Yet what they are endorsing is not a solution, but a fantasy: one that could deepen regional instability and embolden the most destructive actors.
The assumption that Palestinian statehood will lead to peace rests on an idea imported from the Oslo Accords: that sovereignty will moderate extremism and allow a unified, constructive national project to emerge. This vision is now three decades old, and every observable outcome contradicts it.
In Gaza, the Palestinian Authority was violently expelled by Hamas after brief coexistence. Elections produced a terror regime, not a liberalizing one. In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority rules through repression and factional patronage, not consensus or reform. There is no convergence between these two regimes, only mutual suspicion, periodic arrests of each other's supporters, and competing claims to legitimacy.
Even if a Palestinian state were declared tomorrow, what kind of state would it be? The uncomfortable truth is that there is no shared vision. What exists instead are four competing "Palestines," projected selectively depending on the audience:
A Western-style progressive democracy, described to Western states, liberal donors and NGOs.
An Islamic theocracy, promoted to religious networks and Islamist allies.
A Marxist anti-imperialist front, pitched to Western student radicals and socialist groups.
An Arab nationalist republic run by a strongman, appealing to traditionalist regimes in the region.
These visions are mutually exclusive, yet the Palestinian movement has never been forced to reconcile them. Why? Because they are held together not by a common aspiration to build, but by a common commitment to destroy. The only consistent message across all factions and rhetorical strategies is rejection of Israel’s legitimacy and existence. That is the glue holding the fractured movement together.
Yasir Arafat was a master at using language to pretend that a Palestinian state would be all things to all people. he employed Marxist language for his Soviet sponsors, Islamist language to the extremists, democracy claims to the West and the pretense that is already was an Arab League state to other Arab leaders. At the same time his focus was on terrorism against Israel - something all the factions could agree on.
This is not nationalism as a project of construction. It is nationalism as a vehicle for permanent grievance. A state born of that logic will not stabilize the region. It will fracture violently, much like Libya after the fall of Gaddafi. There, tribal, religious, and ideological factions briefly united to topple a dictator, but with no agreed system of governance, they plunged into civil war. Iraq and Yemen offer similar lessons: opposition alone does not make a nation. When the enemy is gone and no shared vision remains, chaos follows.
This already happened in the Palestinian controlled areas with limited autonomy. Polls consistently show Hamas jihadists are more popular than Mahmoud Abbas' dictatorship. The socialists who are protesting have next to no support from Palestinian Arabs themselves. The dream of a real democracy that the Western nations pretend would emerge is pure fantasy.
The existing Palestinian Authority is now 30 years old. It has yet to build real workable institutions - its judicial system is a joke, its legislature is a giant rubber stamp, everyone recognizes it as corrupt and it is still a subsidiary of the PLO making even the elections they did have into performance art. IOne person rules every branch of government. ts most successful component is to lobby the international community to exclude Israel for cultural and sporting events. And the EU keeps sending money and experts to build a government that clearly does not want to govern.
Even the most dovish Palestinian faction says that their major goal is not to bring in the millions of Palestinians in Syria, Jordan and other Arab countries. It is to force Israel to accept them. That is not nationalism - it is the desire to destroy Israel. What other group in history has demanded that their own people resettle in a state that they claim has genocidal intent against them?
Recognition of a Palestinian state under current conditions does not incentivize peace. It rewards intransigence, excuses factionalism, and elevates rhetoric over responsibility. If it comes to fruition is a recipe for another Libya or Yemen. Worse, it signals to extremist groups that the path to legitimacy is not through compromise or reform, but through maximalist rejectionism and strategic victimhood.
This is not diplomacy. It is retreat from realism. Europe should not compound the failures of Oslo by endorsing a statehood bid that lacks unity, governance, and any willingness to coexist. The path to peace does not begin with symbolic gestures. It begins with clarity, accountability, and the courage to reject fantasy when it endangers the future.
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