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Australia will recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly meeting in September, joining the United Kingdom, Canada and France in taking the historic step.

Recognising a Palestinian state is at one level symbolic – it signals a growing global consensus behind the rights of Palestinians to have their own state. In the short term, it won’t impact the situation on the ground in Gaza.

Practically speaking, the formation of a future Palestinian state consisting of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem is far more difficult to achieve.

The Israeli government has ruled out a two-state solution and reacted with fury to the moves by the four G20 members to recognise Palestine. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the decision “”.

So, what are the political issues that need to be resolved before a Palestinian state becomes a reality? And what is the point of recognition if it doesn’t overcome these seemingly intractable obstacles?

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Settlements have exploded

The first problem is what to do about Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the International Court of Justice has��.

Since 1967, Israel has constructed these settlements with two goals in mind: prevent any future division of Jerusalem, and expropriate sufficient territory to make a Palestinian state impossible. There are now��.

Palestinians see East Jerusalem as an indispensable part of any future state. They will never countenance a state without it as their capital.

In May, the Israeli government announced it would also build����in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – the largest settler expansion in decades. Defence Minister Israel Katz described this as a “strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel”.

The Israeli government has also����to����the West Bank in recent months.

Geographical complexities of a future state

Second is the issue of a future border between a Palestinian state and Israel.

The demarcations of the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem are not internationally recognised borders. Rather, they are the ceasefire lines, known as the “Green Line”, from the��.

However, in the��, Israel captured and occupied the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula (since returned), and Syria’s Golan Heights. And successive Israeli governments have used the construction of settlements in the occupied territories, alongside expansive infrastructure, to create new “facts on the ground”.

Israel solidifies its hold on this territory by designating it as “”, meaning it no longer recognises Palestinian ownership, further inhibiting the possibility of a future Palestinian state.

For example, according to research by Israeli professor��, Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries covered approximately seven square kilometres before 1967. Since then, Israeli settlement construction has expanded its eastern boundaries, so it now now covers about 70 square km.

Israel also uses its��, which runs for around 700km through the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to further expropriate Palestinian territory.

According to a����by researchers Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir, the wall is part of the Israeli government’s policy of cleansing Israeli space of any Palestinian presence. It breaks up contiguous Palestinian urban and rural spaces,����some 150 Palestinian communities from their farmland and pastureland.

The barrier is reinforced by other methods of separation, such as checkpoints, earth mounds, roadblocks, trenches, road gates and barriers, and earth walls.

Then there is the complex geography of Israel’s occupation in the West Bank.

Under the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, the West Bank was divided into three areas, labelled��.

In Area A, which consists of 18% of the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority exercises majority control. Area B is under joint Israeli-Palestinian authority. Area C, which comprises 60% of the West Bank, is under full Israeli control.

Administrative control was meant to be����to Palestinian control under the Oslo Accords, but this never happened.

Areas A and B are today separated into many small divisions that remain isolated from one another due to Israeli control over Area C. This deliberate ghettoisation creates separate rules, laws and norms in the West Bank that are intended to prevent freedom of movement between the Palestinian zones and inhibit the realisation of a Palestinian state.

Who will govern a future state?

Finally, there are the conditions that Western governments have placed on recognition of a Palestinian state, which rob Palestinians of their agency.

Chief among these is the����that Hamas will����in the governance of a future Palestinian state. This has been backed by the��, which has also called for Hamas to disarm and relinquish power in Gaza.

Fatah and Hamas are currently the only two movements in Palestinian politics capable of forming a government. In a��, 32% of respondents in both Gaza and the West Bank said they preferred Hamas, compared with 21% support for Fatah. One-third did not support either or had no opinion.

Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, is deeply unpopular, with����wanting him to resign.

A “reformed” Palestinian Authority is the West’s����to govern a future Palestinian state. But if Western powers deny Palestinians the opportunity to elect a government of their choosing by dictating who can participate, the new government would likely be seen as illegitimate.

This risks repeating the mistakes of Western attempts to install governments of their choosing in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also plays into the hands of Hamas hardliners, who mistrust democracy and see it as a tool to impose puppet governments in Palestine, as well as Israel’s narrative that Palestinians are incapable of governing themselves.

Redressing these issues and the myriad others will take time, money and considerable effort. The question is, how much political capital are the leaders of France, the UK, Canada and Australia (and others) willing to expend to ensure their recognition of Palestine results in an actual state?

What if Israel refuses to dismantle its settlements and Separation Wall, and moves ahead with annexing the West Bank? What are these Western leaders willing or able to do? In the past, they have been unwilling to do more than issue strongly worded statements in the face of Israeli refusals to advance the two-state solution.

Given these doubts around the political will and actual power of Western states to compel Israel to agree to the two-state solution, it begs the question: what and who is recognition for?

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Republished with permission from��. Dr Martin Kear is Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations, School of Social and Political Sciences.