The U.N. Recognition of a Palestinian State - with Dr. Tal Becker

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All these countries are making this decision to recognize a Palestinian state, and therefore, October 7th becomes Palestinian Independence Day.

The basic question is: if you're going to do recognition, why not link recognition to the release of hostages and Hamas relinquishing arms and power?

Why not make Hamas the obstacle to recognition, not the midwife of recognition?

I mean, the biggest evidence of all is that Hamas is celebrating this as its achievement.

It's 10 a.m.

on Sunday, September 21st here in New York City.

It's 5 p.m.

on Sunday, September 21st in Israel as Israelis.

And all of us get ready for the Rosh Hashanah holiday this week.

In Israel, the IDF continues its ground offensive in Gaza City, where the military spokesperson said it would operate with, quote, unprecedented force.

As of Friday, the IDF said it estimated that 480,000 Gazans had already fled the area, which is roughly half of Gaza City's population.

On Friday, the UN Security Council failed to pass a resolution that would have prevented the re-imposition of snapback sanctions on Iran.

This is because the Iranian regime is non-compliant with its obligations under the JCPOA nuclear agreement.

Also, on Friday, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in support of a two-state solution, or to advance the process for a two-state solution, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with 142 states voting in favor, 10 voting against, including the United States, and 12 abstaining.

Today, Sunday, the prime ministers of the UK, Canada, and Australia announced official recognition of a Palestinian state without elaborating as to the so-called state's borders or its leadership.

This move comes as anti-Israel sentiment surges around the globe.

There are too many examples and cases to point to, but one that's getting a lot of attention right now: a growing number of Western artists and celebrities are calling for a cultural boycott of Israel over the Gaza War.

An open letter from, quote, Filmworkers for Palestine, which is a new organization, has amassed thousands of signatories, including some of the most high-profile celebrities in the world, who have pledged to cut ties with Israeli institutions they accuse of being, quote, implicated in genocide.

Meanwhile, in Israel, several leaders of the opposition, including Yair Lapid, Avigdor Lieberman, Gaddi Eisenkot, and Yair Golan, announced Saturday night that they are forming a so-called change block.

of what they describe right-wing, center, and left-wing parties aimed at challenging Prime Minister Netanyahu ahead of next year's elections.

On today's episode, we are joined by Tal Becker to discuss the significance of this week's meeting of the UN General Assembly, where major leaders are set to recognize a Palestinian state and what this means for the Gaza war, for Israel's place in the world, and for the future of Israel itself.

Tal Becker is an Israeli lawyer and international lie expert.

He has served as a legal advisor to the IDF, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the the Israeli mission to the UN.

He was also a member of the legal team that defended Israel in the case brought by South Africa to the International Court of Justice, in which Israel was accused of genocide.

Tal is a veteran member of numerous Israeli peace negotiating teams.

He's currently the vice president of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

Tal, welcome back to the podcast.

Thanks, Dan.

Good to be with you.

Just to set the table here, can you give us an overview of the story?

How and when what we're watching play out in the UN this week come about?

Well, I mean, there's been a long history of states considering recognizing a Palestinian state over decades, really.

A lot of that, I think, was symbolic in nature.

And now over the summer in July, we had essentially what began as a French initiative gather a bit of momentum.

And now what's in play is, I think, about 10 to 12 states who either just minutes before we started recording, we had the UK, Canada, and Australia, and a number of other states who at the coming General Assembly this week will be recognizing Palestine.

Every one of those recognitions is a little different.

It's not exactly sure how it will be worded, what its actual import is from a legal perspective, whether it would be conditioned or not.

But the fundamental move is to essentially recognize a Palestinian state in the context of the UN General Assembly meeting.

Aaron Powell, so you said that this is there have been efforts by different countries to do this in the past.

So is the only difference now that more of them are doing it?

It's like in a synchronized process versus in the past it was a little more scattershot?

Aaron Ross Powell, I think the difference is in the character of states that are doing it.

I mean, we have quite a few G7 countries, two permanent members of the Security Council, France and the UK.

In the past, there were kind of waves of recognition.

