By Naftali Shavelson
Tuesday, September 23, 2025
The U.K., Canada, and Australia jumped on a crowded
bandwagon over the weekend. Following French President Emmanuel Macron’s
announcement of an intention to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state at
this year’s U.N. General Assembly, these Commonwealth countries made their own
official recognitions, in a glitzy coordinated media campaign. Joined the same
day by Portugal, their declarations follow those of Spain, Norway, and Ireland
in May of last year, and all come as some flavor of semblant rebuke toward Israel’s
military campaign in Gaza since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.
Across Europe and the Anglosphere, these pronouncements
may feel like low-risk opportunities to stake a claim on global developments,
and maybe even do some good by ushering in an early end to a grinding war.
However, despite the bearers’ geopolitical perceptions or righteous collective
self-image, their recognitions reveal less about Middle Eastern trajectories
than about their own diplomatic sidelining, frustration, and decay.
European power brokers, quite simply, were long used to
punching above their weight in international affairs, especially in the
developing world. Once, this was through colonization. As that went out of
style, and the continent looked to reclaim its moral high ground, it shifted
into “Global Crisis Manager” — the savvy mediator who would save the (third)
world from itself, through a combination of humanitarian assistance, diplomacy,
and scolding.
In reality, it didn’t seem to work, and the EU and its
ilk have found themselves heavily marginalized in the Middle East, especially
throughout this current conflict. Cognizant of their glorious pasts, they have
likely looked on with a degree of jealousy at others’ outsized roles in all
manner of developments.
The truth is that today’s Middle East is a theater in
which the U.S., the Gulf monarchies, and to some degree Turkey dominate the
stage. Washington and Doha lead hostage negotiations. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are
entrusted with envisioning (and bankrolling) Gaza’s future. Meanwhile, all that
European and Anglosphere middle powers can seem to muster is statements issued
from the sidelines.
Once, French and British consuls strutted through Beirut
and Jerusalem as if they owned the place — because, for a time, they did. But
Europe hasn’t parceled out African or Middle Eastern borders for quite a while.
Their declarations represent less of a coherent foreign policy than a nostalgic
daydream.
And ironically, in trying to claw their way back to
relevance, these nations are ensuring their own absence from the negotiating
tables of tomorrow’s Middle East. When the rebuilding of Gaza, Syria, and
Lebanon slowly commences, in tandem with a reawakening of the Abraham Accords,
local players will prioritize partners ready to clamp down on terrorism and
invest in expanding Israel’s circle of peace. These Palestinian statehood
announcements, as per Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sent rather a different
message: hardening Hamas’s negotiating position enough to scuttle cease-fire
talks, thus extending the war and delaying broader regional peace.
Sooner or later, the Israel-Hamas conflict will end,
though Middle Eastern leaders won’t easily forget these sanctimonious
recognition performances, which ignored both Hamas’s October 7 atrocities and
its continued terror war. Israel will be fine on its own and will pick its
partners judiciously. In parallel, any Palestinian leader genuinely interested
in building a viable state will eye Europe and the Commonwealth more coolly,
too. They know they’ll need Gulf money, Israeli security cooperation, and American
backing. Ottawa and Canberra may deliver stirring statements, but they won’t be
paying salaries, policing borders, or underwriting reconstruction. They’ll be
footnotes.
As for the Gulf states, their reaction will be disdain
and a shaking of the head; they know firsthand the need to cut off all oxygen
from the Muslim Brotherhood and its jihadist cousins. They also understand
realpolitik. At the most beneficial moment, they joined (or will soon join) the
Abraham Accords, and thus Washington’s good graces. They know the Europeans
traded leverage for a press release. And now they know whom to leave off the
guest list when serious talks begin.
Driven by colonialist yearnings, jealousy of new global
power dynamics, and a lingering superiority complex, London and its peers have
tried to ram themselves back into the Levantine spotlight. But in doing so,
they have written themselves out of the script. Symbolic gestures make fine
headlines, but in the brutal math of the Middle East, they buy nothing — and
cost everything.
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