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France has became the latest country to officially recognise a Palestinian state after announcements over the weekend by the U.K., Canada, Australia and Portugal.
The diplomatic push comes as world leaders head to the United Nations in New York for high-level talks. One noticeable absentee is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who was denied a visa by the U.S. and will now address the U.N. via video link.
Maha Nassar, a scholar of modern Palestinian history, lays out the decadeslong struggle for statehood. She notes that recognition by major Western nations is an important diplomatic moment − more than three-quarters of the world now recognizes a Palestinian state. But that in itself doesn’t make statehood likely so long as the U.S., which opposes statehood at this point, has a veto on the U.N.’s main decision-making body, the Security Council.
“In fact,” writes Nassar, “many Palestinians and other critics of the status quo say Western nations are using the issue of Palestinian statehood to absolve them from the far more challenging diplomatic task of holding Israel accountable for what a U.N. body just described as a genocide in Gaza.”
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George Kyris, University of Birmingham
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