When Emmanuel Macron announced his intent to recognise the State of Palestine in July, which has set off a domino effect with Canada, UK, Malta and Australia lining up to do the same in September, I lauded the effort here for its historic success in bringing all Arab League countries to jointly disown Hamas, calling for its expulsion from Palestine.
While I am a strong supporter of Israel, I fail to see how the political right in the country wants to resolve the situation, without some sort of statehood for the Palestinians.
Israel could annex both Gaza and the West Bank – but what exactly would accomplish? Something has to be done with the 4 million people living there.
To that end, I think it is not out of place for the international community to apply pressure on the government in Jerusalem to revive the peace process in some form.
However, any such push cannot come by rewarding terrorism – and given the public statements made by Western leaders, one could get the impression that Israel is responsible for starting this whole war in the first place.
The explicit involvement of Arab states in Macron's diplomatic manoeuvre made it an excellent opportunity to place more pressure on Hamas to release the hostages, disarm and leave Palestinian politics in shame BEFORE the State of Palestine could at least nominally be recognised by another few Western nations.
And yet for the past ca. 6 weeks since the original announcement, the pressure appears to be placed solely on Israel, while the terror group has dug in, starving the remaining captives and waiting for the developed world to recognise Palestinian statehood, giving Hamas an instant boost of popularity among regular people.
How exactly does that help to push them out of domestic politics? And how many of them will find their way back into it in due time?
Their exile would be temporary at best and none of them would bear any responsibility for the butchery of October 7, save for the ones IDF has already eliminated.
Is that how the West sees justice these days?
Some countries like Canada or Belgium have made the recognition conditional on exclusion of Hamas from future governance or the organisation of free elections by the Palestinian Authority in 2026 – but, bizarrely, the sheer act of recognising Palestine is supposed to happen this month.
How can these conditions be met if they are mere promises out in the future?
Even if recognition is only to be formalised after they are fulfilled, the official stand made by those countries at the UN this year, while Israeli hostages are starving to death in Hamas tunnels, is clear evidence that terrorism works.
Macron's continued spars with Israel, while he's barely making a peep about Hamas, certainly don't help to create an impression of at least equal, let alone fair treatment of the real victims and the real perpetrators in this tragedy.
France has achieved a diplomatic milestone by bringing the Arab world together against terror, but instead of using it as a springboard to actually help eject Hamas from politics, it has created conditions for its victory.
It's not only terrible news to Israel, which is on the front lines of the fight with Islamic extremism, but to Europeans themselves, as it shows to wannabe martyrs around the world – including within the EU – that they can blow their way up to concessions from the developed West, without giving up anything.
How exactly does that make any of us safer?
