. Famines have momentum. The more malnourished, the more vulnerable a population gets, the more of them become vulnerable to dying. When you have a huge swath of the population that is in a state of significant malnutrition, and you've got a huge population of people who are succumbing to disease, succumbing to injury, the risk to them grows and grows the longer that they're in that in that situation. 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