Recognition Sans Reality: How and Why the West Capitulates to Hamas

Recognition of a Palestinian state — while hostages remain in captivity, while Hamas continues to rule Gaza through violence against Israel and its own citizens, and while the Palestinian Authority remains ineffectual, kleptocratic and supportive of terrorism — is as imbecilic as it is dangerous. No amount of erudition, accolades or public office guarantees wisdom; high rank often amplifies habit and fear, not judgment. Global politics requires emotional intelligence, honesty, and, above all, common sense. Britain, Canada, Australia and others, including France, which has signaled its intent, reveal not wisdom but expedience: an attempt to manage domestic unrest, to advertise moral virtue, and to wield a diplomatic cudgel against Israel. Recognition is not merely a declaration of sympathy. To recognize something is to affirm that it exists as claimed. One can call a duck a pencil, but it remains a duck. The same holds for statehood.

International law has long relied on the Montevideo Convention of 1933 as its touchstone. To qualify as a state, an entity must have a permanent population, a defined territory, a government exercising effective control and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. These are descriptive, not moral, criteria. They do not require perfection or virtue. But they do require something more than slogans and symbolic flags.

Palestine meets the first element. Today, there is little dispute that Palestinians constitute a permanent, identifiable population. But the case weakens immediately after that. The claimed territory — the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip — remains unsettled. For the protection of its citizens after years of deadly attacks, Israel maintains security control over large parts of the West Bank, and the borders of a potential Palestinian state have never been agreed upon. Gaza, meanwhile, has not been under Palestinian Authority (PA) administration for nearly two decades. In June 2007, after a brief and bloody civil war, Hamas fighters hurled PA officials from rooftops and seized full control of the Strip. Since then Gaza has been ruled not from Ramallah but by Hamas, a group designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and others.

The problem of governance is even more decisive. The PA functions as a limited municipal authority in parts of the West Bank, but it is widely acknowledged to be corrupt and chronically ineffective. Its own budget testifies to the problem: roughly 7% of its annual expenditures go to stipends for Palestinians imprisoned for or killed while carrying out attacks on Israeli civilians, a practice so notorious it is colloquially known as “pay-for-slay.” Hamas’s record is darker still. On Oct. 7, 2023, its fighters massacred some 1,200 Israelis, raped women and dragged more than 250 hostages into Gaza. Many of those captives remain unaccounted for today. That is not simply a lapse of moral governance; it is the active perpetration of war crimes.

Recognition of a state normally implies the expectation that it can honor international obligations and control the armed groups operating within its borders. Yet no Palestinian body can plausibly claim that capacity. The PA lacks effective authority over Gaza; Hamas’s charter continues to call explicitly for the destruction of Israel; and armed militias in the West Bank operate with minimal central control. When Germany recognized Croatia in 1991, or when the United States recognized Kosovo in 2008, those governments at least exercised effective monopoly on force within the territory they claimed. No such claim can be made here.

Supporters of recognition sometimes point to the fact that more than 140 United Nations member states have recognized Palestine and that in 2012 the U.N. General Assembly granted it “nonmember observer state” status. But diplomatic recognition cannot conjure away the absence of a single, responsible government. France continued to exist as a state during the Nazi occupation even though it could not defend itself; that was because it still had a legitimate government-in-exile that spoke for the French nation. Palestine has no equivalent: it has two rival claimants, one of them openly genocidal, the other, more discreetly so.

If the legal and practical prerequisites have not changed since before Oct. 7, why are Western governments choosing this moment to move toward recognition? The reasons have less to do with the Middle East than with their own domestic politics. In London, Paris and Ottawa, mass protests over the Gaza war have shaken city centers and threatened fragile political coalitions. Leaders under pressure to calm their streets and court voters have found that a symbolic nod to Palestinian statehood is an easy gesture. Recognition also serves a second purpose: it allows them to signal even-handedness and to pressure Israel into concessions that years of direct negotiations have failed to produce. These are motives of expedience, not of realism.

Meanwhile the facts on the ground have grown only grimmer. UNRWA schools —  funded in part by the very governments now talking of recognition — have repeatedly been found to use textbooks that demonize Jews and, according to investigations by several donor countries, employed staff who took part in the Oct. 7 attacks. Hamas continues to hold hostages and to fire rockets from beneath hospitals and apartment blocks. The Palestinian Authority shows no capacity, or desire, to confront Hamas militarily or to end the practice of rewarding convicted killers. And neither Israel’s government nor any Palestinian faction is negotiating a two-state settlement. To imagine that recognition in these circumstances will conjure peace is to indulge in fantasy.

Israel, by contrast, is a small nation fighting on multiple fronts to free its citizens, protect its borders, and limit civilian casualties in the face of an enemy that embeds itself among civilians. Since Oct. 7 it has endured rocket attacks from Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Its army has entered Gaza repeatedly not for territorial conquest, but to destroy Hamas terror-tunnels and to rescue its hostages. This is done at significant risk to its own soldiers. That some Western governments have grown weary of Israel’s prolonged effort to defend itself should make no difference to the justice of that effort.

If the true goal were Palestinian self-determination and regional peace, the responsible policy would look very different. It would begin with coordinated international action to secure the immediate release of every hostage. It would continue with the on-the-ground dismantling of Hamas’s military infrastructure so that no governing entity in Gaza could again launch an Oct. 7 – style massacre. It would demand transparent and unified Palestinian governance that renounces terror and ends the payment of “martyrs’ salaries.” It would overhaul or replace UNRWA so that Palestinian education and relief are no longer conduits for indoctrination and violence. Only then would recognition serve as more than a symbolic blow against Israel.

Recognition of a Palestinian state under present conditions is therefore not diplomacy; it is political theater — a way for Western governments to quiet street protests and posture on the world stage while avoiding the harder work of freeing hostages, confronting Hamas and fostering genuine Palestinian civil society.

A duck called a pencil remains a duck. A political entity that lacks unified governance, defined and controlled territory, and a commitment to peace remains something other than a state. To pretend otherwise is not compassion. It is dangerous negligence.

May God bring us a New Year of joy, health, enduring peace, with the immediate return of every captive to their families. 

Peter Himmelman is a Grammy and Emmy nominated performer, songwriter, film composer, visual artist and award-winning author.