There has been a recent rush of countries to formally recognize the state of Palestine. Affirming Palestinian sovereignty marks a historic diplomatic milestone, yet the exact layout of its territory, a central requirement under international law, remains fiercely contested from every hilltop in the West Bank to the ruins of Gaza.
To grasp what this moment means, we need to trace how borders have evolved – or dissolved – over Palestine’s tumultuous political history. The 1947 UN partition plan had envisioned two semi-contiguous territories for Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as an international city.
But that vision quickly collapsed into the war that led to the establishment of Israel in 1948. Palestinians found themselves confined to the West Bank and Gaza Strip as fully separated territories, demarcated by the “green line” and placed under Jordanian and Egyptian control.
These initial contours remain the internationally recognised basis for Palestinian statehood until today – and are referred to as the “pre-1967 borders.” That year, the Six-Day War saw Israel effectively tripling its territory. It occupied all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and annexed East Jerusalem.
Israeli settlements immediately began fragmenting Palestine’s geography, especially in the West Bank. These settlements are illegal under international law, and in many cases lacked even the government’s authorisation.
Yet they faced limited government pushback – and were often directly supported by Israeli authorities. The Oslo Accords later carved the territory into Areas A, B, and C with varying degrees of Palestinian governance.
Following suicide bombings during the second intifada (2000-05), Israel built a separation barrier cutting deep inside the 1967 borders. Six decades on, the West Bank resembles a fragmented archipelago more than a cohesive state territory.
Building insecurity
In a recent study, my colleagues and I used satellite imagery to show, for the first time, what exactly this does to the West Bank. We tracked all 360 settlements and outposts that existed in 2014 across the following decade.
During this time alone, the average settlement expanded by two-thirds in size. Collectively, they now occupy 151 sq km of built-up area – compared to 88 sq km ten years ago – a 72% increase. Adding to this are hundreds of new settlements, especially with a wave of approvals following October 7, 2023.
Each of these settlements comes with extensive Israeli military presence and infrastructure. This has created a complicated system of roads and checkpoints that typically exclude Palestinians, severely restricting movement and economic activity.
What’s worse, violent attacks and harassment by extremist settlers are well-documented in some locations. To say that building an independent state under these conditions is challenging would be a massive understatement.
A recently approved development project on the West Bank exemplifies this. On paper, the E1 project will be yet another settlement. But if constructed, E1 – short for “East One” – will choke off the main road running north to south outside Jerusalem, effectively cutting the West Bank in half.
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, celebrated the move as “erasing” the idea of a Palestinian state while bolstering national security – the government’s official justification for settlement expansion.
In reality, the settlements have the exact opposite effect. Our research, involving four months of fieldwork and surveying over 8,000 Palestinians, found an alarming dynamic.
Living within a few kilometers of settlements almost doubled the likelihood of engagement in high-risk and violent action (more than 82%), while moderate protest dropped by 30-36%. Similarly, support collapsed for diplomatic initiatives and surged for violent attacks.
Critically, this isn’t simply a reaction to settler violence. Beyond the effects of such exposure, settlement presence alone intensified collective moral outrage, a cognitive state known to drive violent conflict.
Studies demonstrate how this state primes people to think in terms of threat and punishment rather than the risks of taking action – particularly dangerous in the West Bank. And this factor is likely to persist: the settler community today counts upwards of half a million people, many of them armed, violence-prone, and radically opposed to leaving.
What this implies for Israeli-Palestinian relations is that, as settlements expand, so will political violence and retaliation, fuelling further cycles of conflict. The recent attack in Jerusalem, in which Palestinian gunmen shot six people just weeks after E1’s approval, tragically shows this reality already.
Looking for leaders
Any viable Palestinian state must include a vision for Gaza’s reconstruction and integration once the horrific suffering and famine caused by Israel’s brutal attacks end. Yet, as I’ve reported based on data collected in January, Gaza’s largest political constituency (32%) now consists of those who feel represented by nobody.
Hamas is militarily decimated and has lost almost all remaining support among the public. The UK and other countries have also proscribed the terrorist group. Yet no viable alternative has emerged to represent Gazans’ interests.
Over in the West Bank, a Palestinian Authority (PA) dominated by elderly men offers little better. Three decades since its establishment as part of the Oslo peace process, it is widely seen as illegitimate, corrupt and incapable, as polls consistently show.
The most realistic governance scenario involves a restructured PA administering both territories. It’s likely this will still be dominated by Fatah, but with fundamentally reformed structures and leaders.
If elections were held today, the 89-year-old president, Mahmoud Abbas, would almost certainly lose. One candidate with more prospects is the imprisoned Marwan Barghouti, complicating succession planning.
Whoever eventually leads a unified Palestine will inherit decades of failed self-governance, deep public scepticism and Israel undoubtedly attempting to intervene in this process.
Making recognition matter
Despite massive challenges, building a functioning Palestinian state is not impossible. So recognition can be more than a symbolic act. Already, it’s reshaping in tangible ways how major powers engage with Palestinian representatives while applying meaningful pressure on Israel’s leaders.