For those who remember the history, in 1988, Iassa Arafat essentially made made a unilateral declaration of statehood, which achieved this kind of symbolic recognition, particularly from developing countries.

And so I think the difference is in the context, that this is happening in the context of the Gaza war, in the context of a kind of response to Israeli policy, and also in the quality or the nature of the states that are making the declaration.

So what actually happened last week?

And at a very technical, just like, what does it actually mean what happened last week?

And then where does it take us for this week?

so my understanding is that i mean recognition is a individual act taken by countries to individually recognize an entity as a state but it's happening in the context of a french saudi initiative which does not include the participation of israel and the u.s to advance in their words a two-state solution there was a conference in july to advance that that produced something called the new york declaration and it's accompanied by in u n talk something called the New York Call, which is to be adopted, I think, tomorrow night, Israel time, which is a call for states to recognize or consider recognizing a Palestinian state.

And then you will have these 10 to 12 countries, it seems, who either will have recognized or in the context of the General Assembly will recognize Palestine.

And what's the significance, just from a legal perspective?

It's actually a harder question to answer than you would think.

I'm a recovering lawyer,

so I'll try to put it in short term.

The first thing to say is the whole thing kind of reminds me of an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry wants to return a shirt out of spite, and the store owner says you can't return shirts out of spite.

Now, I don't remember another case where there's recognition, which was framed, at least by some of the countries, as being more an expression of rebuke or opposition to Israeli policy than it was an assessment of whether this entity actually met the criteria of statehood.

Generally speaking, what recognition does is make an assessment as to whether an entity meets the core criteria of statehood and then recognize it as a state so that the relationship, the bilateral relations between the recognizing state and that entity is one of sovereign state relations.

They could sign treaties, they exchange ambassadors and so on.

Here, divorced from the entire conversation has been any question about what has changed to say that Palestine now meets the criteria of statehood, especially effective government.

These are countries that champion international law.

And so you might have thought that there would be some kind of explanation as to what had happened for Palestine to satisfy the conditions.

I'll just give you one very brief example.

These are countries that consider, for example, the West Bank, Judea, and Samaria occupied by Israel.

What that means is that they think that Israel has effective control in that territory.

But for there to be a state, it is the entity claiming statehood that has to have that effective control.

So you have countries who see Israel as an occupying power on the one hand, saying that they recognize a state on the other, when the core condition for statehood, effective control, they say rests with Israel, not with the Palestinian entity.

So there's a lot of questions about the legality of this.

What is the legal status of this act when nothing has fundamentally changed?

And it may be better to understand this act as a kind of political statement, also a domestic political statement, rather than a kind of assessment that the Palestinian entity has now met the criteria for statehood under international law.

So I think what you're saying here is there's a lot of ambiguity.

There's a lot of fog.

There's a lot of confusion about what this actually means.

But that doesn't mean that the UN can't recognize a state.

You're just saying it's never been done this way.

So can you maybe describe how it has been done in the past, where it is the norm?

First, to say that it's not the UN that does the recognition, it's individual states that do recognition, right?

Generally speaking, what happens is that an entity that claims statehood makes an argument that it has met the criteria of statehood, which belongs to the Montevideo Convention, which has these four criteria of statehood, permanent population, defined territory, effective government, and the capacity to engage in foreign relations.

And then a number of states make an assessment as to whether that entity lives up to those criteria.

In Israel's case, I I think it's interesting to note, Israel had really consolidated and built the mechanisms of statehood, and only then recognition came.

And there's usually a situation where you have this, an entity, it could be, for example, East Timor or Kosovo in more recent history, that has largely met those criteria.

But then there's an argument about whether it goes the whole way.

And some countries give it political support by offering it recognition and treating it as a state.

It's very rare, at least to my recollection, that there isn't really a discussion about whether you meet the criteria or not.

So in that sense, it's kind of putting the cart before the horse.

First, we recognize, and then we hope there will be processes in place that will enable a Palestinian state to emerge in the future.

And because of that, the recognition is essentially a symbolic act.

It's almost a little bit of diplomatic theater.

