August 6, 2025
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/richard-robertson-carneys-palestine-recognition-100023057.html
Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada intends to recognize a Palestinian state in September. This would be a dangerous, highly premature decision — and a foreign policy blunder that could embarrass Canada while compounding the crisis in the Middle East instead of bringing Israelis and Palestinians anywhere closer to a lasting peace.
The government’s dubious plan is predicated on assurances from the ruling Palestinian Authority (PA) that it will demilitarize and hold elections (for the first time in nearly two decades) that exclude Hamas, the terrorist group that launched the October 7 massacre and continues to hold dozens of hostages.
Canada should know, from experience, not to treat the PA as a legitimate state actor. It has offered similar rhetorical concessions in the past, but few, if any, have ever come to fruition. Instead, despite past pledges to de-radicalize, the PA has time and again sponsored terrorism, fostered violent antisemitism in its schools, directed official media to incite hate and suppressed dissidents. Its leadership, moreover, is corrupt and has long exploited international aid for personal gain.
That Canada would entrust this governing body with self-actuating on a democratic transformation calls Ottawa’s foreign policy into question. Carney indicated that he is working directly with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, a notorious Holocaust denier whose authoritarian regime has stymied past attempts at establishing peaceful co-existence. He was elected in 2005 to a four-year term, but has ruled for nearly two decades without receiving a renewed mandate from the Palestinian people.
There are alternatives to the discredited PA, yet Carney’s decision treats the PA as the only viable option capable for reforming and leading a Palestinian state. Instead of taking a novel approach to establishing a democratic Palestine, Canada has put the cart before the horse and chosen to throw its support behind a Palestinian quasi-state that has proven to be incapable of any meaningful change. It is folly to assume that a failed state can reinvent itself into a legitimate democratic actor.
If Canada’s objective is to support Palestinian-led efforts to achieve statehood, it would be more consistent with Canadian values for our government to empower the Palestinian people to cultivate leadership that is better and more capable of honouring commitments to de-radicalization and democratic reform. The logical time to recognize a Palestinian state is once it has demonstrated that it is capable of operating as such.
Another serious problem is that Carney’s statement treats the issues of Hamas, and the Israelis it still holds hostage, as though they were ancillary concerns. It is unreasonable to expect Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza until it has rescued the hostages and obtained Hamas’s unconditional surrender. Neither the return of the hostages or the end of Hamas is guaranteed through Canada’s premature recognition a Palestinian state.
Palestine must earn recognition from the international community; it cannot be unilaterally bestowed by foreign governments. The global focus must be on working to bring two parties capable of establishing a lasting peace to the negotiating table to determine their own future.
Hastily declaring Palestine a state may appease some on Canada’s political fringes, but the mainstream Canadian public should not tolerate a half-baked foreign policy with such a low prospect of securing a lasting and just peace.
Our foreign policy must be grounded in Canadian values and moral clarity. History will judge those of us that choose expedience over principle, sanitizing the stains of terror and placing hollow hope in an illegitimate, unworthy regime.
Postmedia Network
Richard Robertson is the director of research and advocacy at B’nai Brith Canada.