But as nations line up to recognize Palestine, they must confront what they’re actually recognizing. Given the vicious cycles of settlement expansion and violence that our research shows, recognition risks becoming an empty gesture unless this issue is addressed diplomatically head-on. Without creating genuine conditions for statehood that uphold the interests of all parties, neither goal will be achieved.
The choice is no longer between one-state and two-state solutions. It’s between recognizing borders that have long been rendered meaningless – or committing to build something viable. Both the future of Palestinian statehood and Israeli security may depend on that choice.
Nils Mallock, PhD Candidate, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics and Political Science; King’s College London
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Mr Mallock being a Phd candidate at the well known far left LSE school of learning fails deliberately to mention or even briefly explain the 1948 war. I wonder if he thinks the “Volke Deutsche” from Prussia should also have the right of return to Poland as Muslims and a designated UN agency since their 1945 forced “Nakba” style departure ?
To Rules Based Disorder:
I don’t think if jewish behaviour is rooted in theistic principles. Jews have no traditional homeland, such as ancestral villages in India, where people lived for hundreds, if not thousands of years in the same place. In a village, you cannot get away with behavior that antagonizes everyone around you, lest you become ostracized very quickly.
As an itinerant group, Jews have to fall back on the one thing they can carry from place to place, money. It seems that they worship money as god for this reason. Money, by its very nature, cannot give birth to new money unless through money lending at a rate of interest. In this regard, they are very much unlike farmers. Moreover, money must constantly make more money or it will depreciate due to inflation, and it can be lost to theft, taxation, etc. This requires the moneylender to act viciously and extract from a down-on-his-luck borrower his last meager possessions.
Truth, fairness, justice, sympathy, empathy, and other virtues that are extolled in other religions give way to the unrelenting need to increase the sum of money to be lent to the next borrower. This is the basis of violent loansharking.
All other societies consider it unfair to squeeze the last drop of blood from a struggling (usually peasant) borrower. Hence, all religious reform movements, including Christianity and Islam, denounced usury and advocated ‘jubilees’ every seven or so years in order to clear the slate of all debts and give the borrowers a fresh start.
In order to make jews “normal,” they need to be given a diffent caste occupation that does not prey on the society. I don’t think the root of their behavior is in theology. It seems the other way around.
To your point, for the historic reasons why Christians and Muslims looked down on usury, they unwittingly handed this practice to Jews, who are not compelled by Judaism to disavow usury towards gentiles. This is probably one of the reasons for the mistrust surrounding them. My argument is the other reason being the theological “god’s chosen” ideology trickling down in their consciousness through Rabbis and the Talmud over time. This ideology is dangerous as it absolves them from any responsibility from bad behavior. Perhaps morality is lacking or not taught very well in Judaism and this was why Jesus tried to reform it. The pharisees conspired with their Roman enemies to kill him. The Romans then destroyed the pharisees temple. The lesson here is: these people do not like reform, are overly vindictive – the very essence of extremism. The wanton killing and destruction in Gaza can be explained this way. The moneylending tendencies can explain their infiltration of the West.
If ever the Asian Times failed in its duty to curtain such antisemitic blood libel it is here. Yet it will be surprising if my retort is published. This author has form for such diatribes. History shows us that more often than not Jews were forbidden other activities in societies where Christians applying interest was not allowed.
Anti semantics. Blood libels. No willingness to take a hard look at yourself. No substantive counter arguments. Playing the poor victim again. All very predictable. I am not surprised.
What’s worse? Witness the Judeophobic brain-worm at work, an ancient parasite of the mind that has sought to multiply and spread as it adapts since the time of the Merneptah Stele (c. 1208 BCE). Even now, when activated by words like “Jews,” “Netanyahu,” “settlers” “Zionism,” “Israel,” or their variants, it drives its self-justifying, frothing, and morbidly obsessed host along a familiar path, spreading the programmed delusion that “the Jews are the source of all evil and must be held to account.” Invariably, the consequences are as tragic as they are predictable for all it reaches, from Gaza to Dresden, culminating in the infected host’s self-immolation—see the Führerbunker. Yet, like the bush, burned but not consumed, once again the people of Israel rise. Am Yisrael chai.
The people of Israel are doing only a handful of things at the moment. 1 – fleeing. 2 – committing genocide, 3 – in denial. Zionism as an idea has failed. Israel is not a peaceful place for Jews, Palestinians or any other minorities. The Ottomans were far better administrators of the holy land than crusaders and religious Zionists. Their little secret was not clinging to braindread messianic ideology – but rather, pragmatism, trade and tolerance. You as a Zionist simply do not wish to share the holy land with other stakeholders and natives. And this will be your undoing.
Israel recognized that its sponsor is in a terminal decline. It wants to establish facts on the ground by seizing territory and neutralize enemies before the US exits the scene. If the US leaves West Asia, which is very likely to happen, there is a real possibility that the UN will vote to de-recognize Israel itself. It is a malignant tumour, and will be surgically excised.
