The other day, I saw a photo of a Palestinian man’s dead body, decomposed to the extent that all that was left was a spine and some ribs. The bones rested against Gaza’s broken earth, testimony to what international law becomes when applied to Palestinian flesh.

The response of the so-called “rules-based order” to this and other crimes Israel is committing against the people of Gaza has not been to cut off arms sales, end diplomatic ties, or support boycotts and sanctions. Instead, many of the world’s most powerful countries have coalesced around something else entirely: recognizing Palestinian statehood.

Even that comes with caveats. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced last week that Canada will recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September, but only if Palestinians agree to “demilitarization.” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised British recognition unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire and “long-term peace.” Emmanuel Macron spoke of France’s historic commitment to justice while French companies quietly deliver millions in military components for Israel’s “defense.”

How gracious of our butchers to offer scraps while sharpening their knives.

These announcements arrive precisely as the bodies pile higher, as the famine reaches a point of no return, as international law becomes a funeral shroud draped over Palestinian corpses. And they speak not to any genuine desire to help Palestine, or end genocide, but rather to a need to solve a political problem.

Western governments face unprecedented domestic opposition to their support for Israeli apartheid. University campuses revolted. Trade unions withdraw pension funds. Citizens demand arms embargoes. The carefully constructed narrative of Israeli victimhood crumbles under the weight of livestreamed genocide. So Canada, France, Britain, and others offer Palestinians the same poisoned chalice they have offered for decades: recognition without sovereignty, statehood without power, liberation without freedom. They offer us their idea of liberation while making sure we are never really free, because a free Palestinian, in their mind, is a dangerous one.

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December 2025 Issue

Think about the demand for Palestinian “demilitarization.” A people under 77 years of occupation must promise to remain defenseless as the price of recognition. The Palestinian Authority must hold elections in 2026 while Israeli forces prevent movement between cities. We must commit to democracy while living under military rule that has displaced 40,000 Palestinians from Jenin and Tulkarem since January alone, and that has, at the very least, murdered 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

Starmer will recognize Palestine only if Israel stops killing Palestinians publicly. If Israel kills us quietly, out of the world’s view, then Palestine gets nothing. This is the “long-term peace” these speak of (“peace,” when discussed by colonizers, is just another word for submission). The British government has made Palestinian statehood contingent on Israeli behavior, as if our right to exist depends on our oppressor’s willingness to be more discreet about our elimination.

The Oslo Accords promised Palestinian statehood through negotiation. Instead, they delivered 30 years of expanding settlements, deepening apartheid, and the systematic erasure of Palestine. Oslo was signed by men who did not represent the Palestinian people and sealed with the blood of Yasser Arafat, assassinated by the very forces that continue to rule Israel. The agreement taught Israel that it did not need to defeat the Palestinian struggle; it only needed to delay it long enough for the world to forget that Palestinians were ever free.

This is the colonial playbook perfected across centuries. The United States promised Native American tribes sovereignty while forcing them onto reservations, stripping their children of language and culture, and violating every treaty signed. South Africa offered Bantustans to Black South Africans, calling fragmented, impoverished territories homelands while maintaining white supremacist control over the economy and military. France promised Algeria autonomy while extracting its resources and maintaining colonial domination. The colonizer’s promise is always a lie wrapped in the language of liberation.

Now they intend to do the same in Palestine: promise statehood while building settlements, promise peace while expanding occupation. In the last seven decades, Israel has built almost 200 illegal settlements, housing over 600,000 settlers; in May 2025, Israel approved an additional 22 new settlements. The negotiations are never about ending Palestinian suffering but about managing it, containing it, making it invisible to the world. This statehood drive follows the same script, only now the stakes are higher and the charade more transparent.

Yet Britain, Canada, France, and others expect Palestinians to accept this hollow recognition—to forgive the unforgivable, to negotiate with those who stand to look like the “good guys” in the halls of history. Too bad, history heard Hind Rajab’s call. They have spent the last two years forcing us to internalize the dehumanization we witness daily, parroting cries of false antisemitism while feeding the delusion that history began on October 7, 2023. Everyone seems to think they can dictate the future of Palestine without Palestinians. But we will be the ones to determine the manner in which we seek liberation and what we do with that freedom.

Palestinian statehood, like aid, cannot be a bargaining chip. Waiting until Israel has annexed almost all of Palestine to offer statehood is the same logic as waiting until the fifth stage of starvation to airdrop aid. Offering statehood now is an attempt by these countries to displace their guilt, their complicity, because they are guilty. These countries want to claim moral authority while having actively participated in Palestinian genocide. All this happens because these countries do not recognize Palestinians as humans deserving of rights in the first place.

However, if these actors think that the law is a salvation, then they must also accept that the legal architecture already exists for Palestinian liberation. The UN has for many years recognized the occupation and apartheid of Palestine, both crimes against humanity. In response, UN Resolution 3236 affirms the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, national independence, and sovereignty —“by any means necessary.” The same international community that invokes the “responsibility to protect” when convenient now watches Palestinian genocide unfold in real time, their doctrine suddenly absent when the perpetrator is their favored client state. These same governments actively violate their legal duties to ensure Israeli compliance with international law.

The highest crime of all, genocide, is expected to be packaged nicely away while they consolidate power for their continued expansion. These states want public forgiveness for not actually solving the Palestinian “problem.” But the dead cannot forgive.

The two-state solution died with the 18,000 dead Palestinian children in Gaza, with every family displaced from Jenin, with every day the world watched genocide and called it “self-defense.” What emerges will not be the neutered statelet these governments envision but the Palestine we create ourselves through resistance, through steadfastness, through the simple act of continuing to exist when existence itself becomes revolution.

I denounce the despicable idea that Palestinian statehood is a substitute for justice, that we should accept land just to dance over buried corpses.

To welcome this sham of a two-state solution would be dishonoring the tens of thousands of martyrs whose deaths were the price paid for the world’s indifference to Palestinian blood. What is needed now is complete recognition of Palestinian rights: the right to decide our future, until freedom can be seen in every direction. What is needed now is for the world to impose sanctions, to intervene—for the billions who witness this genocide to have the spine of a single Palestinian man.