On a single day, Spain, Norway and Ireland joined 143 of the 193 member-states of the United Nations in recognising a Palestinian state. Spain has said its recognition applies to a unified Palestinian state that includes the Gaza Strip and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, with East Jerusalem as the capital. Slovenia, Malta and Belgium are expected to follow soon.
There are differences in the conditions of recognition, of course. Norway has decided to plant a full-blown embassy in Occupied Palestine, joining only five other countries to have done so. Most of the other Palestine-supportive nations are asking for a vaguely-defined two-state solution, with Spain asking for a pre-1967 border for Palestine with the capital in East Jerusalem. No country, however, has opted for a one-state solution in which 5.3 million Palestinians and 9.1 million Israelis would agree to live in a society where they both have equal rights.
The current melee seems to have cloaked the emergence of a divisive new geopolitical alignment within the US-led ‘Coalition of Common Challenges’ centred on Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine. Fifteen of the 32 nations in the US-led NATO have already recognised or are on the brink of recognising the Palestinian state. All the 27 European Union member-states are players in the international sanctions imposed against Russia after its war on Ukraine in February 2022. Türkiye is the only NATO member not on this list. And therein lies a tale: that of countries that are generally within the US’s vast and heavy-handed sphere of influence who are charting their own foreign-policy ways—even at the cost of riling the US.
The possibility of their being concerned with the pecuniary downside of being attached to the US by the hip is high. The sanctions against Russia are malfunctioning. Russia remains a healthy economy, in spite of the fact that the combined GDP of NATO member states is about $51 trillion, over 20 times Russia’s GDP, and NATO member-states spent $1.3 trillion on defence in 2023, 10 times what Russia spent. Despite the fluctuations in its costly war with Ukraine, the country’s GDP grew by 2.8 percent in 2024, despite, as NATO grieved, “Western sanctions intended to impede Moscow’s war effort”. Meanwhile, the Gaza war has kneecapped Israel. According to the IMF, Israel’s real GDP growth this fiscal will be 1.6 percent, less than half the estimate of 3.3 percent and down from 2.9 percent in 2023. With a further slide envisaged ahead, it is imprudent for stable economies to be roped to a ship with a big hole in its hull, even if that ship is bolstered by a far huger ship bristling with enough treasure to stave off a meltdown.
In addition to this, there also appear to be incorporeal elements at play in this new directionalism—a theory of political flexibility and adaptability to emergent conditions—away from US geopolitical centripetality and what is called destinationism, an idée fixe about an ideal condition. And these elements include statal appropriateness. The growing global stance against Israel has to do with political morality—an overstretched idea, given the corruptness of politics in general, but gaining surprising currency—while the limited opposition to Russia is predicated on pure geopolitics. In short, an eclectic collection of countries around the world is seeing Russia as a nation they can do a moral-economic business with but Israel as too feral to be in the comity of nations.
This nova geopolitica is being resisted by the US’s staunch allies (and colonial states), but with increasing reluctance. Britain has confessed that it is considering recognition of a Palestinian state, but France has said while the subject is not “taboo”, it is not the time yet, while Germany is standing firm against the idea.
But consider this: many of the countries that still stand in alignment with the US’s unflinching backing of Israel in its madness in Gaza have expressed their favour of the international rule of law implicit in the International Criminal Court’s warrant of arrest against Benjamin Netanyahu. These countries include Germany, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain, France, Ireland, Norway, Australia, Canada, Chile, Belgium, Slovenia, South Africa, Colombia, the Maldives, Oman and Jordan. They have all stated they would be obligated to arrest Netanyahu were he to appear in their territories.
Japan, which never bucks the US in the comity of nations, said that it fully supports the ICC. Its foreign minister told his Israeli counterpart that the ICC order is legally binding and Japan calls for an immediate ceasefire. One might be inclined to disdain this as inconsequential. After all, how likely is Netanyahu to want to cross these unwelcoming thresholds? The fact is, the man loves visiting Europe. He has done so at least 55 times in his more than 100 overseas visits since 2009. So this is, without a smidgen of a doubt, going to hurt. It will almost entirely obstruct him from his ability to schmooze with leaders he considers of maximum importance to his chokehold on Israel.
Meanwhile, aside from cranking out its usual—and, by now, disregarded and disesteemed—naysaying on the matter of holding Israel imputable, the US is playing softball, especially with European breakaways from its line. It is ignoring or floundering in the face of the fact that this newfangled exercise of pragmatic latitudinarianism indicates the future of geopolitics.
(Views are personal)
(kajalrbasu@gmail.com)
Kajal Basu | Veteran journalist