On July 28 and 29, approximately 30 delegations gathered in Rome to advance the 2025 New York Declaration and Palestinian statehood alongside Israel.[1]
The conference began with the answer. It should have begun with a question: What evidence is there that a sovereign Palestinian Arab state created under present conditions would live peacefully beside Israel?
Four days earlier, former American ambassador David M. Friedman described conversations with unnamed senior Democratic leaders regarded as pro-Israel. He said they warned that if Israel refuses a Palestinian Arab state, a future Democratic administration could cause America to abandon Israel.[2] The reasoning is familiar.
The status quo is untenable, the argument goes. Israel cannot indefinitely control millions of Palestinian Arabs, nor can their aspirations be suppressed. Therefore, despite deeply imperfect circumstances, the international community must move toward statehood.
The first two propositions have force. The conclusion does not automatically follow.
“We must try something" is not a strategy without a credible explanation of how the proposed change improves matters. A Palestinian Arab state would not be a pilot program. Sovereignty and international recognition cannot easily be withdrawn if it fails. The question is practical, not ceremonial: What would statehood change about the actors, institutions, incentives and beliefs that prevent peace?
If the answer is merely they would finally have a state, diplomacy has confused the objective with the mechanism for achieving it.
What Problem Would Statehood Solve?
Advocates often merge three goals: Palestinian Arab self-government, separation from Israel and durable peace. Statehood might advance the first two. It does not produce the third.
The Palestinian Arab polity has no unified government or monopoly on force. The Palestinian Authority governs portions of Judea and Samaria. Hamas remains entrenched in Gaza. Other armed groups operate independently. The PA has held no presidential election since 2005 and no legislative election since 2006, when Hamas won 74 seats to Fatah’s 45.[3]
The 2025 New York Declaration implicitly acknowledges this reality. It endorses the formula “One State, One Government, One Law, One Gun" and says Hamas must cease governing Gaza and surrender its weapons to the PA.[4] Those are not housekeeping matters to address after recognition. They are prerequisites for a functioning state.
Who will disarm Hamas? What happens if it refuses? What happens if Hamas participates in and wins a future election? Would an armed Hamas government inherit the international standing and legal powers of the newly recognized state? If the PA cannot establish a monopoly on force before sovereignty, why assume that recognition will enable it to do so afterward?
Unless these questions have enforceable answers, statehood would not resolve Palestinian Arab political division. It would convert that division into a sovereign crisis.
Support for “Two States" Is Not Enough
Palestinian Arab society is not monolithic, and recent polls contain evidence of pragmatism. An Arab Barometer survey conducted in October 2025 found that 59 percent preferred a two-state solution when it was presented as one of three broad alternatives.[5] That finding is significant and should not be concealed.
But support for the phrase “two-state solution" is not the same as support for the compromises required to implement one. Another survey conducted that month found that only 44 percent supported a demilitarized Palestinian Arab state on the 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital, limited land swaps, peace with Israel and international guarantees; 53 percent opposed it. When regional normalization and an agreement ending the conflict were included, opposition rose to 59 percent.[6]
The same poll found that 69 percent opposed disarming Hamas even if doing so would permanently end the Gaza war. Among respondents who said they would vote in a legislative election, 44 percent chose Hamas and 30 percent chose Fatah. Eighty percent believed corruption existed in PA institutions.[7]
The conclusion is not that every Palestinian Arab rejects peace. It is that no demonstrated political mandate presently exists for the security arrangements and final compromises on which a workable two-state agreement would depend.
The refugee issue illustrates the gap between a state and an end to the conflict. Mahmoud Abbas says the PLO accepted a state on the 1967 lines and recognized Israel in 1993. Yet he refuses to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, partly because this could prejudice Palestinian Arab refugee claims. In May 2026, he again said the refugee issue must be resolved through “return and compensation," and that UNRWA’s work should culminate in refugees returning to their homes.[8]
This is operational, not semantic. Would a two-state agreement end all further national and territorial claims, or would it create a Palestinian Arab state alongside a continuing claim by millions of Palestinian Arabs and their descendants to settle inside Israel? Without a clear end-of-conflict commitment, two states may become two platforms from which the conflict continues.
Hamas is more explicit. Its 2017 policy document accepts a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines as a “formula of national consensus," while refusing to recognize Israel or relinquish its claim to all territory between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.[9] Accepting a state on part of the land is not necessarily accepting two states as the permanent outcome. It can be an interim strategy.
History supports this concern: Arab leaders rejected partition in 1937 and 1947, and the PLO was founded in 1964, before Israel controlled Judea, Samaria and Gaza.[10] But the case against premature statehood need not rest primarily on historical justice. Even those who consider the past irrelevant must still address present intentions, institutions and capabilities.
