Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan told Parliament on Monday that Singapore’s recognition of a Palestinian state is “not a matter of if, but when.”
It’s a line crafted to sound principled and inevitable. But unlike the sunrise or the next full moon, this “when” is tethered to preconditions that may never materialise—indeed, to conditions that the Israeli government and military actions are actively degrading every day.
In substance, “when” functions as a Big IF, a rhetorical placeholder that defers decision-making indefinitely while claiming moral high ground.
This is not a semantic quibble. Language in foreign policy does real political work: it signals priorities, sets thresholds, and shapes public expectations.
When “when” masks an implausible set of prerequisites, it becomes spin—especially when those prerequisites are contingent on actors (chiefly the current Israeli government) who are moving in the opposite direction.
Below, we lay out why the Minister’s logic is circular and self-defeating; why the “not if, but when” formulation is misleading; and how Singapore’s own precedents on sanctions and international law leave it with fewer excuses than the government suggests.
We also engage the clarifications he gave—often answers that skated past the central questions—and note three hard facts that should inform Singapore’s policy:
- the UN’s inquiry has found genocide in Gaza;
- Israel is a significant trade and defence partner of Singapore; and
- Singapore can and has imposed sanctions on states for grave breaches of international law.
What the UN is now saying—and why it matters for Singapore’s “small-state” doctrine
In mid-September, the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, identifying four of the five genocidal acts under the Convention and citing statements by senior Israeli officials as evidence of intent.
Israel rejects the conclusion; nonetheless, the finding marks a decisive escalation in the international legal assessment of the war. The COI called for an immediate end to the commission of genocide and compliance with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) orders.
This sits atop the ICJ’s earlier binding provisional measures (January and May 2024), which ordered Israel to prevent genocide, enable aid, and punish incitement—orders premised on the plausible risk of genocide. For a state like Singapore that grounds its survival strategy in respect for international law, these are not rhetorical flourishes; they are the apex of international adjudication.
The Minister’s statement repeatedly affirmed Singapore’s reliance on international law and condemned the “deliberate and unlawful denial of humanitarian aid.”
Yet if international law is the touchstone for small states, then a UN Commission finding of genocide and the ICJ’s binding orders should weigh heavily—arguably more heavily than deference to a historic bilateral relationship. You cannot both privilege international law and treat its most serious determinations as background noise.
“Not if, but when” is circular—and the circle tightens
Singapore’s formal test for recognition is threefold: a unified, effective Palestinian government that both renounces terrorism and accepts Israel’s right to exist. In the abstract, those sound like reasonable conditions. In practice, they amount to an endlessly receding horizon:
- The Israeli government publicly rejects a Palestinian state and accelerates settlement expansion that shreds territorial contiguity (e.g., the E1 project). Balakrishnan himself criticised these moves as attempts to “extinguish” the two-state solution and announced targeted sanctions on extremist settler leaders—an overdue recognition that the facts on the ground are moving away from two states, not towards them.
- Gaza’s physical devastation and social collapse—hospitals, schools and homes destroyed; famine risks; mass displacement—make “effective governance” an implausible near-term benchmark. The COI’s genocide finding underscores that this is not just “proportionality gone wrong”; it is systematic destruction.
Conditioning recognition on Palestinians first achieving stable, unified, demilitarised governance under occupation and devastation is to demand the product of sovereignty before extending the recognition that helps constitute it.
That is the crux of the circularity: recognition is withheld until conditions are met; the very power blocking those conditions (the occupying power) faces no cost from Singapore for blocking them; hence, the conditions likely never arise; hence, recognition never comes—while we all pretend it’s just a matter of time.
What the clarifications segment revealed: questions asked, answers sidestepped
During clarifications, several MPs pressed precisely on this contradiction.
Vikram Nair asked whether recognition now could preserve the two-state horizon in the face of Israeli policies undermining it. Balakrishnan’s answer stressed “national circumstances” and “objective reality” (who is in charge in Palestine?) before returning to his “not if, but when” line and dangling future recalculation if things “deteriorate.”
But the premise of the question was that things are already deteriorating—by his own account. The reply affirmed the problem while offering no clear trigger beyond an elastic “we will recompute if it gets worse.”
Leader of the Opposition, Pritam Singh asked whether the “effective government” precondition is now unrealistic given explicit Israeli opposition to Palestinian statehood and the expansion of settlements; he also raised Singapore’s defence and trade ties and whether our posture risks appearing anachronistic as partners recognise Palestine.
Balakrishnan reiterated history and the aversion to terrorism, argued that Singapore is being “realistic,” and then refused to discuss defence cooperation “for national security reasons.”
That avoided the core: if the obstacle is Israeli policy, why is the cost borne entirely by Palestinians in Singapore’s framework? And how is it realistic to make Palestinian recognition contingent on eliminating a veto that Israel is exercising in practice?
Yip Hon Weng asked whether Singapore would call out genocide. Balakrishnan said the ICJ must determine this and declined to pronounce. But the question referenced the International Association of Genocide Scholars’ view and asked about political naming.
Since then, the UN COI has, in fact, issued its genocide finding. Waiting only for a final ICJ merits judgment (which may take years) is a choice that understates the gravity of the current UN assessment.
Xie Yao Quan asked about Israel’s airstrikes in Qatar—a sovereignty violation—and whether sanctions should follow, given Singapore’s past responses to sovereignty breaches elsewhere.
Balakrishnan condemned the act but said he is “not inclined” to go further, cautioning against “chasing every infraction.” That elides the comparative: Singapore did sanction Russia for violating Ukraine’s sovereignty; Israel’s strike in Doha is also a sovereignty breach. If sovereignty is the small-state red line, why does the line shift?
