On this day, November 15, 1988, the Palestinian National Council in Algiers declared the establishment of the State of Palestine, affirming that “the State of Palestine is the state of Palestinians wherever they may be,” a state founded on equality and dignity within a parliamentary democratic framework. This declaration represented a pivotal event in Palestinian political history, carrying a promise of sovereignty after decades of displacement and occupation, and signaling the Palestinian leadership’s readiness to engage in a political settlement based on a two-state solution, through acceptance of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947 and international legitimacy as a basis for mutual recognition and a path toward peace.
However, after 37 years, this declaration remains largely symbolic rather than reflecting actual sovereignty. The proclaimed Palestinian state continues, from the perspective of international law, to exist “on paper” only. Despite recognition by approximately 81% of the world’s states and its status as a “non-member observer state” at the United Nations, it does not exercise control over its territory or borders, nor does it have the capacity to assert its sovereignty or protect its population. The ongoing Israeli occupation and colonization, the longest in modern history, has transformed Palestinian territory into a fragmented geography, fortified by military checkpoints and settlements. At the same time, policies of creeping annexation continuously redraw the boundaries of 1967, upon which the Palestinian state was originally declared.
Since 1988, Israel has worked relentlessly to erode any Palestinian sovereignty in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), a policy characterized mainly by accelerating land grab on the one hand, and forcible displacement on other. The number of settlers in the West Bank has increased more than fivefold, and settlements and outposts have expanded systematically, eroding the remaining Palestinian lands. Cities such as Bethlehem, Hebron, Ramallah, and Nablus have witnessed escalating settler violence and terror, including physical assaults, live gunfire, home arson, and illegal grab of occupied land, all under the protection of the Israeli military. These practices have not only fractured the social and geographic fabric of the West Bank but have also isolated it from Gaza, which has been under a comprehensive blockade since 2007, eliminating any material unity between the two halves of the purported state. In this context, settlements are no longer merely a “political obstacle” to Palestinian statehood but constitute a comprehensive replacement project that erodes the very possibility of the state itself.
From the standpoint of international law, sovereignty is defined as the ability of a state to exercise full authority over its territory and population without external interference. The Palestinian case represents a stark historical exception: a state declared under the authority of an occupying power exercising de facto control over the occupied territory. The Palestinian Authority, established under the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, which should have been able to run a sovereign state is in fact a limited civil administration operating under Israeli hegemony. In the West Bank, Israel effectively controls more than 60% of the oPt classified as “Area C,” while Gaza remains under a strict blockade, and Jerusalem, the capital specified in the declaration of independence, continues to be illegally annexed and judaized, subjected to systematic discrimination, demolitions, and displacement of its Palestinian inhabitants.
Notwithstanding the International Court of Justice’s Advisory opinion of 2024 on the legal consequences of Israel’s practices in the oPt, which concluded that Israel’s very presence in the oPt is unlawful, recognizing Israel’s violation of the non-derogable norms of the prohibition of territorial acquisition by force, racial segregation and apartheid, Israel systematically violates International humanitarian law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which stipulates that occupation does not transfer sovereignty and obligates the occupying power to administer the territory for the benefit and protection of its population. Israel systematically violates these obligations through settlement expansion and creeping annexation, constituting a clear breach of Article 49, which prohibits the transfer of the occupier’s civilian population into occupied territory. Furthermore, the construction of the Annexation Wall, the imposition of an increasing number of military checkpoints, and the closure of internal crossings between the West Bank and Gaza significantly undermine the principle of territorial unity, a core component of legal sovereignty.
Israel has thus transformed the two-state solution into an empty slogan, imposing a reality of incremental annexation that turns the oPt into isolated cantons resembling administrative islands without sovereignty. Under this reality, the Palestinian “Independence Day” becomes a painful paradox: a celebration of a state declared but never born, of sovereignty suspended between proclamations, daily military raids, expanding settlements, and checkpoints.
Two years after the Genocide in Gaza, the issue of international recognition of Palestine resurfaced, with major states, including the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and Australia, officially recognizing it, joining more than 140 countries that had previously done so since 1988. Yet, while this recognition represents a significant symbolic milestone, it remains formal and procedural. The international community itself, which acknowledges that Palestine lacks the fundamental elements of statehood, defined territory, borders, and effective sovereignty, continues to push Palestinians into repeated “peace processes” and assigns them responsibility for their failure, while overlooking the illegal occupation’s policies that deliberately undermine their foundations. In this respect, recognition functions more as an instrument of illusion than as a tool for dismantling colonial control.
The obstacles to achieving “genuine independence” are not due to a lack of Palestinian will, but to a multifaceted political siege. At the forefront is the U.S. veto, which has prevented Palestine from attaining full United Nations membership, blocking the transformation of widespread recognition into effective legal status within the international system. Alongside this, Israel’s fundamental rejection of Palestinian statehood perceives any recognition as a “reward for terrorism” rather than a step toward justice, continuing to undermine the foundations of Palestinian sovereignty through settlement, annexation, and security domination. Additionally, the internal Palestinian division between Gaza and the West Bank further weakens the national project, depriving Palestinians of a unified political voice and effective negotiating capacity in the international arena.
The convergence of these three elements, U.S., Israeli, and internal Palestinian, renders Palestine an exceptional case in contemporary history: a state recognized internationally yet occupied in fact. It is an unprecedented equation in the international system, where recognition itself becomes a testament to the absence of sovereignty rather than evidence of it.
The 1988 declaration of independence marked a symbolic milestone in Palestinian political consciousness, but it did not fulfill the criteria defined by international law for statehood: population, territory, government, and effective sovereignty. 37 years later, Palestine remains deprived of its rights; of exercising authority over its land, trapped within an expansive settler-colonial system that denies its existence and prevents its realization. Thus, the celebration of “Independence Day” amid walls, blockades, and settlements serves as a painful reminder not of freedom, but of its absence. It is a renewed declaration that Palestine remains the state yet to be born, a state declared before achieving its right to the liberation of its land, the right to self-determination for its people, and the right of return for its refugees.