More than three decades after the Palestinians declared statehood and long after most of the international community recognized that state, a growing number of Western countries are finally catching up with the rest of the world.

The recognition of Palestine, most recently by France, Britain, Canada, Australia, and several others, has been hailed as a game changer and dismissed as meaningless political theater. It is neither, though very much depends on what comes next.

Their explanations notwithstanding, these acts of recognition need to be understood first and foremost as a response by governments aligned with Israel to growing public pressure to change course as a result of the Gaza genocide and the unprecedented shift toward support for Palestinian rights. Concluding that business as usual was no longer a viable option, these governments opted for symbolic measures like sanctioning particularly vile Israeli officials, suspending negotiations on trade agreements yet to be concluded, and most recently diplomatic recognition of Palestinian statehood.

From the perspective of these governments, the actions they chose to take were the least consequential available. They do not entail any concrete policy changes toward Israel or require them to implement significant measures such as an arms embargo, economic sanctions, judicial prosecutions, or travel restrictions. Most important, they do absolutely nothing to bring an end to the Gaza genocide.

Additionally these states have explicitly proclaimed that their purpose is to salvage the two-state paradigm and breathe new life into what they call the “peace process.” This has been accompanied with a raft of demands and conditions about Palestinian governance, political participation, and even national security policy that are typically absent from acts of recognition. The entity they would like to see has all the hallmarks of a protectorate, far removed from an independent, sovereign state.

Yet there is also a reason Israel and its apologists are having an unprecedented meltdown over these acts of recognition. If it was the meaningless political theater they claim it to be, they would have ignored or at most mocked it. At the formal level, recognition means that Israel is no longer occupying Palestinian territory but rather the state of Palestine, a situation akin to the 1990 Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. The International Court of Justice last year already declared Israeli rule of the territories it occupied in 1967 illegal and demanded it be brought to a rapid end. Together these developments have, at least in theory, put paid to further negotiations about Israel’s removal from these territories, and particularly about which illegal settlement blocs it will permanently retain.

More broadly, it will become increasingly difficult for Western governments to look the other way as Israel continues to pulverize the state and people without which their two-state settlement remains a dead letter. If Israel later this month obtains US approval to annex some or all of the state of Palestine in response to these recent declarations and proceeds to do so, Western governments will face a moment of truth. Will they once again respond with empty slogans about two states, peace, and the rest of it, or will they adopt concrete measures to raise the costs Israel pays for doing as it pleases in Palestine?

While these are not insignificant issues, they only partially explain Israel’s unhinged response. The more significant issue, which Israel understands only too well, is that Western governments are for the first time since the emergence of the Zionist movement during the late nineteenth century taking measures in support of the Palestinians in response to popular pressure.

Previously such measures were taken for different reasons, such as a desire to placate Arab governments, an exasperation with Israeli conduct by Western governments, or a desire to serve what they believed to be Israel’s best interests. But recognition represents the first time governments have been forced to act as a direct result of massive and growing public pressure from their own citizens.

It is no longer Israel setting the agenda and terms of debate. The finger has been removed from the dike, and Israel’s fear is that continued popular pressure will cause the dam to burst.

It is in this context that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent statements about his country becoming a “super Sparta” and embracing “autarky” must be understood. This is of course total nonsense. Israel is a small state with a small population with limited resources. It has no hope of dominating its region other than as a proxy for its Western sponsors and allies.

The past two years have demonstrated how utterly dependent Israel is on Washington and also Europe for its military and intelligence capabilities, its economic well-being, and diplomatic and legal impunity. To a much greater extent than South Africa’s former white-minority regime, Israel cannot survive without the West, certainly not in its present form.

Israel’s fears that further public pressure on Western governments will result in not only declarative statements but concrete policy changes are therefore entirely justified. It is not as much alarm about recognition as such as it is anxiety about a failure of Western governments to divert popular anger by recognizing the state of Palestine and repeating well-worn slogans about peace and two states.

Predictably Israel’s right-wing supporters in the West have responded to growing support for Palestine with “great replacement” theory hysteria, seeking to promote the view that Palestine is an issue that solely concerns Muslim voters and that this undifferentiated constituency has bent Western governments to its will in its quest for global domination. The Protocols of the Elders of Mecca.

Even as popular movements in Western countries seek immediate and meaningful policy changes to bring an end to the unspeakable atrocity that is the Gaza genocide and to address the broader issues of Israeli apartheid and Zionism’s ideology of racist supremacy, seen from this perspective recognition can and should be understood as an achievement and even an important one.

It demonstrates that even in a context where the schism between ruler and ruled is reaching levels last seen before World War II, if not the nineteenth century, activism can have an impact, does make a difference, and will compel governments to respond. The challenge before us is to ensure that recognition is the start of a process that ends with the liberation of Palestine.