So, Taul, by the time many people listen to this podcast, there will have been this formal vote already in the UN.

And we have talked over the years, over the decades, about the path to Palestinian self-determination, the aspiration for Palestinians to have a Palestinian state.

I think for so many around the world, including this, you know, 140-plus countries, that part of the conversation is over.

Now there's like a thing that the world agrees on exists, which is a Palestinian state.

I feel like these next few days, the conversation is going to enter a whole new world.

Yeah, I mean, we might feel for a little while that we're in a whole new world, but eventually I think reality is going to, you know, smash you in the face to some extent.

There is always this dimension of what happens in the UN that it's kind of its own bubble.

It's a kind of own little virtual world, and it doesn't actually affect the lives of the people on the ground, right?

So there is this diplomatic speak, there's a Palestinian state.

But I mean, realistically speaking, do Palestinians feel like they live in a state?

I think that's highly questionable.

That doesn't mean it's irrelevant, because I think the symbolism is important.

The question really here is, what narrative are you empowering?

What narrative are you disempowering?

Okay.

Lost in this discussion is

the fact that all these countries are making this decision to recognize a Palestinian state, which no matter how you slice it and dice it, history will record as

a

that happened in the same time frame and was actually catalyzed by October 7th.

Therefore, October 7th becomes Palestinian Independence Day, or at least is a key date in this process.

So that's one fact.

And the other fact, which is, I could argue, even more horrifying, is all this is happening while Hamas is holding Israeli hostages.

What do you think explains that?

That all these governments around the world know these facts that I just described and they're still plowing ahead.

Yeah, so I mean, the first question that really hovers over this recognition decision: if it is genuinely meant to advance the goals that these states say they want to advance, they want the hostages released, they want Hamas to relinquish power and relinquish arms, they want to advance a two-state outcome.

And the New York Declaration that was adopted last week has a set of wonderful words and assertions in that regard: that there should be a post-Hamas future in Gaza, there should be disarmament, and so on.

The basic question is, if that's your objective, why not link recognition to the release of hostages and Hamas relinquishing arms and power?

Why not make Hamas the obstacle to recognition, not the midwife of recognition?

Which is essentially what happens despite the nice words, if you do not link recognition to actual things that happen in reality on the ground and to make Hamas be the one that is preventing that from happening.

The biggest evidence of all is that Hamas is celebrating this as its achievement now when this question is put to some of the recognizing states they will say things like we are of course opposed to hamas they will even say chamas is opposed to a palestinian state right and i i just would say two things about that kind of line of argument the first is that hamas is celebrating this so i'll kind of take their celebration over western assessments as to why it's bad for them right the second thing is that you know i heard it said many times chamas is opposed to a palestinian state Hamas is not opposed to a Palestinian state.

Hamas is opposed to a Palestinian state that is linked to peace with Israel, that is linked to the end of the conflict, that isn't just a platform for furthering the conflict.

And that's precisely what this recognition fails to do.

It delinks recognition from the process of reconciliation.

And as a result of that, it's doing exactly what Hamas wants it to do, which is all of the recognition and none of the responsibility.

I think the UK case is particularly egregious here because in the way the UK formulated it, it's a little fuzzy, but they essentially said that they would recognize unless Israel agreed to a ceasefire and to a couple of other things.

So if you're Hamas, you're going to say to yourself, I better object to a ceasefire.

I better keep on holding hostages so that I can get recognition attributed to my actions.

Right?

I don't think this was the intention, but the effect of it is to make yourself complicit in incentivizing Hamas to continue to hold hostages and refuse a ceasefire.

And I just want to add to this, the hostage families, there's a letter that they sent to Kier Starmer the last couple of days where they warned recognition of a Palestinian state, and I quote here, has dramatically complicated efforts to free the hostages.

They go on to plead to Prime Minister Starmer, do not take this step until our loved ones are home and in our arms.

Yeah, that's very difficult.

And, you know, Dan, I think the statement that they want Hamas to release hostages they want hamas to relinquish power these are important statements but then you have to ask what is the mechanism that pressures hamas to do that is recognition of palestine without conditioning it on release of hostages going to do that Is condemnation of Israel but not of Hamas and putting real pressure on Hamas going to do that?

