The United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have announced that they will “recognise” a Palestinian state. They cloaked the move in the language of peace and justice, speaking of “reviving the two-state solution,” of “affirming dignity,” of “bringing balance” to diplomacy. But leaving aside the absurdity of recognising a state that does not exist, strip away the platitudes, and the truth is unavoidable: this was not diplomacy, but surrender. It was not a triumph of principle, but a grovelling concession to terror and domestic identity politics.

Recognition does not reward peace; it rewards bloodshed. It does not strengthen moderation; it strengthens Hamas. It does not prepare the ground for coexistence; it feeds the desire for more massacres, more rockets, more dead civilians. Worse still, it reveals the moral bankruptcy of Western leaders who now make foreign policy not according to justice, security, or reason, but according to the demands of their most aggressive voting blocs.

Let us be clear: Hamas and Fatah have never wanted a state beside Israel. They want Israel gone. Recognition now is not a gesture of peace, it is a declaration that terror works, that massacres yield results, and that the West has neither memory nor spine. These pusillanimous politicians that shame us all still mumble the fantasy that Palestinians seek a state living “side by side” with Israel. It is a lie. A dangerous one. Hamas says it openly: all of Israel is occupied territory. From the river to the sea, their charter states that Palestine must be “liberated.” Their method of “liberation” is murder — stabbings, rockets, bus bombings, the slaughter of families in their homes. This is not a state-in-waiting. It is a death cult armed to the teeth.

And Fatah, the supposedly “moderate” faction ruling the West Bank? Its record is scarcely better. Yes, its diplomats speak, in English, of “two states.” But in Arabic, the maps in classrooms erase Israel, the television broadcasts glorify terrorists, and the stipends flow steadily to the families of “martyrs” who murdered Jews. Fatah has rejected every serious offer of statehood, not because the offers were insufficient, but because accepting them meant accepting Israel’s right to exist.

If Palestinians truly wanted their own state beside Israel, they would already have it. They were offered one in 1947, again in 2000, again in 2008. Every time, the answer was the same: no state is acceptable if it means Israel survives. That is the truth the recognition charade ignores.

The claim that recognition will bring peace is an insult to common sense. Hamas massacres Israelis. Fatah glorifies terrorists. Western governments respond by handing out the prize of statehood. What lesson does that teach? Simple: murder works. Terror works. Burn enough buses, butcher enough teenagers at a rave, and eventually Western leaders will come crawling with recognition papers in hand.

By calling Palestine a “state,” the West flips reality on its head. Israel’s defensive blockades become “acts of aggression.” Counter-terror strikes become “attacks on a sovereign neighbour.” Every act of self-preservation will be paraded before the UN as a war crime. Israel is placed in a diplomatic chokehold, punished not for aggression but for refusing to lie down and die. And of course, by recognising Palestine, they lose what little influence they have on Israel, making the whole thing an idiotic charade – if peace was what they really wanted.

And do not think this will stop at Israel’s borders. The message will be heard in Bradford, Berlin, Toronto, and Sydney: militancy pays. Every Islamist radical festering in European suburbs will see recognition as vindication. Every Jew in the diaspora will feel less safe. Synagogues, schools, and ordinary families will be targeted, while politicians wring their hands and blame “tensions. Or the “far-Right.” Recognition abroad is recruitment propaganda at home. Today’s diplomatic gesture is tomorrow’s knife attack in a London street or a car ramming in Paris.

Why, then, did the UK, Canada, and Australia do it? Do they truly believe Hamas and Fatah will lay down arms and embrace peace because of a Western signature? Of course not. The reason is more cynical, more squalid. Nowhere is it clearer than in Britain. The Labour Party knows that its electoral future rests heavily on the Muslim vote. In city after city — Birmingham, Bradford, London boroughs — Muslim populations are large, easily-led, vocal, and overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian. For Labour, recognition is not foreign policy; it is voter outreach.

Keir Starmer did not recognise Palestine to help Israelis or Palestinians. He did it to shore up support among a bloc Labour believes it cannot win without. It is the politics of appeasement, no different in essence from the 1930s: sacrifice someone else’s security to keep your own voters happy.

In Canada and Australia the calculation is subtler but the principle is the same. Progressive parties, obsessed with identity politics, pander to growing Muslim communities and to activist elites who view recognition as a badge of moral superiority. Substance be damned; symbolism wins headlines and votes.

And so foreign policy becomes hostage to demography. Instead of defending allies, deterring terror, or upholding moral clarity, Western leaders bend the knee to the Islamist zealots. Recognition of Palestine is not an act of justice but of political cowardice, the cowardice of leaders more afraid of losing urban constituencies than of rewarding terrorism.

Recognition is worse than naïve. It is a betrayal. It betrays Israel, the one democracy in the region, surrounded by enemies who daily threaten its destruction. It betrays Jews everywhere, who will now face the emboldened rage of radicals who believe violence is validated. It betrays the very idea of peace, which requires compromise, honesty, and mutual recognition — not the unilateral elevation of those who reject all three. And it betrays us, the citizens by reducing great democracies to client states of woke, identity politics, its perverted ideology mattering more than truth, and terror is rewarded if it comes wrapped in enough slogans.

This is not recognition. It is capitulation. It is the Western Establishment announcing to the world that it will appease terrorists and their supporters and that it is ready to sacrifice its allies and its own citizens to the false gods of globalism and demographic appeasement.

Recognition of Palestine by the UK, Canada, and Australia is not a step toward peace. It is a leap into darkness. It tells Hamas and Fatah: your dream of erasing Israel is alive. It tells terrorists everywhere: kill enough Jews and the world will reward you. It tells Muslims in Western capitals: you are a bloc to be appeased, not citizens to be integrated.

The result will not be peace but more terror. More rockets on Israeli cities. More knife attacks on European streets. More dead children, Jewish and Arab alike, sacrificed on the altar of globalist treachery.

The UK, Canada, and Australia have not recognised Palestine. They have recognised terror.