Conditional recognition of Palestine is paternalistic and hollow. It just entrenches delays and external control.
Unconditional recognition of Palestine would have carried deep symbolic and moral weight.
It would signal to Palestinians and the international community that statehood is not something to be earned through negotiations but a fundamental right grounded in international law and the principle of self-determination.
Such recognition would affirm solidarity with a people who have long faced displacement and occupation, elevating their claims to sovereignty without filtering them through external economic and political needs passing as security or governance conditions. Unconditional recognition would represent a bold moral stance that prioritizes justice and legitimacy over political expediency.
But Canada's electeds are neither bold nor moral.
Addendum:
- "I cannot help but be sympathetc to the isaelis....a lot of them have been killed by hamas"
I understand. I have sympathy for both sides. But I have a hundred times more sympathy for the victim than the oppressor. Here are the facts:
Palestinians have not lived with the same freedoms that Israelis take for granted. Their right to assemble is heavily restricted, their political movements are fragmented, and genuine representation is denied under the weight of occupation and military control.
The rise of Hamas itself cannot be understood outside this context: it was fostered and even financially supported by Netanyahu’s government as a way to weaken Palestinian unity and undercut the Palestinian Authority. To describe Hamas only as a terrorist organization ignores this history. It is the product of decades of disenfranchisement, manipulation, and desperation, rather than a simple matter of ideology.
October 7th was not the beginning of a terrorist plan. It was a continuation of the same dynamic Palestinians have faced since 1948: displacement, military occupation, and the denial of basic rights. To frame that date as the origin of violence erases the decades of structural violence imposed on Palestinians, which has shaped every aspect of their daily existence. Seen in this broader historical arc, October 7th was not an isolated eruption, but part of a long struggle over land, freedom, and survival. Call it resistance or self-defense.
When facing a colonizer, “terrorism” is better understood as resistance against an occupying power that has systematically dispossessed them. While violence against civilians is tragic, it does not occur in a vacuum. It arises from generations of military rule, blockades, settlement expansion, and settler violence that the international community has largely failed to stop. This is the same history as Vietnam against France and the U.S., Haiti against France, Mexico against Spain, Egypt against Britain, India against Britain, and so on.
When Israel responds with overwhelming force, the asymmetry of power becomes clear: Palestinians have no state army, no protection under international law, and no equal means to defend themselves.
The imbalance in deaths tells the story more starkly than any rhetoric. Since 1948, Palestinian casualties have vastly outnumbered those of Israelis, and entire communities have been uprooted or erased in the process. To speak of Israeli suffering without acknowledging Palestinian suffering is to look at only one side of the conflict. Any honest account must recognize that Palestinians have lived under occupation and siege for generations, denied equality and the chance at self-determination, and that their resistance, however one chooses to label it, is inseparable from this lived reality.
The Jewish people have indeed suffered enormously throughout history. They have been displaced, persecuted, and killed in countless cycles of violence. But take a closer look and you will see that this history is different from the picture painted today. In all of history until 1948, it was not Muslims who were the mortal enemy of Jews, but Europeans.
Before 1948, Jewish communities living outside their ancestral homeland generally fared much like other religious minorities in foreign lands, sometimes better, sometimes worse, depending on the place and period. Like Muslims, Christians, or others living under empires or outside majority populations, their treatment varied: they could face restrictions and outbreaks of violence, but they also often built thriving communities, participating in trade, scholarship, and civic life when conditions allowed.
In Europe, Jews endured centuries of expulsions, pogroms, and systemic exclusion, culminating in the most entrenched patterns of religious marginalization of the era. At the same time, Jews in Muslim-majority societies lived under a subordinate legal framework and sometimes faced localized violence, but they maintained continuous communities and relative security.
The deepest and most sustained persecution of Jews before 1948 came from Europe, not from Muslim lands.
In 1948, the land of Palestine was partitioned to create the State of Israel, a process led by Britain and the United Nations without the consent or meaningful consultation of the indigenous Palestinian population. Britain, exercising imperial authority through its Mandate, administered the territory as colonial powers often did, treating it as land to be divided and assigned rather than as the homeland of a people with rights to self-determination.
Since 1948, Palestinians have experienced ongoing displacement and violence as the State of Israel expanded beyond the borders set in the UN partition plan, occupying additional Palestinian land through war and settlement. Many Palestinians who remained inside Israel became citizens, but they have often faced systemic discrimination, land confiscation, and political marginalization compared with Jewish Israelis.
In the West Bank, Gaza, and surrounding areas, waves of conflict, occupation, and settlement have deepened Palestinian dispossession, with settler violence against Palestinian communities becoming a persistent feature of daily life. Over the decades, the number of Palestinian deaths has far exceeded those of Israelis, reflecting the disproportionate impact of the conflict on the indigenous population.
From 1948 to October 6, 2023:
Palestinians killed by Israeli forces: about 18,000–30,000+
Israelis killed by Palestinians: about 1,500–2,000
Since October 7, 2023:
Palestinians killed by Israeli forces: about 60,000–65,000
Israelis killed by Palestinians: about 1,100–1,200 (killed in the October 7 attacks and subsequent conflict)
So, if you were faced with the same overwhelming violent oppression and no ability to "vote yourself to freedom" what other option is there? What would you do?