So it really seems, if this is about advancing those stated goals, it really seems counterproductive.

And you create a dynamic where Israel becomes becomes basically the only actor trying to pressure Hamas.

And Western states who claim that they are opposed to Hamas essentially are acting to relieve the pressure that Israel is trying to create by offering it essentially rewards for not reaching a ceasefire, not releasing hostages, and so on.

This is not the first time you and I have spoken where your great frustration is not the concern of the international community on a particular issue, but rather the concern of the international community being so misaligned in terms of trying to seriously address that concern being so misaligned with what they actually do.

Can you address that?

I think recognition really is just a symptom of a fairly common phenomenon where there is this gap between the stated interests and the policies you adopt in the name of that interest.

I think one of the clear examples is a shared interest that I think every moral person should have to minimize civilian suffering in this war.

Right.

Now, it's obvious that Hamas's strategy and Hamas's evil does not absolve Israel of its obligations to do its best to prevent civilian suffering.

But that strategy certainly deserves attention, right?

It certainly creates the context, the conditions.

It's one of the prime causes of that suffering.

I mean, for God's sake, Gaza is 360 square kilometers.

The tunnel network is over 500 kilometers, right?

So you have a tunnel network that is greater than the entire square kilometers of Gaza.

And that, of course, is just one element of this unprecedented strategy of using civilian infrastructure and civilians as human shields.

That word unprecedented is used a lot.

I think, you know, I just heard the Secretary General say that this was the most unprecedented suffering in war that he has seen since Secretary General.

I don't know how he got to that.

While he's been Secretary General, you mean?

While he was Secretary General, we're in the middle of a war in Sudan with, I think, 400,000 killed.

We had the civil war in Syria on his watch.

So I don't know where he gets that.

But one of the ways that this war is unprecedented is in the absolute extensiveness of that strategy of using civilians as human shields.

It seems to me that there has been a preoccupation, if not an obsession, with Israelis' response to the dilemma that Hamas created, but not really a lot of attention to the creation of the dilemma in the first place.

It's right to ask, how does Israel deal with a hospital that has been used by terrorists?

But it's also really important for the moral frame and moral context of the conversation to say, how did the terrorists use the hospital in the first place?

And I have this fantasy in my mind.

Imagine if what happened in response to this was not just to look at Israel's response to the terrorism and the terrorism itself.

Imagine if Western states really loudly and clearly called out this civilian shield strategy.

Imagine if they put pressure on Turkey and Qatar, for example, to call on Hamas to allow civilians to evacuate areas where there were hostilities or call on the ICC prosecutor to make this strategy a priority for what he was looking for, because there wouldn't be the problem of Israel's response if this wasn't the strategy in the first place.

And the failure to do so has really emboldened that strategy for Hamas and for every terrorist around the world.

So that's, and then the second area I think this plays out on is on humanitarian aid.

And again, Israel has real obligations on humanitarian aid.

But I haven't seen any kind of real focus on Hamas's responsibility for the humanitarian situation.

We've had stories in the last couple of days about Hamas stealing a huge amount of baby formula from UNICEF trucks.

Yesterday there was a story about Hamas firing on UN workers who were trying to create an additional humanitarian aid route.

Maybe it's just me, but I missed the outrage.

And by the way, this is a widespread phenomenon in conflict.

It's not just in Israel.

There's a great research report done by Nita Barak Cohen and Jonathan Boxman about the way any territory controlled by a terrorist organization,

that terrorist organization is going to use humanitarian aid to stay in power.

You look at Somalia, Ethiopia, Syria, Yemen, lots of conflict areas.

That's been the dynamic.

In other words, there's a real problem from hell that humanitarian agencies, even when they're trying to do good and provide aid to the civilian population, they are actually accomplices in fueling the conflict they're trying to stop because the terrorist organizations benefit from it.

So when you take a step back then and you ask if a fraction of the creative energy and focus and diplomatic effort that has been invested in criticizing Israel was invested in how to pressure Hamas, how to change Hamas's calculus, I wonder whether the war would still be ongoing.