On sanctions generally, Balakrishnan emphasised that Singapore is small and sanctions rarely “move the needle.”
True—but that is precisely what Singapore argued against when it sanctioned Russia: that small states must act, in principle, when first-order rules are broken. You cannot say sanctions are mainly expressive, then refuse to express the principle when the violator is a partner.
The inconvenient facts: trade, defence, and precedent
A significant economic and defence relationship
Singapore’s economic ties with Israel are not trivial. Enterprise Singapore reports S$1.74 billion in total bilateral trade in goods in 2024; trade flows rose year-on-year in recent periods. Beyond goods, there is deep technology collaboration.
On defence, cooperation is long-standing and substantial, from Israel’s historic role in the SAF’s early years to current joint ventures like Proteus Advanced Systems (ST Engineering and Israel Aerospace Industries) marketing the Blue Spear anti-ship missile. Recent reporting highlights deliveries to foreign customers and technical maturation, underscoring that this is not merely “history”—it is living industrial policy.
None of this is inherently disqualifying. But it explains the government’s reluctance—and it should be acknowledged transparently.
When the Minister frames nondisclosure as “national security,” the effect is to shroud policy trade-offs that are, in truth, political and commercial as much as they are strategic.
If we will not meaningfully pressure Israel because it is a valued partner, we should say so, and then defend why partnership trumps principle—even after a UN genocide finding.
Singapore has sanctioned for principle before
In March 2022, Singapore took a rare, even historic step: unilateral financial measures against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine—explicitly citing the principle of sovereignty and the UN Charter.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and MFA detailed restrictions on banks, entities, fund-raising, and digital-asset flows. The message: even a small state must uphold foundational norms.
If principle carried the day then, why not now? Balakrishnan announced targeted sanctions against extremist settler leaders—welcome, but extremely narrow.
The EU, U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan and the UK had already imposed measures of this type by mid-2024. Singapore’s move in 2025 makes it a late follower, and it carefully avoids measures that touch the Israeli state, economy, or defence sector.
If the baseline for action is violation of international law, we have a stack: illegal settlements (affirmed in UN resolutions), the strike on Qatar’s territory, and now the COI’s genocide finding alongside binding ICJ orders.
In other words, the predicate Singapore invoked against Russia is present here. The unwillingness to cross from micro-sanctions (a few settler leaders) to state-level measures reflects political choice, not legal impossibility.
The rhetorical sleight of hand: turning an impossibility into an inevitability
The Minister’s central trick is to conflate temporal inevitability (“when”) with conditional contingency (“if”).
“When” is justified by listing conditions that Israel shows no intention of permitting and that, per the UN Commission, are being actively destroyed in Gaza.
The speech even acknowledges these realities—settlement expansion, annexation talk, social collapse—before circling back to “when.”
In communications, that’s called having it both ways:
- Speak the language of inevitability to reassure domestic audiences that you are on the right side of history.
- Embed preconditions to ensure nothing actually changes until someone else (the Palestinians) does the impossible and the other someone else (the current Israeli government) stops doing the very things it is doubling down on.
It may be tactical diplomacy. But it is also spin.
What a more honest framing—and policy—would look like
If Singapore means to anchor its Palestine policy in international law and small-state interests, a more credible approach would do three things:
- Say the quiet part out loud: Acknowledge that trade and defence ties with Israel shape Singapore’s calculus. Then argue—if this is genuinely the view—that the strategic and economic benefits outweigh the costs of withholding fuller measures.Citizens can evaluate an honest trade-off; they cannot evaluate euphemism.
- Align practice with precedent: If sovereignty and grave breaches of law are red lines, apply the Russia standard.At minimum, announce a menu of escalating measures—visa restrictions, procurement guidance, financial due-diligence advisories, and state-linked sanctions calibrated to specific violations (e.g., strikes in third-party states, systematic obstruction of aid, settlement expansion).If we can design bespoke Russia measures, we can design bespoke Israel measures.
- Treat recognition as a lever, not a reward: Countries including France, Canada, the UK, Australia, Portugal, Belgium, and others have moved to recognise Palestine now precisely to preserve the two-state horizon that settlements and war are annihilating.One can debate their timing or motives, but the logic is consistent: when one party blocks the door, you don’t keep waiting for the door to open; you change the incentives. Recognition is one such change.
Singapore prides itself on being careful, deliberative, and law-abiding.
Good. Then let’s be careful enough to see through our own rhetoric; deliberative enough to weigh our precedents consistently; and law-abiding enough to respond when the UN system sounds its loudest alarm.
A final word on national unity
The Minister repeatedly invoked national unity—as if recognising Palestine now, or imposing stronger measures, would fracture Singapore.
But nothing is more corrosive of unity than the perception that principle applies unevenly: one standard for an adversary, another for a partner.
If we want cohesion, the surest path is consistency. Singaporeans across communities can accept hard trade-offs; what they struggle to accept is double standards defended by clever phrasing.
So let us strip away the phrasing. “Not if, but when,” under current policy, is not a promise; it is a postponement. And postponement, in the face of an ongoing UN-identified genocide and a collapsing two-state horizon, is not neutrality. It is complicity by delay.
If Singapore truly believes in the two-state solution, if we truly believe that international law is the small state’s shield, and if we truly believe that sovereignty violations must carry consequences, then the path is clear: tighten sanctions in line with our Russia precedent, speak plainly about our defence-trade constraints, and recognise Palestine—not as a reward to one faction or another, but as a signal that the door to two states will not be shut by fiat or force.
Until then, “when” remains what it sounds like to anyone paying attention: a Big IF.
The post “Not If but When”? Why Singapore’s Palestine stance is really a Big IF appeared first on The Online Citizen.
