'Performative gesture': Voices of Palestinians on statehood

BRUSSELS/LONDON - Palestinians living in Europe said international recognition of a Palestinian state risks being an empty gesture and does not address the crisis in Gaza, where Israel's two-year assault has killed more than 67,000 people and led to famine.

Britain, France, Belgium and Australia were among the Western nations to recognise a Palestinian state last month, with leaders hoping the move would pressure Israel to end its military campaign in Gaza.

A U.S.-backed peace deal has been partially accepted by Israel and Hamas, and officials from both sides were due in Egypt for ceasefire talks this week. But Israeli strikes continued over the weekend, killing dozens of people.

A U.N. Commission of Inquiry concluded in September that Israel had committed genocide in the narrow, 25-mile (40 km) strip of land, an assessment rejected by Israel.

As the Gaza conflict marks two years, Palestinians in the diaspora spoke to Context about statehood recognition.

Tamam Abusalama, 31, was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. In 2013, after high school, she moved to Turkey to study, then to Belgium in 2016 to do a master's degree. She now lives in Brussels.

Since the conflict started in 2023, her father, mother and brother have been evacuated from Gaza to Spain, but many other family members - "the ones who are still alive" - remain.

"We are in constant touch with them, but at this point of the genocide, it just feels useless talking to them. It's sad to say, but my main way of communicating with them is to send money whenever it's needed," she said.

It is heartbreaking that it has to take a live-streamed genocide for world leaders to start taking these steps.

It feels like a nightmare, or it feels like a dark comedy, that they are talking about recognition of Palestine, while there is a genocide still ongoing.

I cannot stand the hypocrisy in the double standards. This is again another performative gesture that just aims to absorb the anger of the masses that have been out on the streets for the past two years, but also to show that (governments) are doing something.

But (they're) not doing anything.

They are talking about self-determination while putting conditions (on it). Who has to govern Gaza? What form of self- determination is this?

Nizar Badran, 75, is a Franco-Palestinian urologist, who left Jerusalem in 1967 and now lives near Paris. He is vice-president of PalMed, a medical association that provides healthcare to Palestinians in the occupied territories and Lebanon. He has also provided training and urgent care to Palestinians in Gaza, where PalMed has been working since 2008.

It's a step forward, towards the recognition of the Palestinian people, with political and social rights, including the right to a state. The most important thing is that the Palestinian people exist on a map.

Is this the right question to answer right now? In no way does it respond to the situation. The question that people are asking in Gaza and elsewhere is how to stop this massacre.

Instead of having the right answer, the (French) government has the wrong answer by using recognition to calm their own populations who are protesting. It's a media solution.

Ghassan Ghaben, from Gaza, lives in Britain and is the co-founder of mutual aid group Reviving Gaza. 

With his immediate family stuck in Egypt since fleeing Gaza last year, Ghaben has been campaigning with Gaza Families Reunited for Palestinians to have a special visa route to join family in Britain.

The (British) government's recognition of Palestine as a state must be followed by concrete action. Recognition alone does not end Israel's genocide in Gaza or the ongoing occupation policies in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

This requires Britain to move beyond symbolic gestures and take decisive steps: to introduce sanctions on Israel, including an immediate arms embargo, and an end to military, trade and intelligence cooperation.

It must support justice mechanisms such as the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court in holding Israel accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And actively push for a permanent ceasefire.

W.M., who did not want to use her full name for privacy, is a Palestinian researcher living in Germany for nearly a decade.

Germany has not recognised a Palestinian state and has rejected claims of genocide in Gaza but says it would support a U.N. resolution for a two-state, solution.

Recognition itself is not going to be a magic wand. Recognition is not going to be the remedy for the humanitarian crisis on the ground, the occupation, the blockade and the daily realities in Gaza and the West Bank.

But we think that it still legally and politically matters, because it has created a degree of diplomatic leverage for Palestinians around the world.

It has brought back to the fore the long-forgotten idea that there should be a solution for the Palestinian issue, without which the whole of the Middle East will continue to suffer.

Without follow-up measures - for example, the recognition of borders, the recognition of an actual Palestinian sovereign nation with access to citizenship, to rights - and without measures like arms controls and sanctions on actors complicit in the abuses taking place, this recognition will be largely symbolic.

These interviews have been edited for clarity and length.

(Reporting by Joanna Gill and Lin Taylor; Editing by Ayla Jean Yackley.)