If your actual concerns are, how do we empower those Israelis and those Palestinians who want a better future, then these games of just kind of focusing on the response to the terrorism, but not the terrorism itself, focusing on the civilian harm that Israel is responsible to prevent, but not on the harm that Hamas has generated, focusing on getting humanitarian aid to the civilian population, but not on Hamas's role for preventing that from happening.

In the end, you're just doing performative stuff.

You're not actually helping.

And that's diplomacy of looking good.

It's not the diplomacy of doing good.

Do you think that there's anything Israel could have done to have headed off this, what we're watching, play out right now this week?

So I think it's too hard to assess.

I think Israel has to ask itself some hard questions about the way it has navigated its relations with these countries.

I do think that the humanitarian situation has had an impact here, and we have to ask ourselves what else we could have done throughout that process.

And I also think that there's a very interesting kind of relationship between

those advancing in Israel a kind of annexationist agenda and these recognizing states.

I would say the only constituent in Israel amongst Israeli Jews who are happy about not opposed to recognition are those who are looking for an argument why we have to respond to recognition by unilateral measures.

So there's this kind of funny relationship between, on the one hand, those who are advancing unilateral recognition, in other words, recognition not linked to particular steps, and those who want to advance unilateral measures in the West Bank on the Israeli side.

They claim that they're opposed to each other, but in a strange way, they kind of empower and legitimize each other.

Tal, some states have framed their support for the recognition of a Palestinian state as a response to statements and commitments that Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has made, that somehow he's kind of gotten more serious about the responsibilities of governing in a future state.

How do you respond to that?

Right.

So I think if one problem is the way this rewards Hamas, I think the second challenge of this action is the way that it kind of creates the wrong incentive structure for the PA.

Abbas wrote a letter, I think, on July 9th, which said some important things that he hasn't said in the past, condemned October 7th for the first time, for example, committed to a demilitarized Palestinian state, committed to reforming school books, and especially, I think, for some countries, committed to elections within a year.

And then you had countries like Australia and Canada say predicated on those commitments, they will recognize a Palestinian state.

Now, what seems strange about that is that they're front-loading the act of recognition in return just for promises, some of which have been made several times and broken several times, right?

Why not say we will recognize after the Palestinian Authority takes these measures, commits to reconciliation with Israel and all these kind of steps, rather than beforehand?

You could have imagined recognition being framed as as a kind of clear rejection of from the river to the sea, right?

We're acknowledging that we would like to see a Palestinian state emerge alongside Israel, and we're putting in conditions and incentives and disincentives in order to make sure that it's done in a way that rejects the annihilationist vision of Hamas.

It can also be from the perspective of this state's kind of opposition to the annexationist agenda on some of the Israeli right.

And we're tying it so that you don't get recognition until you reject from the river to the sea but by rewarding Hamas on the one hand because it's not linked to Hamas's anction and then front-loading recognition on the other hand so that first you do the recognition and only then you hope that the Palestinian authority will take these steps you don't do anything to really remove from the river to the sea to be that agenda and in that sense I think you're kind of squandering leverage which even if it's symbolic it's still important to the Palestinians you're doing so at the expense of the very thing you claim to be advancing, which is a two-state outcome.

Tao, from Jerusalem's perspective, I'm asking you, as someone sitting in Jerusalem, as a former diplomatic advisor, diplomatic strategist, what do you think is the best course now for Israel?

I think fundamentally, the important thing to understand is if your goal is to advance a Palestinian state alongside Israel, And if that goal is meant to be more than diplomatic theater, there is one constituency that matters.

There's one constituency that you have to persuade, and that's the Israeli public.

A majority of the Israeli public supported a Palestinian state quite a while ago now.

And in rounds of negotiation, Israel offered a Palestinian state.

I was there.

Israel was willing to go there.

And I think such onslaught of terrorism, even before October 7th, but afterwards, the feeling that wherever we withdraw from, that vacuum is filled by those who want to kill us rather than those who want to coexist with us.

