During decades of resistance against a vicious colonial invader, every Palestinian attempt to get recognition was scuttled by the colonial Israeli power, be it Labor or Likud.
From a 1960s style revolutionary secular resistance, through a 1970s switch to a political approach (Arafat held both a gun and an olive branch in 1974 at the UN), to the 1980s recognition of the PLO as the representative of the stateless Palestinian people, and to the 1990s formal self-governing Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians were labeled as terrorists who do not deserve to have their own state over their own raped and confiscated land. No other movement of resistance to colonial occupation has ever been so vilified by the colonial occupier, as have the Palestinians by their Zionist occupiers.
After all these attempts, which the Zionists in Israel made sure they failed by sheer violence and repression, including the continued land theft and uprooting, the home confiscations and demolitions, the forced de-Palestinization and enforced Judaization of Jerusalem, the killings, and the illegal building of foreign settlements on stolen land.... After decades of Israel violating every human rights protocol, UN treaty and UNSC resolutions, laws of occupation, laws of war.... radical Islamism became the Palestinians' last resort, hence Hamas.
If anyone has rewarded Hamas it is war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu himself. Netanyahu created Hamas as a way to undermine the Palestinian Authority and keep the Palestinians divided and weak. Netanyahu made sure that Qatar kept funding Hamas by wiring money to the Israeli government who then transferred it to Hamas. With that money, and despite the blockade Netanyahu supposedly imposed on Gaza, weapons and money kept flowing into Gaza. Netanyahu propped up Hamas while he hollered to the world about Hamas being a terrorist organization, just as he and his predecessors labeled Arafat a terrorist before making peace, a fake one for sure, with him.
At the same time, Netanyahu did everything to weaken the Palestinian Authority, instead of helping it keep its commitments under Oslo, while he himself violated every provision of the Oslo Accords.
Israel and Netanyahu used the same approach with the Iranian militia of Hezbollah in Lebanon. When the Iranian Islamic Republic was born in 1979, it created Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1981-1982. As soon as it was up and running, (with the help of the Assad regime then occupying Lebanon in collusion with the US because Assad maintained peace along his Israeli-occupied and annexed Golan Heights), Hezbollah's first "exploit" was to bomb the US Marines Headquarters in Beirut in October 1983, killing 243 US Marines.
What did the jackass Ronald Reagan do? Not wanting to upset the Saudis and the other oily Arabs, he fled the scene with his 243 body bags. Had the Americans, the British, the French and the Italians of the Multinational Force stayed and fought the newborn Hezbollah and Syria, with the backing of everyone else in Beirut - the invading Israeli army, the Lebanese army and the Christian militias - Hezbollah wouldn't even exist today. But somehow, at every juncture of this long horrific trajectory since the creation of Israel, it and the West seemed to want to keep the region's problems alive instead of solving them. Protecting and nurturing hostile terrorist forces operating in the region is a rich source of pretexts for intervention, land theft and expansion.
Israel did it again when it withdrew from South Lebanon in 2000, handing the Lebanese South not to the Lebanese government forces, but to Israel's arch-enemy Hezbollah. These days, the Israelis and the Americans are pushing the Lebanese government forces to disarm Hezbollah which is a sure recipe for for a civil war. They had more than 4 decades and many many opportunities to do something, but they didn't. They allowed Hezbollah to grow and prosper, letting things smolder from one war to another, one terrorist attack to another, one invasion to another until the fruit was ripe. And now they are harvesting what a colonial enterprise always wants: More land.
Israel and Netanyahu in particular have made sure that Hamas and Hezbollah succeed because it gave Israel the pretext for doing what it is doing today: Annexing Gaza and the West Bank from Palestine, annexing the Golan from Syria, and the upcoming invasion and annexation of South Lebanon.
Could the Israelis have gotten so far in expanding their Nazzi-inspired lebensraum without the "assistance" of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Assad regime, all of whom they groomed and nurtured for decades? Having used Assad, the Israelis have now ditched him. Having used Hamas, they now are trying to annihilate it. And having used and abused Hezbollah, they are forcing the Lebanese into a raging fire to get rid of it. Why? Because they have reached their ultimate goals: stealing land from their neighbors, and taming and domesticating the long-ago hostile, but always stupid, Arab regimes, now Israel's best friends.