An Experiment With Irreversible Consequences
The fact that the status quo is unacceptable does not mean every alternative is better. Policy must compare realistic outcomes, not compare a painful reality with an imagined success.
Gaza is a warning about sequencing. In 2005, Israel evacuated every Israeli community and removed its permanent military presence. Gaza did not become a fully sovereign state, and Israel continued controlling certain aspects of access, airspace and the coast. Nevertheless, the withdrawal tested the proposition that removing Israeli communities and soldiers would itself create momentum toward moderation and state-building. But Hamas won the 2006 election, seized Gaza in 2007, built extensive military infrastructure and repeatedly attacked Israel.[11]
The lesson is not that territorial compromise is impossible. It is that withdrawal cannot substitute for legitimate government, a monopoly on force and a political culture prepared for permanent coexistence.
Full statehood would raise even harder questions. Who would enforce demilitarization and inspect violations? Who would control borders and prevent weapons imports? What consequences would follow if the new state entered military relationships with hostile foreign powers or allowed attacks from its territory? Would outside guarantors actually use force, impose sanctions or restore Israeli security control after violations? If not, what exactly would they be guaranteeing?
Aid, privileges and interim authorities can be conditioned or suspended. Recognized sovereignty cannot be reversed without an international confrontation. That is precisely why the institutional and security foundation must precede the final grant of power.
Reverse the Sequence
The alternative to immediate recognition is not permanent occupation or passive defense of the status quo. It is a phased process in which political authority and sovereign powers expand as Palestinian Arab institutions demonstrate that they can exercise them responsibly.
First, Hamas and other independent armed groups must be disarmed and excluded from government. One legitimate authority must exercise a monopoly on force in both Gaza and the areas under discussion in Judea and Samaria.
Second, the Arabs need genuinely competitive elections, an independent judiciary, transparent finances and a tested peaceful transfer of power. These are not Western luxuries. They determine whether agreements signed by one leader will survive the next political crisis.
Third, leaders, schools and official media must prepare the public for permanent coexistence. Maps, curricula and public payments cannot erase Israel, glorify attacks or financially reward violence. Reform should be independently verified over time, not announced for the benefit of foreign donors.[12]
Fourth, Arab leaders must accept reciprocal Jewish and Palestinian Arab national self-determination and an agreement that ends the conflict, including further territorial and refugee claims.
As those benchmarks are met, Palestinian Arabs should receive expanding authority, reconstruction assistance, economic access, mobility and international investment. The process should have published milestones and outside monitoring so that “not yet" does not become “never." But the most irreversible powers should come last, after the institutions needed to use them peacefully have been established.
Why Should the Arabs Compromise or Moderate their Demands?
Why should Arab leaders moderate their demands if they believe continued refusal will eventually cause the United States and Europe to punish or abandon Israel? Pressure applied only to Israel rewards maximalism and reduces the incentive to compromise.
Peace is not a diplomatic ceremony, and statehood is not a sacrament. A state is a formidable grant of power. Before the international community creates one, it should require evidence that this power will be used to live beside Israel-not to continue the struggle from a stronger position.
Rome began with the answer. It is long past time to ask the practical questions.
Notes and Sources
[1]: Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, “Global Alliance on the Two-State Solution Technical Sessions Begins Today," July 28, 2026.
[2]: David M. Friedman, post on X, July 24, 2026.
[3]: Palestinian Central Elections Commission, “Previous Election Events"; CEC, final distribution of seats in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council election; Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Public Opinion Poll No. 96, October 28, 2025.
[4]: United Nations, New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, July 29, 2025, especially para. 11.
[5]: Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Arab Barometer 9 in Palestine, April 5, 2026, reporting fieldwork conducted October 8-26, 2025.
[6]: PCPSR, Public Opinion Poll No. 96, section on the peace process.
[7]: Ibid., sections on disarmament, elections, domestic conditions and political support.
[8]: Mahmoud Abbas, address to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe; Office of the President of the State of Palestine, address to Fatah’s Eighth General Conference, May 14, 2026.
[9]: Hamas, A Document of General Principles and Policies (2017), paras. 2, 18-20 and 25-27.
[10]: Palestine Royal Commission, Report, Cmd. 5479 (1937); United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 181 (II), November 29, 1947; Palestinian National Charter of 1964, reproduced by the Institute for Palestine Studies’ Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question.
[11]: Government of Israel, “The Disengagement Plan-General Outline"; Palestinian Central Elections Commission, 2006 results. See also Grobman, “How Palestinian Arabs Have Been Transformed From Being the Aggressor to the Victim" (2021).
[12]: Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, FAQ on the EU-commissioned Report on Palestinian Textbooks; Reuters, February 10, 2025; Times of Israel, July 19, 2026.
Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society, a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and on the advisory board of the National Christian Leadership Conference of Israel (NCLCI)