The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - What It Means to Be a State || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

News recently broke that France has decided to officially recognize Palestinian statehood—a move welcomed by some and ignored by others.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/what-it-means-to-be-a-state

Hey, Al, Peter Zion here coming to you from Oregon. Today, we're going to talk about the French recent recognition of the Palestinians as an independent country. The question is whether this moves anything in Gaza or in the region at all. And the answer is really no. To be a country, there's a few things you have to have. You have to have a permanent, contiguous population. You have to have clearly defined borders. You have to have a government that can project power throughout that zone.

and ideally an economy that can support the population, and really Palestine does not qualify. The single biggest problem, of course, is this is not one chunk of territory. It's two if you're being charitable, that'd be in the Gaza Strip, and then you have the West Bank. But even within that, that's not true. Even if you ignore the fact that there's a war going on and Israel has basically balkanized the Gaza Strip to a bunch of pieces, that happened a long time ago in the West Bank, and it's not one piece. it's dozens. So the Palestinians, by any definition, can't control their own territory and have been broken up into a few dozen different bits that in many cases are not on the same side. That's a problem

too. There's no single government here. Fatah, which is the group that cut the peace deal with the Israelis all those years ago, controls the West Bank enclaves. And Hamas, which is at war with Israel, controls the Gaza Strip. So this isn't one government. This is several governments, or if you're being charitable too. So it doesn't qualify. Third, the borders. I mean, technically had a map there, but again, Israel controls all of the territory between all of the area enclaves, and that's before you consider the war in Gaza. And then finally, there's the economics of it. This is a chunk of land that imports well over 95% of its energy and well over 95% of its food. And so there's no way it could function as an independent state unless somebody

pays for it to exist. And if you're one of those horrid, people who says that the solution is just to kill all the Jews and allow all of this territory to be Palestinian. I'm sorry, that doesn't help, and you're also a monster, because Israel imports over 90% of its energy, and based on whose numbers you're using, somewhere between 50% and 80% of its food before you consider the Palestinian territories. So there's no version of this where it works, unless it is done hand and glove with the Israeli gun. government. So if you're looking for a solution to the Palestinian problem, and it is a problem, it starts with talks with the Israeli government, which of course means that the Israeli government

is the one who has a functional veto power. And yes, yes, yes, that can get ugly and messy, but unfortunately, it is the only way forward. Having somebody on the outside saying that the Palestinians are a thing achieves nothing.