Andrew Dickens: The issue of recognising Palestine as a state

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

So the big question of today is whether New Zealand should join other nations in recognising a Palestinian state.

Now this is a much bigger question than it seems. For some it's easy - call Palestine a state and then they have a legal foothold to fight for some land I guess.

And in a way, we already have done that by calling publicly for a two state solution to the conflict in the Middle East.

But it's easy to confuse nations and states.

States have a multi-layered definition. A state is a political and legal entity with sovereignty over a defined territory and population. It's focus is governance, law, and authority.

So many of those provisos are missing.

Obviously there is no defined territory. Or maybe there was, but it's been pretty much destroyed now.

There is no authority that is recognised by most, with Hamas having lost the mandate in the eyes of many countries and the Palestinian Authority long since discredited.

A state can easily be confused with a nation, which is a group of people who share common cultural elements such as language, ethnicity, history, or traditions.

Māori are a nation of people within New Zealand. Palestine can be a nation, but that doesn't mean land.

And that's where the rubber really hits the road. It's hard to recognise a Palestinian State when there is no land for it to belong in.

Declaring a Palestinian State is therefore a piece of global virtue signalling. A stance with little of no practical application other than political pressure on Israel.

New Zealand and its Government has been accused of kicking the can down the road because it's going to consider it's position over the next month.

To be fair, we are. But this is a delicate move which on the outside seems so easy to many, but is full of pitfalls.

And seems to be putting the horse before the cart when we don't know where this state would be in the world.

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