Undoubtedly, the recognition of nearly 160 countries, out of a total of 193 United Nations General Assembly members, of the Palestinian state is a major political achievement. This achievement is a consolidation and recognition of the two-state solution principle as one of the fundamental principles advocated by Egypt as part of the foundations for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the face of Israel’s stubborn stance against this important principle or outright rejection of the Palestinian people’s right to establish their independent state.

Although the recognitions were not accompanied by a specific definition of the borders of the Palestinian state or addressing many other issues, this does not diminish the importance of affirming the two-state solution principle first, and secondly confirming the Palestinian people’s right to establish their independent state. On another level, these recognitions also represented a very important step towards undermining the moral basis of the Israeli occupation and Israel’s policies against Palestinians and Palestinian territories, as well as its persistent efforts to undermine the material basis of the Palestinian state project. The international recognitions sent a clear and explicit message not only against Israel but also against its allies, essentially stating that if the largest bloc within the international community has not yet succeeded in stopping the ongoing aggression on Gaza—due to Israeli stubbornness and American support—it still holds other cards to confront this obstinacy.

The importance of these wide recognitions of the Palestinian state increases when considering the accession of a significant number of European countries (notably the United Kingdom, Portugal, France, Belgium, Spain, Norway, Ireland, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Sweden, Malta), indicating important shifts within the European house and the readiness of significant European forces to adopt positions different from the American stance regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and support for Israel; this support is no longer an inevitability of European-American relations, or at least not as it was before. This European stance gains further importance under the Trump administration, which adopted strongly pro-Israel policies starting in the previous period (January 2017 – January 2020) and continued during the current period.

Thirdly, this wave of wide recognitions points to another equally important conclusion: that through organized and systematic political and diplomatic work, important goals and successes can be achieved in managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, constituting a breakthrough in this path. It is true that the recent wave of international recognitions came against the backdrop of the brutal Israeli aggression on Gaza and the huge humanitarian and material costs associated with it, which created broad international sympathy for the Palestinian people in their current ordeal, and as a kind of compensation for the international community’s failure to stop the aggression and put an end to this ordeal; but all these costs could have passed without any political gains, or even without an effective confrontation of the Israeli narrative about what happened on October 7, 2023.

There is no doubt that massive political and diplomatic work was carried out over the past two years that led us to the start of this important wave of international recognitions of the Palestinian state. This work was led and heavily borne by Egypt, in bilateral, collective, and multilateral contexts.

However, despite the importance of this wave of international recognitions of the Palestinian state, it remains insufficient, considering the severity of Israeli policies and the political and military support the occupying state receives from the United States, which points to the importance of building on this step through intensive and systematic political and diplomatic work on several tracks. The first track concerns building the Palestinian state itself, meaning that the Palestinian brothers present a model of a civil state that can be defended and forms a basis for deepening the international community’s conviction of the Palestinians’ right and worthiness to have their state, especially the bloc that has actually recognized the Palestinian state.

In this context, there is a list of important entitlements that the Palestinian brothers must address; foremost among them ending the division, rebuilding national political institutions, consolidating a model of democracy and power rotation, developing a unified and modern political discourse towards the international community, and other entitlements. The Palestinian Authority has begun an internal reform process but needs more measures as part of sustaining and attracting more international support for the Palestinian state project.

The second track relates to working on increasing the volume of international dealings with the “Palestinian state.” Recognition itself is an important step, but maximizing its positive effects requires turning it into a political, economic, and cultural reality, which will primarily depend on the volume of political, economic, and cultural dealings that these recognitions will establish, or rather the dealings that the Palestinian Authority should seek based on these recognitions. Certainly, the Palestinian Authority will face severe Israeli complications in intensifying these dealings with the outside world, but again, organized and systematic diplomatic and political efforts will help erode and gradually break through these complications.

The third track concerns the necessity to invest in ongoing social transformations within Western societies, especially among the new generations, who have become more open to supporting the Palestinians and the Palestinian cause not on a religious basis but on the basis of the right of an occupied people to self-determination and the rejection of killing and genocide on religious or ethnic grounds. These new generations have expressed these positions in various forms and degrees over the past two years, which played an undeniable role in changing the positions of many European governments. These generations represent a great opportunity to support the Palestinian cause by changing the traditional orientations of elites and European ruling institutions, and perhaps American ones at a later stage, as confirmed by opinion polls conducted in recent years.

This wave of wide recognitions points to another equally important conclusion: that through organized and systematic political and diplomatic work, important goals and successes can be achieved in managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, constituting a breakthrough in this path.