Prime Minister Mark Carney’s announcement that Canada will join France, Britain and other countries in soon recognizing a Palestinian state is the latest sign of how badly Israel’s international standing has been damaged by 22 months of unrelenting war in Gaza.
Canada, France and Britain were among the first and loudest countries to express their support for Israel in the hours and days after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas.
The diplomatic jolt delivered by the trio’s announcements that they are each prepared to recognize Palestine reflects mounting international outrage over the conduct of the war since then, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to halt the conflict.
On Thursday, Portugal became the latest country to declare that it intends to recognize a Palestinian state at next month’s meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.
Carney’s policy shift on Palestinian statehood met with cautious hope, criticism by Canadians
The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel killed more than 1,200 people and saw another 251 taken to Gaza as hostages, generating an outpouring of international sympathy.
More than 660 days later, most of Gaza lies in rubble and the senior leadership of Hamas has been destroyed. The fighting has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and famine is now spreading among Gaza’s 2.1 million residents.
But Mr. Netanyahu continues to resist pressure at home and abroad to accept a ceasefire deal that would see the last 20 living hostages released by Hamas, along with the remains of an estimated 50 others, in exchange for an end to the military operation.
Mr. Netanyahu, whose right-wing coalition government would likely collapse if he accepted a ceasefire deal, has vowed to fight on until Israel achieves what he calls “total victory.”
A Palestinian woman in northern Gaza's Jabalia gestures at a plane conducting an airdrop of aid in the Israel-besieged Palestinian territory on August 1, 2025. US special envoy inspected a US-backed food distribution centre in war-torn Gaza as the UN rights office reported that Israeli forces had killed hundreds of hungry Palestinians waiting for aid. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)BASHAR TALEB/AFP/Getty Images
The decision to continue the war has left the Jewish state more isolated on the international stage than at any other time in its history.
“Israel may have won these short-term military victories, but in the long term they’ve definitely lost,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and one-time adviser to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. “The world is not viewing Israel in the same way any longer − and I don’t think it ever will.”
Only the United States continues to give Israel near-total support as it continues to escalate, rather than wind down, the military campaign in Gaza.
President Donald Trump expressed his concern this week over images of “real starvation stuff” seen in Gaza. But on Thursday, he put the onus for ending it only on Hamas, posting on social media that “The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!”
Until this week, Western recognition of an independent Palestine was supposed to be the final step at the end of a peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), after thorny issues such as borders, the status of Jerusalem and the rights of Palestinian refugees were resolved.
Palestinians in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip rush towards a plane conducting an airdrop of aid above the Israel-besieged Palestinian territory on August 1, 2025. US special envoy inspected a US-backed food distribution centre in war-torn Gaza as the UN rights office reported that Israeli forces had killed hundreds of hungry Palestinians waiting for aid. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)BASHAR TALEB/AFP/Getty Images
The declarations by Mr. Carney, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are meant to put pressure on Israel into ending its campaign in Gaza, and to re-engage with that moribund effort to reach a two-state solution.
Canada’s pledge to recognize a Palestinian state is predicated on the PA adopting a series of reforms, including a commitment to hold elections next year for the first time since 2006.
While Israel condemned Ottawa, Paris and London for “rewarding Hamas,” it was Israel’s actions that pushed three of its closest allies to take the dramatic step.
Several major human-rights groups – including two prominent Israeli organizations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel − have accused the country of committing genocide as the death toll in Gaza has risen. Members of Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet have floated plans to drive the remaining Palestinian residents out of the territory, proposals widely viewed as flouting international law.
The International Criminal Court last year issued warrants for the arrest of Mr. Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza.
All of that has undermined the solidarity that Canada and its allies expressed with Israel in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks. Two days after the Hamas assault, as Israel was launching some of its first strikes on Gaza, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau stood in front of Canadian and Israeli flags at a Jewish community centre in Ottawa and reiterated Canada’s support for Israel and “Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with international law.”
The message was the same from Paris and London, as well as other long-time supporters of the Jewish state.
International outrage at Hamas was such that it was almost taboo to mention that Palestinians had been living under Israeli military occupation for 56 years before the Oct. 7 attacks occurred. (Israel has been occupying the West Bank, the main Palestinian territory, since a 1967 war. And while it withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, it maintained an air-and-sea blockade that led the UN to conclude that it was still an occupying power.)
But the occupation was always the context. It was former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak who first warned back in 2011 that his country would face a “diplomatic tsunami” if it didn’t seize the initiative to make peace and end the occupation.
“It’s a mistake not to notice this tsunami. Israel’s delegitimization is in sight, even if citizens don’t see it. It is a very dangerous situation, one that requires action,” Mr. Barak said in a speech to the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv that year.
Mr. Barak, who was Mr. Netanyahu’s defence minister at the time of his remarks, warned that his boss’s refusal to embrace the two-state solution was “pushing Israel into a corner from which the old South Africa’s deterioration began.”
Mr. Barak’s “diplomatic tsunami” line was mocked in later years by Mr. Netanyahu as the Abraham Accords brokered by Mr. Trump in 2020 saw Israel gain recognition from several Arab states without making any concessions on the Palestinian issue. But the moment Mr. Barak feared now appears to have arrived.
Dahlia Scheindlin, a Tel Aviv-based pollster, said the hardening of the Canadian, French and British positions toward Israel were being viewed through a partisan lens inside the country itself.
The roughly 40 per cent of Israelis who support Mr. Netanyahu and his coalition government saw the moves as proof that “the world is irredeemably against us, probably anti-Semitic and definitely anti-Israel.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s many critics, meanwhile, would see it as “more proof of how badly the Israeli government has mismanaged our situation,” Ms. Scheindlin said.
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced on Wednesday that Canada intends to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Ms. Buttu, the Palestinian-Canadian lawyer, said it was tragic that it took Israel’s near-total destruction of Gaza − in addition to the death toll, 92 per cent of buildings in the strip have been damaged or destroyed and more than 90 per cent of residents have been driven from their homes at least once – for the diplomatic tide to change in the way Mr. Barak predicted 14 years ago.
More than 3,500 people were killed in July alone, according to the Gazan Health Ministry. Another 111 people were reportedly killed in the 24 hours leading up to noon local time on Thursday, including two children that the Al-Jazeera television network reported had died of hunger.
The violence won’t stop just because several prominent Western states have joined the other 147 UN members that already recognize Palestine. Ms. Buttu said she would have preferred to see Canada and its allies declare that Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted a “genocide” – and save their diplomatic recognition for another time.
“They’re trying to go after Israel, but in a backhanded way. They’re trying to address Israel’s actions – not by confronting them head-on, but instead by doing this like, ‘oh, we’ll recognize you’ way,” she said. “And the impact on the ground, I’m afraid, is going to be a big nothing.”