Australia, Great Britain, and Canada officially recognized the existence of Palestine on Sunday. A few hours later, Portugal followed suit. However, these countries have one thing in common—their head of state.
The fact that all three countries of the so-called Anglosphere are ruled by King Charles III means that the British monarchy has formally renounced its historic commitment to support a “Jewish national home in Palestine,” as defined in the Balfour Declaration.
The reasons for this change cannot be understood without a historical digression and an understanding of how colonial powers function.
The British Empire decided against a Jewish state
At the end of World War I, the British government responded to the growing strength of the Zionist movement. Since 1896, when its founder Theodor Herzl published the brochure The Jewish State, several organizations had emerged that advocated the establishment of a nation-state—and thus implicitly defined the Jews as a nation.
Herzl, as chairman of the World Zionist Organization, and his supporters appealed to the Western powers, especially the United Kingdom, with a request to allocate Palestine – especially when it was already clear that London would receive Palestine under the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916).
Map showing the planned colonies and spheres of influence in the Ottoman Empire in 1916. Legend: blue – France, red – Great Britain, green – Italy, yellow – Russia, orange – international zone. Photo: prince_volin/Flickr, license CC-BY-SA
Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour promised Lionel Rothschild and the leader of the British Zionists, Herbert Samuel, on behalf of the government of King George V, to help “achieve the goal” of a “national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.” After the San Remo Conference (1920) and the division of the Ottoman Empire into British and French mandate territories, this commitment became internationally known.
The future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill argued in his essay “Zionism versus Bolshevism” that supporting Zionism and the efforts to establish a Jewish state in Palestine was the most effective way to combat the rise of Bolshevism. The Balfour Declaration thus found general support in Great Britain.
The king is everywhere
The British system of government differs fundamentally from the Slovak one. It is known as the Westminster system, and everything is overshadowed by the figure of the monarch. In addition to his role as ceremonial head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the king is also nominally head of government (King-on-the-Bench), supreme judge (King-in-Court), and part of the legislative branch (King-in-Parliament).
The head of state enacts laws together with both houses of parliament in Great Britain, Australia, or Canada, “intervenes” in the government by appointing the prime minister and ministers, and acts as the highest court of appeal in the judicial hierarchy with the power to grant amnesty or pardon. Symbolically, he thus unites the powers of the state, even though these are divided into three branches, as in Slovakia.
In the case of the Balfour Declaration, this means that King George V symbolically recognized the need to establish a Jewish state in the Middle East and pledged his support for efforts to bring this about.
At the same time, the monarchical principle obliges all heirs to the throne to abide by the agreed treaties and promises until one of them (via “his” government or parliament) changes these treaties and promises.
The recognition of the Palestinian state by Great Britain, Canada, and Australia—which are still linked today through the figure of Charles III—can thus be explained as a departure by the British Empire and the Commonwealth, as its successor organization, from supporting a Jewish national homeland.
Why Great Britain abandoned Zionism
The current political representation in all three countries of the Anglophone world tends to be on the left of the political spectrum or can be described as liberal. In Great Britain, the Labour Party is in power, as it is in Australia, while in Canada, the Liberal Party has maintained its position after the last elections, but has deposed its previous leader, Justin Trudeau.
The current progressive left—especially in the Anglo-Saxon world—is the result of a fusion of ideas from neo-Marxism, postmodernism, and avant-garde movements of the late 1960s. The consequence of this simplistic view is the perception of interpersonal conflicts according to the principle of “oppressor—victim.”
Authors Jonathan Haidt and Gregory Lukianoff already pointed out this shocking phenomenon in their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind.
This means that American or British voters on the left perceive the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement as a struggle between “white” Israelis and “dark-skinned” Palestinians. Even the former editor of the renowned daily newspaper Haaretz, Amos Schocken, is said to have described Hamas militants as “freedom fighters” – a statement from which he later distanced himself.
The left-wing governments of the Commonwealth, which depend on the votes of such voters, therefore inevitably tend to side with Palestine. This is one of the reasons why they have recognized Palestinian statehood, apart from prosaic reasons such as Tel Aviv's disproportionate response to the attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and the resulting high number of civilian casualties.
At the same time, the recent expansion of ground operations in Gaza and the recent attack on Qatar are diverting the international community's favor away from the Jewish state. This week, Malta, Monaco, Luxembourg, and Belgium also recognized Palestine with reservations. The US and a few smaller states that maintain a status quo position will thus apparently find themselves increasingly isolated.