France, Britain, Australia, and Canada have all announced they now “recognize” a Palestinian state. There is only one problem: there is no Palestinian state. What these governments are doing is not diplomacy. It’s theater.

What does exist is the Palestinian Authority — a governing body created by agreements in the 1990s to administer Palestinian cities in the West Bank. It was never a state. It was meant to be a temporary step toward negotiations. Its president, Mahmoud Abbas, was elected in 2005 for a four-year term. That term ended in 2009, yet he never left office. For nearly two decades, there have been no new elections. The Palestinian Authority clings to power without a democratic mandate, while polls show that if elections were held, Hamas — the terrorist group responsible for the October 7 massacre — would likely win. So when Western governments say they “recognize a Palestinian state,” what exactly are they recognizing? A failed authority that cancels elections? Or a democracy that would hand the keys to Hamas?

This leads to the first question: should this Palestinian state be a democracy? If the answer is yes, then Hamas — an openly genocidal terror group — is the likely winner at the ballot box. If the answer is no, then the world is recognizing a dictatorship and pretending it’s a state. Either way, the contradiction is glaring.

The second question is just as basic: if Hamas cannot be in power, who will remove them? Every Western leader insists Hamas must have no role in Gaza, but the same leaders demand that Israel stop fighting. Without Israel, who exactly is going to disarm Hamas, dismantle its terror infrastructure, and free the hostages? Certainly not the Palestinians themselves — polls show large majorities oppose disarming Hamas, even if doing so would end the war. Declaring Hamas must go is easy. Explaining who will make that happen, if not Israel, is impossible.

The third question is about weapons and armies: will this new state have its own military? Some diplomats say the state would be “demilitarized.” That sounds reassuring in a press release, but in practice it’s a fantasy. Terror cells in the West Bank are already producing rockets. Smuggling networks keep weapons flowing into Gaza. If a Palestinian state controls its own security, Israel is being asked to trust the same people who celebrated the slaughter of babies and children on October 7 to police the terror networks they cheer in the streets. If the state does not control its own security, then who does? Foreign peacekeepers? Israel itself? No one has a serious answer.

Fourth, what about education? Since the Palestinian Authority took over schools in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the curriculum has taught children that Israel should be destroyed and that becoming a “martyr” is the highest calling. This is not ancient history — it is the current textbook material. A Palestinian state means terrorists will have full control of education. If recognition of “Palestine” comes before societal reform, terrorist indoctrination of Arab children will be official state policy. Western governments need to explain how they intend to change an education system that has already produced generations of murderous terrorists. So far, they haven’t.

And then there is the fifth question, which goes to history itself: why wasn’t a Palestinian state created between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan ruled Judea and Samaria and Egypt ruled Gaza? The answer is simple. Because the goal was never Palestinian independence. The goal was the elimination of Israel. That hasn’t changed. Today, a majority of Palestinians openly reject a two-state solution. The same people Western leaders claim to be “recognizing” do not even want the thing they are being offered.

This is the core problem. Recognition is being handed out as though it were a shortcut to peace. But the hard facts on the ground remain: a leadership that cancels elections, a population that supports Hamas, terrorists armed and entrenched, schools that preach Israel’s destruction, and a history that shows the true goal has always been Israel’s elimination. Declaring a Palestinian state does not answer any of these problems. It papers them over. And the result will not be peace. It will be more war.

Rabbi Pesach Wolicki is the Executive Director of Israel365 Action.