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We Must Not Reward Hamas' Barbaric Violence of Oct. 7
(Daily Express-UK) Keith Black - On Oct. 7, Hamas murdered 1,200 innocent men, women and children in Israel, after large parts of the Arab world had made the courageous decision to end their hostility towards Israel. The UK should be encouraging the Palestinians to follow suit. Instead, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, said that "we - with allies - will look at the issue of recognizing a Palestinian state," suggesting the UK Government could take this momentous and consequential step before a two-state solution had been negotiated. No matter how well-intentioned, this would only encourage more violence and less diplomacy. It would send a strong signal to Hamas terrorists that their aims can be furthered by the most heinous of acts. It would weaken the voices of those Palestinians who have argued for a peaceful, negotiated solution to the conflict. Indeed, it would amount to rewarding the atrocities of Oct. 7. Crucially, unilateral recognition would also undermine the necessary message to the Palestinian leadership that they must negotiate and collaborate with Israel to ensure they can share a mutually-beneficial peace. It would lead the Palestinian Authority to believe that their aims can be achieved in the international arena alone, without agreement of the State of Israel and the Israeli people. Instead, the UK Government would do better to focus on pushing the Palestinian Authority to remove its self-imposed barriers to peace - including their horrific pay-for-slay program or their wide-scale teaching of antisemitism in classrooms to radicalize children against Jews and Israelis. The writer is chair of the Jewish Leadership Council in the UK.