What does it mean to recognize the Palestinian state?

“There is no registry office of recognition records. The Palestinian Authority will include in its own list all actions that consider acts of recognition, but in a purely subjective way,” he said.

Similarly, he continued, other states “will say they recognized or not, but without having to really justify themselves (…). We are facing an almost total subjectivity,” he said.

But there is a point where “international law is quite clear: recognition does not create the state, just as the absence of recognition does not prevent the state from existing,” Le Boeuf said, as the necessary elements are a territory, a population and an independent government.

Although the scope of recognition is “to a large extent symbolic and political”, in the Palestinian case, three quarters of the countries state that “Palestine gathers the necessary conditions” to be a state, he said.

“I know that for many people this seems only symbolic, but in fact, in terms of symbolism, it is something that changes the rules of the game,” he wrote in mid-August in The New York Times The lawyer and professor of Franco-British law Philippe Sands.

“Because since the condition of Palestinian state is recognized, (…) essentially Palestine and Israel is essentially on an equal footing regarding its treatment under international law,” he argued.