Akhtar, I. (2026). The Paradox of Peak Palestinianism: Transatlantic Public Opinion, Strategic Realism, and the End of the Two-State Solution. BRIQ Belt & Road Initiative Quarterly, 7(4), 447-476.
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The period after October 7, 2023, has opened a striking gap between transatlantic public opinion and the strategic calculations of Western and Gulf Arab governments. Polling across the United States and Western Europe records historic lows in support for Israel and unprecedented sympathy for Palestinians, alongside a wave of state recognitions that brought the total to 157 of 193 UN member states by September 2025. However, this rhetorical apotheosis of “Palestinianism” has coincided with - and arguably accelerated - the material extinction of any plausible path to Palestinian statehood. Drawing on recent polling and strategic analyses of the June 2025 Twelve-Day War and the degradation of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” and engaging sympathetically with the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, this article argues that strategic convergence among Washington, Jerusalem, and the Gulf monarchies operates on a different plane from public sentiment. Record settlement expansion, Palestinian Authority delegitimation, the destruction of Hamas, the decapitation of Hezbollah, the collapse of the Assad regime, and strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities point toward an emerging Israeli regional hegemony underwritten by quiet Gulf-Israeli security cooperation. Transatlantic Palestinianism thus functions less as a political program than as a performative identity practice, decoupled from Arab state interests. Peak rhetorical embrace coincides with material impossibility.