Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 9 mins.)

A wave of “recognitions of the State of Israel” have occurred around much of the world. Though at first glance these appear politically progressive, in fact they are all tied to supporting the colonial alleged “Two States Solution.”

This is quite apart from the fact that not one practical step is being taken by any of those states in order to prevent the ongoing genocide and massive displacement of Palestinians which many of the states are actually aiding.

Soon all but 30 member states of the UN will have recognised the Palestinian state (yet to exist) and they include western imperialist states such as Australia, Canada, France, Spain, the UK, supported by political parties both in government and opposition,¹ all proposing a ‘two-state solution’ (sic).

This proposal involves accepting the ‘right’ of a European colonial settler regime to invade and occupy a land,² subjugate most of the indigenous people, racially discriminate against them, set up an ethno-state, then carry out ethnic cleansing, genocide and further expansion.

This while simultaneously proposing 20% of the land with least water as a reservation for the indigenous people, under the guns and surveillance of the genocidal Occupier, with its borders, water and electricity supply all under the Occupiers’ control.

Many liberals and social-democrats will support the imperialist ‘solution’ being foisted upon the Palestinian people of the occupation of Gaza by a client regime and the creation of a formal Bantustan³ colony – the “Palestinian State” (sic).

This ‘solution’ was insisted upon at the three-day UN Conference in July, mandated by the UN General Assembly through resolutions ES-10/24 and 79/81 and sponsored by France and Saudi Arabiab, backed by the General Assembly President, Philémon Yang.

Also by Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, stating that the “… only just and sustainable path forward is the establishment of two independent, democratic States – Israel and Palestine – living side by side in peace and security, with Jerusalem as the capital⁴…” ⁵

Firstly, we’d have to say that there is nothing “just” about that path and secondly ask why is that the ‘”only sustainable solution?” Why cannot a democratic state of the entirety of Palestine, as pre-1948, be sustainable? Is it because the Zionists and their imperialist won’t let it be?

Then we’d be entitled to ask whether Guterres and Yang speak for the world or instead for the imperialist states and their clients and allies. In fact, since there can be no peace without justice, a democratic state of Palestine on pre-1948 territory is the only just and sustainable solution.

This scrambling to recognise the ‘Palestinian State’ within a “two-state” framework was also reflected in the recent United Nations vote for a ceasefire, which was tied to the acceptance of the two-state solution, emphasising that it has nothing to do with justice but is all about management.

The imperialist states and their allies, with the particular exception of the US and Israel, are very worried that the legacy of the current genocide will threaten their interests in Western Asia in the near future, including the regimes they depend upon to control the Arab people.

To some extent the western states are also concerned at the exposure of their regimes to their own populations in terms of collusion with genocide, financial implications , suppression of information and, in many cases, repression of democratic rights to protest.

The western states want to save West Asia for imperialism and they think that the USA and current behaviour of Israel are endangering it.

The two-state plan is not at this point supported by the Zionist state and the chief imperialist, the USA, though the plan seeks to impose what they also want: stability within the imperialist system.

Recently another international conference was held to discuss the way to resolve the situation of Western Asia and crisis in Palestine, this conference organised by Qatar following Israel’s bombing of their capital Doha in an assassination attempt against the Hezbollah negotiating team.⁶

The Iranian representative pointed out at the conclusion that although they supported some of the resolution adopted they could not agree to recognition of a Palestinian state within or adjacent to Israel, since that meant de facto recognition of the right of the genocidal Zionist state to exist.⁷

Recognition of the Palestinian State as is being done now is also recognition and acceptance of the totally unrepresentative and undemocratic Palestinian Authority and in fact, Palestinian Embassies (such as the one in Dublin) and Consulates are run through the Authority.

Although Palestine has been officially occupied by a Zionist colonial settler regime since 1948, it has had an imperialist and Zionist client Palestinian regime since the conclusion of the Oslo process (overseen for US imperialism by Bill Clinton): the Palestine Authority.

What would one expect from such a client regime? Collusion, spying, pacification? Certainly, the PA came to represent all those things. But in addition: bullying and brutal suppression, along with widespread corruption. It was managed by the Fatah leadership through the PLO.⁸

Whatever we may think of the Fatah leadership, they were by far the majority choice of the Palestinian people in the legislative elections of 1996. But by the time of the next elections in 2006, most of Palestine society had become sick of Fatah and elected Hamas instead.

