As the U.N. General Assembly meets, leaders from across the globe are lining up to announce recognition of a Palestinian state.
French President Emmanuel Macron has led the charge, urging the Saudis and others to enshrine the two-state solution as the only path to peace. Governments from Canada to Australia to the United Kingdom have already followed suit, formally recognizing Palestine.
It may feel historic to those in the room. Palestinian activists will post triumphant slogans. Supporters will believe their governments have brought Palestine closer to freedom. But in Israel, and even in the newly “recognized” Palestine, we know better.
We see this ritual for what it is: a performance staged for Western audiences, where declarations carry no cost and no risk. A fantasy in which peace is conjured with a press release, while the war outside rages on.
As the cheering fades abroad, the reality here remains unaltered: Israelis still praying for hostages in Gaza, still bracing as the second anniversary of Oct. 7 approaches. Palestinians will remain trapped between Hamas’s iron grip in Gaza and a corrupt authority in the West Bank. No borders drawn. No government built. No weapons surrendered.
Because these recognitions are not about Palestine at all.
They are about Western leaders recognizing themselves, their virtue, their relevance and their ability to declare an outcome without doing the hard work of securing it. And, lest we forget, a way to appease growing Islamist blocs whose votes mean power can be kept a little longer.
But theater has consequences.
For Hamas, it is confirmation that violence pays. Why compromise when patience alone brings international rewards? The moment that recognition was dangled, negotiations lost their meaning.
For the Palestinian Authority, it is yet another escape hatch from responsibility. Why build transparent institutions or prepare the public for coexistence when foreign parliaments will declare a state on their behalf? Recognition without reform is not liberation; it is a license to remain stuck.
For Israel, it is a message that allies will overlook its security in favor of easy headlines. A betrayal dressed as statesmanship, leaving the Jewish state more isolated at the very moment it faces existential threats.
Each declaration claims to advance peace. In practice, each one makes it harder.
Never has lasting peace been forged by outside impositions with zero dialogue between the people in conflict. Real peace—from South Africa’s transition out of apartheid, to the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, to Rwanda’s post-genocide reconciliation—was not declared by outsiders. It was negotiated, painfully and directly, by the parties themselves.
Outside powers can help. They can mediate, pressure and support. But they cannot substitute the hard work of adversaries choosing peace. When outsiders try to impose solutions without dialogue, they fail, from Vietnam to Bosnia, from Afghanistan to Syria. Declarations without buy-in are not solutions; they are distractions, often dangerous ones.
Those who promote unilateral recognition as a way of advancing the “two-state solution” ignore this lesson. Israel has, in fact, offered two states before: in 1947, in 2000 at Camp David, and in 2008 under Ehud Olmert. Each time, the offer was rejected. Not because of imperfect maps, but because acceptance would mean recognizing a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian one. That refusal, not Israel’s unwillingness to compromise, is what has kept two states from becoming a reality.
No conference, no announcement, no recognition will change that.
Every time the world indulges in fantasy, it pushes real peace further away. Israelis don’t feel safer. Palestinians don’t feel closer to freedom. The only ones celebrating are politicians, who mistake gestures for progress, and extremists, who know the performance props them up.
The truth is harsh but simple: Peace will not be imposed from abroad. It will not arrive through symbolic recognitions or foreign applause. It will only come when Israelis and Palestinians themselves decide to build it.
Until then, the ovations of the once great halls of the United Nations are just noise, loud abroad, but here, drowned out by the silence of another obstacle to peace.
