The hostages are home. The cease-fire is holding — for now — but Hamas has not laid down its arms and has not returned all the bodies of deceased hostages.
It has already renewed attacks against Israeli forces, inviting another inevitable response.
At the time of this writing, the world is watching uneasily, waiting to see what follows. J.D.Vance's trip to Israel is to support and help execute the 20 point peace plan
Instead of consolidating this fragile pause or joining the U.S.- and Arab-endorsed "two-peace framework" designed to build the foundations for Palestinian statehood through reconstruction and regional security, several Western leaders have chosen a different path.
Under domestic pressure and the applause of sympathetic media, they've continued what Donald Trump once described as a reckless policy: recognizing a Palestinian state that does not exist, and doing so without preconditions — contradicting their own earlier pledges.
Following the lead of nations that have long turned the United Nations into a forum for one-sided resolutions against Israel, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Anthony Albanese, and Canada's Mark Carney have endorsed statehood in name only — while Gaza still awaits humanitarian aid, reconstruction and the elimination of Hamas.
The result is that Israel is not only accused of genocide but now portrayed as the obstacle to a sovereignty that exists only on paper. Carney has even renewed his threat to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu should he visit Canada.
Anti-Israel activists, rather than welcoming the cease-fire, are working to undermine it.
The irony is stark. Even as the cease-fire holds by a thread, Israel again finds itself on the defensive — not for what it does, but for what others imagine it prevents.
Should the fighting truly stop, the next crisis may already be forming: the political push to create a premature Palestinian state that could become a launching ground for regional instability, easily captured by Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood.
A nominal Palestine, unable to police its borders and dependent on foreign arms and financing, would become a new proxy front — far more destabilizing than Hamas because it would carry the diplomatic legitimacy of statehood without the responsibility of sovereignty.
The protests, threats, and street violence spreading through Western capitals are not incidental side effects; they are early warnings of what a premature state, born of fury rather than foundation, would resemble on a national scale.
A Vanished Principle
For decades, Europe, Australia, and now Canada vowed never to import the Mideastt conflict. That principle has quietly disintegrated.
By recognizing a state with no borders, government, or credible institutions, these governments have imported the conflict as social contagion.
The results are visible in the streets of Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and France, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators have turned their backs on the practical progress that the 20-point plan could bring to ordinary Palestinians in favor of a movement defined almost entirely by hostility toward Israel.
In mosques, protests, and social-media campaigns, activists now proclaim, "There is a Palestinian state — and Israel blocks it."
In Birmingham, for instance, an imam recently praised compassion as a core Islamic value, yet urged his congregation to suspend it toward Israeli athletes, calling them agents of an "apartheid regime."
The paradox is evident: no Arab national team includes Jewish players, yet the Israeli Maccabi club — set to play there on Nov. 6 — includes Arabs.
Have any of these high minded Western leaders militated for Arab countries to accept Jews as residents, let alone include Jewish athletes on their teams?
Europe once swore to keep the Mideast conflict off its streets.
By recognizing a state in name only, it has not merely imported that conflict — it has institutionalized it.
Symbolism is easy; state-building is hard.
Until Europe, Australia, and Canada relearn that difference, their gestures will continue to feed the very cycle of violence they claim to end.
Mark L. Cohen practices law and was counsel at White & Case starting in 2001, after serving as international lawyer and senior legal consultant for the French aluminum producer Pechiney. Cohen was a senior consultant at a Ford Foundation Commission, an adviser to the PBS television program "The Advocates," and assistant attorney general in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He teaches U.S. history at the business school in Lille l'EDHEC. Read Mark L. Cohen's Reports — More Here.
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