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The Twisted Logic behind Recognition of Palestinian Statehood
(Mosaic) Robert Satloff - France, Britain, and Canada have announced their intention to extend full diplomatic recognition to the "state of Palestine" at the UN General Assembly next month. Recognition of Palestinian statehood may address some domestic political needs in Europe and Canada but it will do nothing to assuage the concerns of the constituency that matters most - Israel's voting public - which fears the dangers to its safety that might accompany Palestinian statehood, rejects the idea by a large majority, and has elected successive governments that reflect that view. It is difficult to see the mechanism by which even near-global recognition of Palestinian statehood translates that concept into fact. The unalterable reality that has governed diplomacy since 1967 is that Israel needs to be convinced that its security will be enhanced, not threatened, by territorial withdrawal and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. This requires winning over Israel's increasingly skeptical public, a fact that countries who choose the easy symbolism of recognizing a Palestinian state seem to ignore. The deeper reality is that the second intifada and two decades of diplomatic stalemate followed by the trauma of Oct. 7 have turned the vast Israeli center against the two-state solution. The writer is executive director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.