Is a mere political pronouncement meant to ipso facto unblemished Balfour and his descendants of any share in the bloodletting being committed by the genocidal, child-killing, Israeli war machine? Are symbolic recognitions by European capitals a balm for a century of complicity in the dispossession, starvation, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, or are they a cynical performance of conscience—offering moral absolution without any real reckoning?
I am categorically and unequivocally referring to the massacre of men, women and children, the displacement and starvation of innocent civilians, and the ethnic cleansing of the aborigines of the ancestral land of the Palestinians since the dawn of the 2nd of November, 1917—the day Arthur James Balfour signed away a land he did not own, to a movement that had no right to receive it, at the expense of a people who were neither consulted nor considered.
This essay is not written for faint moral hearts. It is not written for those seeking polite euphemisms to disguise the naked reality of what has unfolded over the last century. It is a call to interrogate whether de jure or de facto recognition of the State of Palestine—something that many European states are now rushing to do—is a genuine attempt at redressing historical wrongs or simply a posturing exercise meant to restore Europe’s tattered moral image. It is also an attempt to remind Europe that history does not wash away with communiqués, and blood is not erased with resolutions.
Any attempt at x-raying this profound phenomenon without first contextualising Balfour’s original sin and the colonial genesis will not only be futile but leave our discussions flat-footed.
The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, remains one of the most consequential imperial documents of the twentieth century. At just sixty-seven words, it is deceptively short, yet it set in motion a century of tragedy. “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…” — so began the declaration.
The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur James Balfour, and his Cabinet, in the full pomp of imperial arrogance, assumed the right to dispose of a land that was neither theirs to give nor empty of people to receive. The so-called “national home” promised to European Jewry was not conjured out of empty desert but carved out of the living, breathing communities of Palestinians—farmers, merchants, poets, Imams, Rabbis, Christians, and Jews—who had inhabited the land for centuries. The Balfour Declaration was not merely a letter of intent; it was a blueprint for dispossession, an imperial guarantee that the machinery of British power would midwife a settler-colonial project in Palestine.
Between 1917 and 1948, the British Mandate facilitated the immigration of hundreds of thousands of European Jews into Palestine, trained Zionist militias, and suppressed Palestinian revolts with ruthless efficiency. Every Palestinian uprising—1920, 1929, 1936-39—was crushed by British bayonets and gallows. Europe’s colonial hand was everywhere: in the drafting rooms, in the military barracks, in the gallows where Palestinian rebels were hanged.
Can Europe now claim that its responsibility ended in 1948, when Israel declared independence? Can Britain wash its hands clean by pointing to the UN Partition Plan, as though its decades of imperial engineering had not stacked the deck in favour of a Zionist state?
While you ponder these questions, note also that, Europe’s complicity did not end with the Mandate. Indeed, after the Holocaust—a uniquely European crime against European Jewry—Europe turned to Palestine as a convenient solution to its “Jewish Question.”
The horror of the Shoah provided Zionism with an unassailable moral argument, but it also gave Europe an opportunity for displacement: the crimes of Auschwitz and Treblinka could be “atoned for” not on European soil, but on the soil of Palestine. Germany, in particular, became Israel’s patron, not merely out of guilt but as a form of moral reparations by proxy: Billions of Deutsche Marks flowed to Israel, arms deals proliferated, and political shielding became the norm. France, until 1967, was Israel’s primary arms supplier, gifting it Mirage jets and a nuclear reactor. Britain, for its part, looked away as its former mandate exploded into war in 1948, leaving Palestinians to face Zionist militias turned state armies. This moral displacement is Europe’s enduring hypocrisy: it seeks to cleanse its conscience for its crimes against Jews by financing and legitimizing Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. In other words, Europe atoned for Auschwitz by underwriting the Nakba.
Indulge me at this point to conduct a legal interrogation of the De Jure vs. De Facto Recognition. In international law, de jure recognition is formal, legal recognition of a state’s sovereignty, while de facto recognition is a pragmatic acknowledgment of a political reality without full diplomatic relations. Many European states are now debating which of these paths to take regarding Palestine. Spain, Ireland, Norway, Slovenia and others have moved toward formal recognition, while others gesture toward “support” for a two-state solution without taking the final step. But the question we must ask is whether this recognition, whether de jure or de facto, is being offered as a means to effect justice or merely to restore Europe’s image as a responsible global actor. Recognition without action—without sanctions on Israel, without ending arms sales, without dismantling the economic and diplomatic shields that enable Israeli impunity—is hollow.