A 2007 decree by President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas disqualified from election any party that did not recognise the leading role of the Fatah-dominated PLO, thereby disqualifying Hamas which denounced the decree as undemocratic and illegal.

There is a long history of imperialism choosing tame representation for occupied peoples, including British colonialism doing the same thing in Palestine.⁹

Fatah, unprepared to accept the loss of their power and corruption opportunities, refused to leave their governing positions until they were helped to leave by Hamas in a short, sharp struggle in 2007.¹⁰ Whereupon the Zionists blockaded Gaza and imperialists paid their grants instead to the PA.

However Hamas did not force the issue of their election in the West Bank, which continued under the rule, not to say dictatorship of the Palestinian Authority.

The corruption of and repression by the PA is not an opinion of the Palestinian resistance organisations alone but is widely acknowledged by all kinds of western observers, including enemies of the Resistance,¹¹ which is one reason the imperialist are calling for its ‘revamping’.

Meanwhile Abbas, ‘President’ of the PA since its inception in 2003 (and ensuring no elections since) is already laying out how democratic the rule of the PA in Gaza would be. Unlike two decades ensuring no elections in the West Bank, Abbas has been enthusiastically preparing for them in Gaza.

He seems to feel quite confident in the outcome of elections which is perhaps not surprising since he has stated that only those in agreement with the imperialist positions and the traitorous one of the PA will be allowed to stand or field candidates.

Regarding weapons, Abbas’ statements have seemed a bit contradictory. On the one hand he said that the Palestinian State alone should hold weapons while on the other he declared that the Palestine State will be unarmed.

However we can understand this to mean that Abbas and his types will ensure they are armed so as to control the Palestinians but will never use weapons against the Zionist Occupation. Even had we not the record of the Palestinian Authority to draw upon, this is clearly not a deal to support.

But it will be supported – in the first place by most of the imperialists and their client states and perhaps later by the Zionists who fear even a mention of a Palestinian State and also by those ‘friends of the Palestinians’ among the liberals and social democrats because it will bring ‘peace’.

And for them, hopefully eliminate or reduce the influence of Muslims (in particular those who are sworn to resist colonisation and imperialism). And isn’t it after all better than genocide by starvation and bombing? And so on.

We in Ireland know – or should know – that such patch solutions don’t work for the people. Our nation’s similar makeover in 1921 resulted in civil war and, within the colonial statelet, pogroms, greater poverty than anywhere in the UK, civil rights marches and sectarian assassinations.¹²

And of course, internment and an ultimately unsuccessful national resistance war of three decades. On the other side of the British Border, it meant years of underdevelopment, emigration, clerical domination and imperialist appropriation of natural resources, labour and infrastructures.

The alternative being offered to the Palestinians was summed up by a patriot at his trial, where he was convicted and sentenced to hang:

“If we are to be indicted as criminals, to be shot as murderers, to be imprisoned as convicts, because our offence is that we love our land more than we value our lives, then I do not know what virtue resides in any offer of self-government held out to brave men on such terms.

Self-government is our right, a thing born in us at birth, a thing no more to be doled out to us, or withheld from us, by another people than the right to life itself, than the right to feel the sun, or smell the flowers, or to love our kind.

It is only from the convict these things are withheld, for crime committed and proven, and my land, that has wronged no man, has injured no land, that has sought no dominion over others, my land is being treated today among the nations of the world as if she were a convicted criminal.

If it be treason to fight against such an unnatural fate as this, then I am proud to be a rebel, and shall cling to my ‘rebellion’ with the last drop of my blood.

If there be no right of rebellion against this state of things that no savage tribe would endure without resistance, then I am sure that it is better for men to fight and die without right than to live in such a state as this.

Where all your rights have become only an accumulated wrong, where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to gather the fruits of their own labours …

and, even while they beg, to see things inexorably withdrawn from them then, surely, it is a braver, a saner and truer thing to be a rebel, in act and in deed, against such circumstances as these, than to tamely accept it, as the natural lot of men.”¹³

It seems to me that throughout history there have been people that it was crucial for the dominant system to defeat but of which their resistance was difficult for the system to overcome.