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Canada will recognize a Palestinian state in September in latest push against Israel's Gaza policies
ROB GILLIES
Updated Thu, July 31, 2025
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks with media during a news conference in Ottawa, Ontario, Wednesday, July 30, 2025. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)
TORONTO (AP) — Canada will recognize a Palestinian state in September, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced on Wednesday, the latest in a series of symbolic announcements that are part of a broader global shift against Israel's policies in Gaza.
Carney convened a Cabinet meeting to discuss the situation in the battered Palestinian territory. He said it came after he discussed the crisis with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer who announced a similar move on Tuesday.
Leaders are under mounting pressure over the issue as scenes of hunger in Gaza have horrified so many across the world. “The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable,” Carney said.
“Canada intends to recognize the State of Palestine at the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025," Carney said — a move that he said was predicated on the Palestinian Authority “holding general elections in 2026 in which Hamas can play no part, and to demilitarize the Palestinian state.”
Carney said he's “not in any way or shape minimizing that scale of that task,” though he added it was clearly "not a possibility in the near term.”
"Much has to happen before a democratic viable state is established,” he said.
A mounting push
Pressure to formally recognize Palestinian statehood has increased since French President Emmanuel Macron announced last week that his country will become the first major Western power to recognize a Palestinian state in September. Carney said he spoke to Macron on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Starmer said Britain would recognize a state of Palestine before the U.N. General Assembly in September, “unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire and commit to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution."
Carney said Canada is working with other states "to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution, to not allow the facts on the ground, deaths on the ground, the settlements on the ground, the expropriations on the ground, to get to such an extent that this is not possible.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government rejects a two-state solution on nationalistic and security grounds ...
[Iznogood: But Israel never articulates an alternative, because it has none. The only other options besides two-states are:
1- The status quo: Maintaning the Palestinian population under a brutal occupation while land theft and expusions continue, slowly and inexorably depleting Palestine of any sense of nationhood, let alone statehood.
2- A one-state solution: in which Israelis and Palestinians live in one genuine multi-ethnic democracy. Inconceivable.
3- A one-time massive event of ethnic cleansing, genocide and displacement to void Palestine of its indigenous people, which seems to be the option currently pursued by the ultra-religious Israeli barbarians.]
A symbolic gesture
As with France and the United Kingdom, Canadian recognition would be largely symbolic, but it’s part of a push by countries against Israel and could increase diplomatic pressure for an end to the conflict.
More than 140 countries recognize a Palestinian state, including a dozen in Europe. Macron’s announcement last week made France the first Group of Seven country — and the largest in Europe — to say it would take that step.
Canada has long supported the idea of an independent Palestinian state existing alongside Israel, but has said recognition should come as part of a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict.
Iddo Moed, Israel's ambassador to Canada, told The Associated Press following Carney's announcement that Canada is a “dear friend but at the moment it is an estranged friend” because it "stopped putting itself in Israel’s shoes.”
Unabating war and suffering
Hamas started the war with its attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which militants killed around 1,200 people and abducted 251 others. They still hold 50 hostages, including around 20 believed to be alive and held in Gaza. Most of the rest of the hostages were released in ceasefires or other deals.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians and operates under the Hamas government. The U.N. and other international organizations see it as the most reliable source of data on casualties.
A total of 89 children have died of malnutrition since the war began in Gaza. Israel denies there is any starvation in Gaza, rejecting accounts to the contrary from witnesses, U.N. agencies and aid groups, and says the focus on hunger undermines ceasefire efforts.
The Israeli ambassador blamed Hamas for the length of the nearly two-year war, saying that "in Gaza we’ve come across the worst possible network of terrorist infrastructure that exists any where around the world.
“We need this to end for the sake of all of us because we will remain there and the Palestinians will remain there," Moed also said. “All of us understand that.”
A White House official said President Donald Trump’s position on Palestinian statehood would not change and that he is instead focused on providing food aid in Gaza. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Trump's stand.
“As the President stated, he would be rewarding Hamas if he recognizes a Palestinian state, and he doesn’t think they should be rewarded,” the official said.
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