To recognize Palestine without confronting Israel’s ongoing annexations, its apartheid regime, and its siege of Gaza is to recognize a state that exists only on paper while leaving its people to languish under occupation. It is a recognition that risks becoming performative, a diplomatic gesture meant to signal virtue without incurring any real cost.
Europe must wrestle with a philosophical question: can a gesture—however well-intentioned—wash away the blood of a century? Can the signing of a communique in Brussels undo the dispossession that began with a signature in London in 1917? Philosopher Hannah Arendt once warned that evil is banal precisely because it is bureaucratized, routinized, reduced to paper and ink. Europe’s complicity in Palestine has been bureaucratized for over a century—through Mandate decrees, through arms contracts, through vetoes and abstentions at the United Nations. Recognition risks becoming another bureaucratic act, another piece of paper to file away under “conscience cleared.”
Moral responsibility requires more than recognition; it requires restitution. It requires dismantling the structures of oppression that Europe helped build. It requires truth-telling about history, reparations to the victims, and accountability for the perpetrators.
I dare to say that, if the Balfour Declaration was the original sin, Gaza is the apocalypse of that sin’s harvest. The current Israeli campaign against Gaza—its carpet bombings, its mass displacement of over two million people, its deliberate starvation policies—constitute genocide in the plain meaning of the word.
The International Court of Justice has acknowledged the plausibility of this claim, yet Europe remains hesitant to act. Instead, many European states have suspended funding to UNRWA, the very agency that keeps Palestinian refugees alive. They have tightened speech laws to criminalize criticism of Zionism under the guise of fighting antisemitism. They have continued arms sales and intelligence sharing with Israel, even as the rubble of Gaza piles higher with the bodies of children. Again, I repeat, what then is the value of European recognition if it coexists with European complicity in genocide? Recognition without embargo is hypocrisy. Recognition without accountability is moral theatre.
The European Union continues to be Israel’s largest trading partner. European technology fuels Israel’s surveillance state, European arms keep its military supplied, and European diplomatic muscle often softens the impact of UN resolutions. Even when Europe criticizes Israel’s actions, it rarely imposes meaningful consequences.
This is not mere passivity; it is active complicity. Every European leader who shakes hands with an Israeli Prime Minister while bombs fall on Rafah is lending legitimacy to the slaughter. Every European parliament that approves arms exports is underwriting ethnic cleansing.
I end this piece by saying; history teaches us that recognition, when unaccompanied by action, can be worse than useless—it can be anesthetizing. It can create the illusion of progress while leaving the status quo intact. If Europe wishes to cleanse itself of complicity, recognition must be tied to concrete measures:
An immediate arms embargo on Israel.
Sanctions on settlements and settlers.
Support for ICC and ICJ proceedings against Israeli war crimes.
Restoration of UNRWA funding and expansion of humanitarian aid.
Truth commissions to examine European colonial responsibility.
Without such measures, recognition becomes a fig leaf for cowardice. Therefore, Europe must stop playing second-fiddle to the US and outsourcing its conscience. It must stop performing virtue while enabling vice. It must choose between being a midwife of justice or remaining an accomplice to atrocity. To cleanse itself of complacency, Europe must not only recognize Palestine but also dismantle the apparatus of oppression it helped create. It must face its Balfourian past, its Mandate-era betrayals, its Holocaust-era displacements, and its postwar hypocrisies. Only then can recognition be more than a diplomatic footnote and become an act of moral resurrection.
The question remains: is de jure or de facto recognition meant to cleanse Europe of its complacency? Or is it simply another piece of paper, another act of imperial arrogance disguised as benevolence? History will judge Europe, not by the words it signs but by its actions or inactions. All concerned must remember, that the blood of Gaza’s children will not be washed away by communiques. The ghosts of Deir Yassin, of Sabra and Shatila, of Jenin, of Khan Younis, of Rafah, will not be laid to rest by symbolic recognitions.
If Europe truly wishes to repent, it must stop being a spectator and start being an actor for justice.
Otherwise, its recognitions will be remembered not as acts of redemption, but as epitaphs for its moral failure.
*Mukhtar Imam is a Professor of International Relations and a Directing Staff at the National Institute for Security Studies, Abuja.
Mukhtarimam01@gmail.com