The feeling that we're alone in that, in other words, that the world will be much more focused on our response to terrorism, that the terrorism itself, and of course October 7th, has now created an Israeli public that sees a Palestinian state as creating the conditions for October 7th to happen again.

And if your act of recognition is about advancing a Palestinian state, then at least part of it has to be about addressing those fears.

The way recognition is playing out now essentially tells Israelis that the reason why October 7th happened is not because Iran and its proxies have an annihilationist agenda.

It's because of the absence of a Palestinian state.

In other words, that Israel is to blame.

And in that environment, what you're essentially doing is making Israelis feel like they are alone in preventing a terror state or a failed state emerging on their border.

And since we're on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Dan, let me put it in Jewish terms if I can.

You know, in Rosh Hashanah, we blow a shofar, the ram's horn, which reminds us of the binding of Isaac.

And there's a beautiful midrash, which means a rabbinic story, about an event that happened on the binding of Isaac.

And the rabbis ask, why did Isaac, Abraham's son, lose his ability to see?

If you look in Genesis, as Isaac became older, he was incapable of seeing his own sons.

And the midrash, the rabbinic teaching, tells a story that when Abraham was at the binding of Isaac, he was getting ready to slaughter his own son.

And the angels saw Abraham wanting essentially to slaughter his son and they began to cry.

And their tears fell into Isaac's eyes.

And the tears of the angels made Isaac's eyes become dim until he couldn't see.

It's a beautiful little story, but what it essentially says is that Abraham's inability to see his own son, Isaac, at that moment at the binding of Isaac, produced a son who was incapable of seeing.

And we are often in this dynamic of not seeing one another.

And so you get into the politics of retaliation, where instead of asking what can actually empower Jews and Palestinians who are not playing a zero-sum game, who recognize each other's validity, to move towards a better future, where there is more Palestinian self-determination that isn't a threat to Israel, where Jews can live not under threat and respect Palestinian rights as well.

That whole dynamic requires seeing.

Recognition in the way that it's being done, not linked to anything, is an act of not seeing.

It's an act of not seeing Israeli fears.

It's an act of not seeing the connection between what you're doing and the impact it's going to have on the society.

And I think in Israel, we also have an obligation to not engage just in the politics of retaliation without tying it to measures that are are about understanding the consequences.

How will it be seen?

And I think basically we need to break this dynamic of this kind of measures that are almost like a game that people play.

And here I think, yes, Western states have a real obligation.

If they want to advance a two-state outcome, They can't do it without addressing Israeli fears.

And it's not too late.

I hope some states will make it much more conditional.

But we really need to empower, I think, those forces in both societies who are asking, since we're stuck with each other, how do we get to a better future?

Now, that future requires making sure that Hamas doesn't dictate our reality.

How do you think Israel will respond?

So I think it's not yet clear.

There are those who are essentially saying if the West is going to try to impose an outcome, we need to make sure that we protect ourselves and impose an outcome in the other direction.

The UAE has spoken very forcefully and other countries have said, you know, be very careful not to engage in some kind of annexationist move that could endanger regional integration.

Prime Minister Netanyahu Netanyahu has a meeting with President Trump, I think, on the 29th, which I think these issues will come up.

I think I would recommend not to make decisions based on a kind of emotional need to respond, more than a deeper question as to how is it we make sure a reality where the enemies of peace and those playing a zero-sum game are not going to dictate our future and condemn us to conflict forever.

Because you do want to deter this kind of unilateral recognition.

But you also need to be careful to keep your, you know, never lose eye contact with your strategic interests over time, which includes, in my view, normalization with the Arab world.

Definitely, in my view, that is an integral part of victory over Hamas and over Iran and its proxies.

And also, yes, imagining a reality where Israelis and Palestinians are living in a better way than the tragedy we're going through at the moment.

Tal, thank you for doing this.

I wish you a Shanatova.

Thank you, Shanatova.

I look forward to seeing you and hopefully being with you on the other side of the Hageim.

As they say, Dan, in Hebrew we say,

which means may one year and its curses end, may a new year and its blessings begin.

I can't think of a time where that was more relevant.

Absolutely.

Beautiful.

Thank you.

That's our show for today.

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