The Judeaphobic fantasy is as old as it is worn out: The Merneptah Stele (also called the “Israel Stele”) is dated to around 1208 BCE (reign of Pharaoh Merneptah, 1213–1203 BCE). The famous line near the end reads (in translation):
“Israel is laid waste, his seed is no more.” The inbred savages of Gaza, Judea, and Samaria are dwindling, consumed by the hatred they spawn and supported by the savage Judeaphobes who cannot stand their impotence in the face of Jewish resilience, resistance, infinite creativity and tenacity. Keep whining, it helps us focus.
When was the last time we heard of a Judaic empire, or any lasting legacy of a Judaic civilization that inspired the world like Cyrus the Great or the Han dynasty? There are none. The endogamous tribe spent more time fleeing nation-states than any civilization building. Oh wait, we have the “Bible” – an ancient tale where the tribe elevated themselves in a book of their own making. That is very impressive. I might give it a try one day. When the Jews did get a chance in 1948 thanks to the British gentiles, it spawned into a Fascist Apartheid state on par with Apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany. How ironic. Albert Einstein was a clever Jew – he warned the world in 1948 about this. Perhaps living as a secular diaspora might work out better for you rather than Religious Zionism throwbacks? Just food for thought. Animal sacrifices on bloody temples do not belong in the 21st century.
No Indian can be legitimately called “judeophobic” for the simple reason that we did not know of these people except from reading about Hitler’s concentration camps. There was great sympathy due to the suffering of all peoples during WW2, but we never considered jews “chosen ones,” because we do not know what they thought of themselves vis-a-vis others.
In India some coastal areas first populated by foreigners (Cochin, Bombay and Calcutta) had some jewish areas, but they were prescribed their own caste and were in the periphery of our societies. They were never allowed to interact with the remaining population on a daily basis except for traders of trinkets at weekly or monthly bazaars.
We learned about these people only recently. Their actions look excessive, unfair, and unjustified. Indian culture preaches and practices moderation in everything. Our law of war (Dharam Yudh) says never to attack an enemy in flight, one who dropped his weapon, one who surrenders, or one who is helpless. Israel does all these things and then some.
Mohandas Gandhi, in 1937, famously said Palestine is for Palestinians, just as France is for the French. That remained the foreign policy until 1992 when India was on its knees due to financial mismanagement and the Jewish senators of the US forced India to remove its isolation of Israel as condition for an emergency loan. This was the most demeaning thing they did, and India does not forget the coercion and humiliation at the hands of a handful of Jews, who forced India to change its foreign policy.
Still, the current context is that even as they killed their own people on October 7, 2023 as part of the “Samson Option”, they continue to argue that Hamas did it. They claim victimhood even as they are killing of noncombatants by the tens of thousands. You don’t have to be judeophobic or even a Muslim to consider this an outrage deserving of extreme condemnation.
Theirs is a virulent strain of monotheism – the purest intolerance, rigidity, ethno supremacism and extreme repulsion at any reform. They crucified Jesus for attempting to reform their Babylonian occult beliefs. They kill negotiators. They have killed hundreds of journalists in Gaza and the West Bank. They attack international flotillas. They kill children of their enemies. They defile trust. They revel in collateral damage – these are policies – ‘Mowing The Gras’ and ‘Dahiya’ doctrines. They torture Palestinians, burn down schools, places of worship and historic buildings. They arrest thousands of Palestinian youth without trial. They burn down Palestinian farmers properties, olive trees and block bank accounts. Zionism is Nazism. Any normal person would not do these things to their enemies. Only the most hateful, vengeful and possessed beings do such things. They even supported Hamas to split Palestinians at one stage. Then play victim when it backfires like the US suporting Saddam, Taleban and Bin Ladin blew back. These people the Israelis and Americans, they never learn.
Correct, it will take more than just cursory statements. The Muslim world should take control here, the Americans by default echo the insanities of their blackmailers in Israel. The Islamic world needs to show leadership with Palestine. The West with its grotesque “no matter what” support of Israel, could easily reign in the Zionist Apartheid state if they wanted to. You see, like illegal Jewish settlements in Palestine which rely on Israel proper for almost everything, so too does Israel proper rely on the West for welfare checks, weapons and cover. Israel cannot survive without leeching off the West as a crusader outpost. The greatest crime of the Apartheid state is attempting to make fait accompli the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by simultaneously denying them statehood AND not absorbing them into Israel – this leaves them with either annihilation or displacement – both of which are war crimes. The first step is recognizing Palestine AND stopping all support of Israeli genocide. Do you think destroying 95% of the housing stock in Palestine improves peace? The Islamic world needs courage. The West needs a brain. Israel need a heart.
Keep whining. Let your impotent bitterness keep eating at you Love it.
You the Zionist sociopath, like your fellow Talmudic mental midgets, are known for reveling in low level behavior.
The platform RBO is often given here is excessive and without any constraint. Also it is so predictably one sided. AT has become to its shame a virulent AS media outlet on a par with The Guardian. I often wonder if RBO is no other than “Helen for Yemen” in another nom de plume having turned its attention from ” Ashkenazi Jews” to the likes or usuary and “they had it coming to them”