Palestinian statehood has never had so much international support — or seemed less attainable.

As world leaders gather in New York on Monday for the UN General Assembly, the question of Palestinian statehood is at the top of the agenda. On Sunday, the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia confirmed that they now recognize Palestine as an independent state, following France, which announced its intention to do so last July and formalized it with a speech by President Emmanuel Macron on Monday. Belgium, Portugal, Luxembourg, and Malta, among others, have announced plans to recognize Palestine as well.

On Monday, representatives of most of the world’s countries — but not the United States or Israel — gathered on the sidelines of the assembly for a meeting, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, to discuss implementing a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also missed the meeting after being denied a visa to travel to New York by the United States, but addressed the assembly by video. Monday’s meeting followed the passage, on September 12, of a UN General Assembly resolution now being referred to as the “New York declaration,” outlining “tangible, timebound, and irreversible steps” toward a two-state solution. The resolution was backed by 142 of the assembly’s 193 members. “Denying statehood would be a gift to extremists everywhere,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said at Monday’s meeting. “Without two states, there will be no peace in the Middle East, and radicalism will spread around.”

In Washington, a new resolution cosponsored by eight senators calls on President Donald Trump to recognize Palestinian statehood. Calling for a two-state solution is hardly a radical position in US politics, but calling for unilateral recognition of Palestine — rather than supporting a process by which a Palestinian state would emerge out of negotiations — is a more dramatic step, and it’s unlikely the resolution would have gotten even this level of support before the war in Gaza. Still, even though none of those senators are Republicans, and the resolution is unlikely to pass, the level of support for a measure that calls for unilateral recognition is an indication of how politics on this issue have shifted in the United States.

Not that any of this is swaying the Israeli government. “There will be no Palestinian state. This place is ours,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared earlier this month at a ceremony announcing Israel’s expansion of the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim. In fact, his government is weighing formally annexing parts of the West Bank in retaliation for the wave of recognition by Western governments. This in turn prompted a warning from the United........

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