The culture of these people resisted domination and, like grass flattened by passing footsteps, sprang up again. And again and again.

Perhaps it was the strength of these peoples’ cultures, the way their stories of themselves could not be supplanted by the stories of the invader, of the occupier, or perhaps it was some special quality of their leaders.

Perhaps it was their ability, as leaders and as people, to draw others in under the banner of resistance.

These people fought their occupiers, occasionally winning, often defeated in battle but rising again and again. Where leaders compliant to the Occupation arose, they were overthrown or sidelined, the people again taking the road of resistance. As a people, they rejected ‘peace’ in bribes or chains.

The examples of such people that march and flock into my mind as this thought occurs to me include in ancient times perhaps the Gauls, certainly the Irish and in modern times the Irish again, the Indigenous American Cheyenne, Sioux, Apache – and the Palestinians.

It is something to see now, all the European imperialists and the imperialist client regimes of the Arab world in a united front to try to pacify the Palestinians, to occupy Gaza and to force the resisting Palestinians under their client manager of the ‘Palestine’ Authority.

It is doubtful that they will succeed and we should hope that they don’t, not only for the sake of the Palestinians and other people of West Asia (the ‘Middle East’) but for our own sakes, fighting the oppression of imperialism and colonialism and the exploitation of our labour by capitalism.

For as observed earlier, the struggle of the Palestinians has destabilised the imperialist system, exposed the fraud of an international humanitarian legal system and in its member states exposed the frauds of capitalist democracy, free press and government representing the will of the people.

Solidarity with the Palestinians and outrage at Zionist genocide and imperialist collusion has brought millions of previously uninvolved people into street action which bodes well for the future and ill for the imperialist system. It’s been an education we need to continue.

End.

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Footnotes

1Within the Irish state this is also the position of Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Social Democrats and Labour.

2Commenting on this and in particular on the Australian Prime Minister’s statement on the question, Ali Albunimah of the Electronic Intifada podcast on 25/09/2025 pointed out that the question of ‘right’ was only mentioned once, and that was in reference to Israel’s alleged ‘right to self-defence’, never with regard to the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination (a right recognised in the UN Charter, unlike the ‘right of a state to self-defence’ which does not exist).

3AI summary: A bantustan was a politically created territory for black Africans in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) during the apartheid era, officially termed “homelands” or “black states”. The policy aimed to segregate and control the black population by granting them limited self-governance within these ethnically defined areas, which were never recognized internationally and were reincorporated into South Africa in 1994. The term “bantustan” was a critical term coined from “Bantu” and the Persian suffix “-stan” (meaning “land”). 

4 “… based on pre-1967 lines and in line with international law and UN resolutions.”

5https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/07/1165509

69^th December 2025.

7https://www.iranintl.com/en/202509165715

8The Palestine Liberation Organisation, in its time comprising the secular liberation organisations of Fatah, PFLP and DFLP. The PA has repressed alternative resistance organisations and suppressed freedom of speech, even to arresting people for criticising it or posting other material on social media. Its forces have killed a civilian critic and a Resistance fighter.

9See https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-recognising-palestine-rewards-israels-pa-collaborators-not-palestinian-people

10Mass media sources usually represent this as the “Hamas takeover” which conceals the fact that they were elected to replace the previously-elected Fatah administration, whose officials refused to concede the popular will.

11https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Palestine

12In case of misinterpretation, innocently or otherwise, let me state that by ‘sectarian assassinations’ I mean those carried out by British colonial proxies, i.e. Loyalist murder gangs.

13This was part of the speech of Roger Casement at his trial; my only change was to substitute the words “my land” for his own: “Ireland.” Casement’s was the 16^th execution arising out of the 1916 Rising in Ireland though he received a criminal trial instead of military court and was hanged instead of being shot by firing squad, as were the earlier 15.

Sources

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/annex-new-york-declaration-06aug25/

https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/07/1165509

https://www.iranintl.com/en/202509165715

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-recognising-palestine-rewards-israels-pa-collaborators-not-palestinian-people