Palestine recognised by a section of the West is a small Bantustan: Ilan Pappé

Amidst calls for action by the international community to end the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, Ilan Pappé, renowned UK-based Israeli historian and crusader for Palestinian rights, describes the recent announcements by some countries in the West – including Britain, Canada, Australia, France and Portugal, which “recognised” the Palestinian state – as a “double-edged sword”, suggesting both positive and negative consequences.

Pappé, a professor at the University of Exeter and an alumnus of the University of Oxford and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, tells Open in an interview, “On one hand, it (this recognition) is a timely counter move to the present Israeli attempt to eliminate Palestine as an idea, a nation and history. So, it is good that Palestine is mentioned and recognised. It is also an indication that some of the pressure from below begins to affect the policies from above in the West – apart from the USA, of course. It shows the willingness of Europe to challenge Trump on the question of Palestine.”

He is referring to mass mobilisations and global protests against Israel’s war on Gaza and against the efforts to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people and to turn the war-torn enclave into a beach resort by breaking international laws.

The maverick historian, who is part of the league called ‘New Historians’ unmasking and challenging conventional interpretations about Israel’s creation from declassified imperial British and local documents, adds, “But there is a flip side to it.”

The 70-year-old academic, who is widely respected for his bold positions and has faced harassment at the hands of various Western agencies for speaking truth to power and for offering historical and scholarly context to the ongoing crisis in Gaza and other areas under Israeli control, elaborates, “The Palestine that is recognised (by these countries) is a small Bantustan stretching over a small part of historical Palestine that leaves many millions of Palestine out of the equation. It (this move) is strongly associated with the two-state solution that advocated a small state with very little sovereignty and totally under the mercy of Israel.”

Bantustans were lands set aside by apartheid rulers for native South Africans in the age of racial segregation to exclude blacks and non-whites from the mainstream of society.

Pappé, who has written more than 20 books on the troubled region comprising Israel and Palestine, the latest being Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic (2024), goes on, “In fact, this a repeat of the Oslo days with the same danger of employing a language of self-determination and peace, while in reality substituting one form of occupation with another. No wonder you will find no one in the Gaza Strip who would think that this move will stop the genocide.”

Following the Oslo Accords of the early and mid-1990s, Israel drastically escalated its policy of illegal occupation of Palestinian areas, with the number of illegal settlers rising from a mere 110,000 in 1993 to more than 700,000, according to figures available with the UN Human Rights Council.

Over the decades, Pappé has done extensive analyses of the functioning of pro-Israeli lobby groups, including the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and how they changed the map of the Middle East through aggressive campaigns and by buying out politicians. Born in Haifa to German-Jewish emigrants in 1954, he had to leave the country in the face of threats, which forced him to seek asylum in the UK in the 2000s. He has penned several best-selling works such as The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths about Israel.

As regards the triggers for these extraordinary moves by these countries in the West and elsewhere to ‘recognise’ Palestine, Pappé notes, “This is pressure from the societies after two years of indifference and inaction. For instance, in France, Macron was aware that 70% of the French, according to surveys, regard the Israeli action as genocide and are highly disappointed with the lack of French response.”

As of now, countries such as Andorra, France, Luxembourg and Malta, too, have either announced or confirmed their recognition of Palestine as a state, leaving Israel furious. Pappé feels that the most significant change lately – amidst the humanitarian crisis in Gaza – is in the attitudes of the global civil society. “Some of this popular support has begun recently to affect policies from above. But the political elites so far are offering symbolic solidarity with the people of Gaza but very little in the way of action. The recognition will not stop the genocide: sanctions will.”

About the grand strategy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently targeted Qatar for aerial strikes and Yemen’s prime minister Ahmed al-Rahawi for assassination, the veteran scholar says, “Netanyahu has two goals. One is to undermine the possibility of an American-mediated agreement on a prisoners’ deal. The second is that he would like to portray Israel as the formidable new regional power that can do what it wants with impunity and therefore it would be wrong to oppose it.”

Meanwhile, Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Palestine, has said that she was worried that these announcements of recognition of the Palestinian state distracts attention from the ongoing war in Gaza, where what is needed is prompt action, not just words.

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