This week, at the doorstep of a new Hebrew year, will go down in Middle East history. In the span of a few days, more than a dozen countries considered friendly to Israel said they recognize a Palestinian state or intend to recognize it once Hamas releases the hostages as part of a deal that would also end the war in Gaza. You could mark this week as the Palestinians’  Green September, a deliberate echo of the famous “November 29” for Israelis (UN decision regarding the partition of Palestine passed by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947).

On Monday, September 20, 2025, French President Emmanuel Macron told the U.N. General Assembly that France recognizes a Palestinian state. Monaco, Luxembourg, Malta, and Andorra issued similar statements. Belgium said its recognition will take effect when the hostages are returned. On previous Saturday, the U.K., Canada, Australia, and Portugal announced their recognition as well, joining Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Slovenia, which had already done so over the past year.

As Netanyahu’s government wages war in Gaza, recognition of a Palestinian state by Western countries has emerged as the only initiative that seems to meaningfully counter Israel’s futile war of destruction in the Gaza Strip, now nearing two years.

One should not dismiss this recognition wave that traces back to the “Saudi Initiative” (better known as the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative), which called for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by establishing a Palestinian state, an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines, and a solution to the refugee issue. In return, Arab states would normalize relations with Israel.

A first step toward implementing that plan has now been taken, unilaterally, despite U.S. opposition. That matters. It’s a major diplomatic gain for the Palestinians, with signatures from powers like France, the U.K., and Canada. Last week the U.N. General Assembly also adopted the “New York Declaration”, stating that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be resolved by a two-state solution, a solution both belligerents in Gaza, Israel and Hamas, currently reject, each insisting that “the whole land is mine” from the river to the sea.

Back in 1947, after the U.N. voted for partition on November 29, the Palestinians rejected it, and even within the Zionist movement some in the Revisionist right opposed it. David Ben-Gurion thought differently. He understood how critical the Balfour Declaration (1917) and the partition vote were for the legitimacy of the emerging state. So today we should not dismiss the current recognitions of a Palestinian state or the renewed placement of the two-state solution squarely on the table. These events may prove just as consequential in both Palestinian and Israeli history.

Unlike 1947, the representative Palestinian leadership today recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and actually had since Oslo Agreement  (1993). This week Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, addressed the U.N. General Assembly (by video, because the United States under Trump did not allow him to land in New York). Abu Mazen called on Israel to return to the negotiating table “to stop the bloodshed and bring about a just and lasting peace”. He reiterated that the PA recognizes Israel, saying “the future of both peoples depends on peace. I want to address all the Jews of the world and wish them a happy new year, and to the Palestinian people, a dawn of freedom and peace.”

 But in Israel the public struggles to accept two states solution: “There’s no one to talk to,” “We must never forget October 7,” “They’re all Hamas". Israeli ears are closed to the possibility of coexistence, even though Abbas, in that speech, condemned the killing of Israeli civilians and the October 7 massacre, saying, “We want a modern democratic state based on the rule of law, equality, justice, and empowering women and youth”. He said Hamas will have no role in governing Gaza, the PA would administer the Strip. He also drew a line between “solidarity with the Palestinian cause and antisemitism."

On October 7, Israelis learned that their country had lost deterrence, contrary to what the intelligence chiefs, the army, and the government had taught them to believe. Israel took the only remaining path: wage war to restore deterrence, not revenge, deterrence, making clear that Israel is strong enough and that any plan to destroy it, whether brewed in Tehran, Gaza, or Beirut, will fail.

And indeed, Israel’s military delivered crushing blows in Iran and Lebanon that restored regional deterrence. But in Gaza, Israel is failing. Hamas has been defeated and most of its commanders will never see daylight again, yet Israel’s prime minister, for his own reasons, won’t stop there. He and his government refuse to accept that you can’t kill an idea. The Palestinians are here, and like Israelis, they are not going anywhere. Gaza, home to more than two million people, is Palestinian. The vast majority there are descendants of refugees expelled or who fled in 1948 from villages inside what is now Israel, within the Green Line, a boundary the Israeli right seeks to erase from memory.

For years, Netanyahu helped enable and even funded, Hamas to block the emergence of a Palestinian state and to weaken the Palestinian Authority, the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. His aim aligns with the messianic national-religious right: to prevent partition of the land. Hamas, for its part, has fought the PA for the same reason, opposition to partition between the river and the sea. Hamas struck Israel on October 7 to derail the budding normalization deals with Saudi Arabia, agreements that would likely have come with recognition of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. There’s no denying the parallels between Israel’s messianic right and movements like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad: rejection of partition and a violent refusal to compromise.

But it isn’t only messianic ideology that keeps the Gaza campaign going, where Hamas has shifted to guerrilla war. Netanyahu’s propaganda machine vilifies the argument that to bring the hostages home, the war must end. Sadly, many Israelis who want the hostages’ return, and who, according to polls, form a majority, prefer to ignore that ending the war requires a solution, which in turn requires talking to the other side. And the other side that exists is the Palestinian Authority.

The French-Saudi declaration, backed by 142 countries to 10 opposed at the U.N. General Assembly (September 12, 2025) sparked the recognition wave we’re now seeing. It lays out steps toward a Palestinian state: end the war, free the hostages, a full IDF withdrawal, Hamas surrendering its weapons to the PA, an international stabilization force within the territory of the future Palestinian state, PA reforms and democratic elections without Hamas, and transferring UNRWA’s mandate to the PA to achieve a “just solution” for the refugees.

Israel must let go of vengeance. It needs new leadership, and cannot wait until the 2026 elections, assuming Netanyahu’s government doesn’t sabotage them. As the novelist Dror Mishani wrote in Haaretz, after Einav Zangauker has declared war on the Israeli government. “We must join her. In fact, it’s unclear why we didn’t start this war long ago, why we allowed Netanyahu’s government to devastate so much of Gaza, and in very different ways, parts of Israel as well…. We must not pin our hopes on boycotts and sanctions from abroad to save us from our government. We have to fight it ourselves…. Netanyahu wants to build Sparta? He’ll succeed only if we become Spartans. So we refuse. We will not supply his government with ammunition, bread, or culture. And we will call on the world to join us and intervene in the war, to stop the machinery of destruction."