By Shariq Us Sabah
France’s recognition of Palestine is welcome, but without follow-through it risks joining the long list of empty declarations that Palestinians have heard for generations. Symbolic gestures do not alter the structures of occupation, nor do they dismantle systems of domination. History shows that real change comes only when the international community chooses action over words.
The precedent of apartheid South Africa is instructive. By the mid-1980s, Europe had severed relations with Pretoria. In 1986, the United States Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto to impose sanctions. The regime’s legitimacy collapsed once its allies withdrew support. South Africa’s rulers did not embrace democracy out of benevolence; they yielded because isolation left them with no alternative.
The parallel with Palestine is unavoidable. Leading human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have concluded that Israel’s policies amount to apartheid under international law. The evidence includes systematic segregation, unequal rights, and the denial of Palestinian self-determination. Yet unlike the consensus that formed against South Africa, Israel still enjoys Western protection.
That protection takes the form of billions in military aid, preferential trade, and diplomatic cover at the United Nations. Far from moderating Israeli policy, such indulgence has entrenched settlement expansion, deepened the occupation, and enabled repeated assaults on Gaza. The promise of a two-state solution grows ever more remote, yet the subsidies and weapons continue to flow.
This contradiction undermines Western credibility. Governments invoke international law to condemn Russian actions in Ukraine, but ignore the same principles in Palestine. They demand accountability elsewhere while shielding an ally. The double standard corrodes the very notion of a rules-based order. If international law is applied selectively, it ceases to be law and becomes mere political convenience.
The tools of accountability are already known. Cutting military assistance, suspending trade privileges, and conditioning diplomatic relations are not radical innovations. They are the same measures that once dismantled apartheid South Africa. Then, as now, critics warned that sanctions would harden attitudes and close the door to dialogue. In reality, they created the conditions that made dialogue inevitable.
There is also a moral question. For decades, Palestinians have lived under occupation, siege, and dispossession. The right to self-determination is a principle enshrined in international law. To deny it indefinitely is to legitimise permanent subjugation. The longer the West shields Israel, the clearer the message: some nations’ rights are negotiable, others sacrosanct. That is a dangerous precedent in an already fractured world.
Recognition of Palestine is a necessary step, but it must be more than symbolic. What is required is coordinated international pressure, the deliberate use of economic and diplomatic leverage, and the political will to apply the same standards to Israel that once brought down apartheid in South Africa.
The international community has faced this test before. Few believed white minority rule in South Africa would collapse. Yet global pressure, combined with internal resistance, forced change. It happened not through war but through persistence, solidarity, and isolation of the oppressor.
The Palestinians deserve the same clarity and commitment. If Western governments act only with words, they will prolong suffering and diminish their own standing. The choice is clear. Either sustain an unjust order or summon the resolve that history demands.
Palestine cannot wait another generation for justice.
Shariq Us Sabah is a writer and commentator on geopolitics and human rights.
26 September 2025
Source: countercurrents.org