Europe’s stance on Palestine, although currently slightly shifting, remains “below the level required,”  Palestinian Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian Shahin said in a recent interview with Anadolu. “What is needed now are practical decisions, not more statements,” Shahin added while noting that several European countries are speaking more clearly on Israel’s military occupation and settlement expansion.

Undoubtedly, Europe can do much more. However, the Palestinian Authority is in the same collaborationist predicament – statements of condemnation but no action, unless action is directed against the Palestinian resistance. The middle ground created by colonialism, which is where the PA and Europe are stagnated, needs to be significantly altered before practical decisions are taken. 

Since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the PA’s concerns were limited to its own illusions of power. While Palestinians in Gaza faced Israel’s bombing, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank faced the violence of security coordination – the PA’s sacred agreement with Israel. The only illusion of leverage the PA has is its adherence to the two-state paradigm and the fact that it was chosen by Western governments as the epitome of state-building in Palestine. Never mind the socio-economic inequalities in the occupied West Bank or the fact that Gaza is repeatedly destroyed by Israel so that rebuilding becomes merely a reference rather than a reality. The PA was chosen for a purpose, and that purpose, so far, needs to be maintained. 

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More needs to be done, but is the PA willing to alter its course for more to happen? Or will the two-state paradigm still dictate the parameters upon which diplomatic engagement is based?

Can the PA and European countries, including those which have taken a consistent stance against genocide, and those more recently speaking out, come to an overt realisation that the two-state paradigm paved the way for the ongoing colonial genocide? 

Can the PA and European countries, including those which have taken a consistent stance against genocide, and those more recently speaking out, come to an overt realisation that the two-state paradigm paved the way for the ongoing colonial genocide? 

If countries call out Israel’s genocide and fail to address Israeli colonialism, then the effect will be brief, inconsistent, and merely an interruption in Israel’s plans. As we have seen, Israel is capable of waiting – Operation Protective Edge in 2014 was the largest aggressions Gaza experienced until the start of the genocide in 2023. In nine years, European countries and the PA spoke of the two-state compromise but never considered Israel’s waiting game as treacherous, or as the lull before a genocide. 

International consensus does not give protection – it merely validates a convenient point of reference in diplomacy. The two-state paradigm is one such example. When the PA states that more needs to be done, is it considering challenging the compromise that led to Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land? Or does it expect change within the same parameters that could not prevent genocide? Is the PA willing to refrain from unleashing its security services upon the Palestinian resistance, or will it prioritise donor funds and ultimately continue using its borrowed power to prevent Palestinians from exercising their right to anti-colonial resistance?

Will European countries be capable of politically linking their opposition to settlement expansion, the death penalty for Palestinians, the genocide, to the colonial historical trajectory that Palestinians have been resisting for decades? 

Will European countries be capable of politically linking their opposition to settlement expansion, the death penalty for Palestinians, the genocide, to the colonial historical trajectory that Palestinians have been resisting for decades? 

Will the PA be in a position to challenge the UN on one of the first points of betrayal of the Palestinian people – the 1947 Partition Plan? Stronger action requires new parameters – if the PA truly wants clear measures and an end to Israeli impunity, it cannot operate from within the same structures providing Israel with legitimacy. 

BLOG: Cracks in Europe’s support for colonial violence and genocide

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