In the Media

Daily Telegraph – 22 September 2025

World leaders are gathering once again at the United Nations for the 80th General Assembly. But instead of uniting to end wars, stand up to tyranny, lift people out of poverty or forge a future of peace and prosperity, they will gather for a performance – a pageant of empty virtue, in which each country will try to out-virtue the other in recognising a state that does not exist and has never existed.

They will try to conjure into being a “State of Palestine.”

Ironically, they will do so by ignoring the very standard they have so eagerly wielded against Israel since October 7, 2023: international law.

A cornerstone of that international law is the Montevideo Convention of 1933, which sets out four essential criteria for statehood: a permanent population, a defined territory, a functioning government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

“Palestine” fails on nearly all counts. It has no defined borders, no single government — only a corrupt Palestinian Authority controlling the Palestinian cities of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and a terrorist Hamas regime in Gaza — and no real capacity for international relations when half its leadership is a proscribed terror group.

It is like insisting a mirage in the desert is a source of water — a triumph of fantasy over reality.

As Shakespeare wrote: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” And here, on the UN’s grandest stage, the actors will strut, the speeches will soar, and the applause will thunder.

But once the curtain falls and the applause fades, one overriding question will remain: what, in truth, will have been achieved?

Will the Israeli hostages held by Hamas be released?

Will Hamas have laid down its arms?

Would the threat of terror be gone?

Will Israeli-Palestinian peace be even a little bit closer?

The answer to all of these questions is emphatically no.

Yet leaders in Britain, France, Canada and Australia refuse to acknowledge how this fantasy collides with hard reality, arguing recognition strengthens the moderates and marginalises extremists. History says otherwise.

Every time peace was possible — from 1947 when the Arabs rejected the partition plan, to Camp David in 2000, to Israeli PM Olmert’s even more generous offer in 2008 — Arab and Palestinian leaders turned away. Frequently, they picked up the sword instead – for instance in 2000, when Yasser Arafat reacted to Camp David by encouraging the bloody second intifada, costing thousands of Israeli and Palestinian lives.

Since its formation in 1994, as part of the Oslo peace process, the Palestinian Authority has been showered with recognition, funding, and diplomatic prestige, and what has it delivered? Corruption, incitement, and the glorification of terrorists –  robbing future generations of peace, condemning them to a never-ending conflict.

The leaders of France and Australia are saying they’ve “secured unprecedented commitments” from Mahmoud Abbas, the 89-year-old leader of this corrupt entity, who is now in the 20^th year of the four year term he was elected to in 2005. Given his record, how naïve do you have to be to believe Abbas’ “unprecedented commitments” to reform without any evidence whatsoever that he intends to act on them?

As for Hamas, international indulgence only emboldened it, allowing it to build a terror statelet with a huge missile arsenal and underground military tunnels longer than the London Underground, much of it using stolen aid.

When Israel left Gaza in 2005, it presented the ultimate litmus test of what a future Palestinian state could look like. It was an opportunity to build up a future based on prosperity, peace and hope. But hope gave way to hate and peace and prosperity were traded for violence and destruction.

And now, after the bloodiest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, the world is ignoring Israel’s security needs, and trying to hand the Palestinians what they refused to build themselves.

Rather than feeling marginalised, Hamas praised these actions – hardly something any Western democracy should feel comfortable about.

These countries refuse to accept reality, instead pandering to angry domestic forces even as antisemitism surges to record highs, including a 316% increase in Australia alone. Many Jews no longer feel safe walking the streets. And many more feel betrayed by leaders fixated on blaming Israel rather than the terror forces it fights – forces who are the antithesis to the values we in Australia claims to hold dear.

Too often the West makes the mistake of thinking all others in the world share the same values they do. Gaza proved they don’t.

Whatever the intention of Western leaders, this faux recognition will demonstrate to Palestinians that terror works, massacres are rewarded, and the path to legitimacy does not lie in peaceful negotiations and compromise, but through torture and carnage. The October 7 attack, the bloodiest against Jews since the Holocaust, will be reframed by them  not as crimes against humanity but as a blood-soaked stepping stone to liberating “Palestine”.

 Justin Amler is a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).