00:00While recognition of Palestine by Western powers mark a diplomatic shift,
00:05it may not signal an immediate end to the conflict.
00:08Rowena Abdul-Razza from SOAS, University of London,
00:11weighs in on the significance of the move at the UN General Assembly
00:15and if it offers any concrete guarantees towards a solution for Palestinians.
00:22I think there is something very important, especially the United Kingdom,
00:26recognizing Palestine.
00:28After all, it was the United Kingdom that created Israel
00:31through the Balfour Declaration back in 1917.
00:37It was with the Balfour Declaration that saw the creation of an Israeli state
00:40on Palestinian land.
00:44So in a way, this is a very symbolic, if a little bit ironic move
00:49that now Britain is recognizing Palestine.
00:51So it's kind of trying to, as much as it can,
00:54to correct the wrong that it has created in its history.
00:58So this is symbolic.
01:00France coming to the fore as well to recognize Palestinian statehood,
01:05also very important because of France's own sort of colonial history in the region.
01:12So there is the historical significance,
01:15there is the significance of the momentum that we're seeing with Palestine.
01:19I've said before that this move towards the recognition of Palestinian statehood
01:27and the awareness that we're seeing of the Palestinian movement is very strong.
01:32It's the strongest it has ever been, as we've seen with the protests and so on.
01:37However, Rowena cautioned that meaningful change is unlikely
01:41as the U.S. continues to assert support for Israel.
01:44Because the U.S. is still backing Israel so strongly,
01:49I mean, it just vetoed another, you know, UN move for Palestine.
01:54We're still going to see difficulties in seeing Palestine truly recognized,
02:02truly free.
02:03So recognizing Palestine, great,
02:05but what kind of Palestine are we going to be left with?
02:08And the only thing, the only thing that might be good with the recognition of Palestine
02:14is that increasingly the U.S. and Israel are going to be isolated internationally.
02:20Hopefully this means that their policies to continue the genocide in Gaza
02:23might just appear even more internationally isolated
02:26and that might stop them maybe,
02:28or at least definitely decrease the justification
02:31that they've been giving themselves to continue what they've been doing in Gaza.
02:35Now with Israel moving to annex the West Bank,
02:40urgent measures are needed to stop the atrocities.
02:43Rowena outlines what concrete steps must be taken following recognition of Palestine.
02:50Firstly, there needs to be a permanent ceasefire.
02:55So the ceasefire has to stop.
02:59Israel, the Israeli campaign in Gaza has to stop.
03:03Because now that these countries have recognized Palestine,
03:07it's going to be harder and harder for Israel to continue its campaign
03:12because its campaign has always been,
03:15they want to get rid of Hamas.
03:19But if Britain, France has now recognized Palestine,
03:25that is a kind of recognition of Hamas as a power in Gaza.
03:31So ceasefire is the most important thing.
03:34And then from then on, we need to think about rebuilding.
03:36We need to make sure that the settlements,
03:38the illegal settlements in the West Bank,
03:40which has been declared illegal by the UN,
03:44even by previous US administrations have called the settlements in West Bank illegal.
03:50Those need to be reversed.
03:53No point to have a Palestinian state with no land.
03:58So
04:08you
04:09and
04:11you
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