What will happen to the West Bank if Palestine becomes a state?
The historical trigger, however, was provided by events in the West Bank. The “other” Palestinian territory is seen by the world as the core of any future state, but to many Israelis, including most of its government, it is Judaea and Samaria, the biblical centre of the Jewish homeland, and ministers have been threatening to formalise Israeli rule over it.
That would make the West’s preferred - indeed, only - solution to the Middle East conflict, two states living side by side, an impossibility. France and Britain could not allow any move to annex the hills of Jericho and Hebron, Ramallah and Nablus, to go unchallenged.
It is, naturally enough, Gaza that has consumed the world’s attention since the events of October 7, 2023. The brutality of Hamas’s massacre of civilians and then the grim price paid by Gaza’s population has played out on the front pages.
The war has led to historic shifts: the near destruction of Hezbollah, Lebanon’s Iran-backed Shia militia, once thought impregnable; and then the attack by Israel and the United States on Iran’s nuclear program.
In the background all the time was a force driving in its own direction, for which the war served as a useful distraction.
Settlers have been rampaging through Palestinian villages. On Monday, one killed a leading activist, featured in an Oscar-winning documentary, but there have been scores of lower-profile clashes and assaults.
In turn, young Palestinian men are being radicalised, joining militant groups, and thus giving a pretext for further Israeli military assaults. The belief of the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, that there is no real distinction between Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank’s ruling Palestinian Authority, even though it recognises and even co-operates with Israel, will surely, if slowly, become a reality on the ground.
That suits the far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition government, who believe that extending settlements will make annexation of the West Bank a de facto, then a de jure reality.
For France and Britain, and particularly for their diplomats, steeped in the history of their colonial roles in shaping the borders of the Middle East, this was the mission creep that had to be stopped.
Both countries - indeed, nearly all countries, including the US - believe Israel cannot rule over Palestine for ever. Nor can it still be considered a democracy if half the population, the Arab half, does not have the same political rights as the Israeli half.
If they do, and Israel becomes a non-denominational, secular state, let alone a Muslim-majority state, would the Jews stay? Would it still be a home for the Jewish people?
As so often in the Middle East, western powers may have acted not because they saw a clear outcome, but because they felt that something, anything, had to be done.
The Times
The political trigger for France, Britain and now Canada to recognise Palestinian statehood may well have been starvation in Gaza.