Already under global pressure over the mounting toll from the war in Gaza, Israel slipped further into international isolation on Wednesday after three European countries broke with their main EU partners and decided to recognise a Palestinian state.
The move, described by an Israeli government spokesperson as “obscene”, will have little practical impact either in the ruins of Gaza or the occupied West Bank. Squeezed by Israel, the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority in the West Bank struggles to pay its own civil servants.
But it follows a steady build-up of problems, from Washington’s warnings over withholding arms if the war in Gaza continues and sanctions against violent settlers to accusations of genocide before the International Court of Justice and a possible arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the International Criminal Court.
Netanyahu has long resisted the so-called two-state solution and his resistance has increased since he went into government with a clutch of hard right religious nationalist parties at the end of 2022.
His government remains deeply suspicious of the Palestinian Authority, set up three decades ago under the Oslo interim peace accords, accusing it of hostile actions from paying the families of armed militants killed by Israeli forces to encouraging antisemitism in schoolbooks.
Netanyahu himself described the decision by the three countries as “a reward for terrorism”, and said a Palestinian state would “try to repeat the massacre of Oct. 7 again and again.”