Mr. Netanyahu’s life’s work has been largely built around the avoidance of a two-state agreement, even to the point of past support for Hamas intended to obstruct such an outcome. That seems unlikely to change, unless the United States can somehow triangulate Saudi normalization of relations with Israel, a vague Israeli verbal commitment to a process ending in two states and the end of the war in Gaza.
“To any prime minister but Netanyahu, the U.S. offer is very attractive,” said Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, who noted that an end to the Gaza war would inevitably bring an official inquiry into responsibility for the Oct. 7 disaster and confront Mr. Netanyahu with the fraud and corruption charges against him. “But for his own personal reasons, he balks at any postwar significant Palestinian role in governing Gaza.”
Leaders of the three European states recognizing Palestine said they were determined to keep the two-state idea alive. “We’re not going to allow the possibility of the two-state solution to be destroyed by force,” said Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister.
Those were stirring words. It seems possible that at a time of terrible suffering — in the ruins of Gaza and under what is widely seen as the ineffective and corrupt rule of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — the recognition will provide a moral lift to Palestinians pursuing their right to self-determination.
But the reality is that a divided Europe has had little or no real leverage over, or impact on, the conflict for some time.
It has been a marginal player since Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the early 1990s resulted in the Oslo accords. The only voice today that Israel will listen to is America’s — and even there Mr. Netanyahu has proved defiant of late.