Explainer: what Canada’s recognition of Palestine means, and what comes next

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed Sunday that Canada now formally recognizes a Palestinian state. Here’s an updated look at what this means, and what comes next.

Is Palestine a country?

The name Palestine has been attached to an area of the Middle East for centuries. Britain took control of the region after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The U.K. endorsed calls by Jewish organizations to populate the area based on Jews’ ancestral ties to the Middle East. The Zionist movement emerged as a response to centuries of violent persecution of Jews in Europe, up to and including the Holocaust.

After Israel established itself as a country in 1948 in a war that displaced many Palestinians, it fought a series of battles with Arab nations over decades.

At the end of the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied three territories claimed by Palestinians. Canada and other nations consider that to be an illegal occupation.

Israel has control over East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim as the capital of a future state. In 1947, the UN called for the city to become a neutral, international city.

The Palestinian Authority controls large parts of the West Bank through the Fatah party. Hamas, which Canada has listed as a terrorist group, has full control of Gaza.

Neither territory has held an election since 2006 and polls by the anticorruption Aman Coalition think tank have found widespread concerns about corruption in both governments.

As of this week, 151 of the 193 UN member states recognize the State of Palestine, despite the divided leadership.

What is the two-state solution?

Canada has for decades called for a “two-state” solution — a Palestinian state existing in peace alongside Israel.

Many countries support this idea as the best way to stop the cycle of violence and occupation. But some countries, including Iran, have said Israel should cease to exist and have funded groups like Hamas and Hezbollah to attack Israel.

Israel says the Palestinian Authority has supported terrorists and has not clearly affirmed Israel’s right to exist. It says Hamas poses an existential threat to the country.

Those concerns intensified after the gruesome Hamas attack on Israel of Oct. 7, 2023, which saw the terror group and its affiliates kill 1,200 people.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed 65,000 people, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry. The deaths have escalated since a new Israeli military surge in Gaza City that Canada and other countries have urged Israel to stop.

Israel says its aim is to rout Hamas and force it to return the hostages it took in the Oct. 7 attack. Many family members of the hostages have argued that the Israeli government has other motives.

Canada says Hamas can have no role in governing a State of Palestine.

Canada and other nations have decried the spread of illegal settlements in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers have violently routed Palestinians from their homes — often with the support of the Israeli government.

Why is Canada only now recognizing a Palestinian state?

For years, Ottawa suggested recognition would only come at the end of peace talks between Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

But last November, the Liberals said Canada’s recognition might come sooner because of the spread of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the high death toll from Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

Carney has said those concerns have only deepened since, with Israeli officials increasingly ruling out the possibility of a Palestinian state. He has said those comments, coupled with Hamas violence, have “steadily and gravely eroded” the path toward a two-state solution.

Canada is also acting in lockstep this month with close allies such as the U.K. and Australia. Ireland, Spain and Norway recognized Palestine in spring 2024.

What did Carney announce?

Carney officially recognized a State of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly, but his government says diplomatic normalization will take much longer.

The Palestinian Authority has a diplomatic delegation in Ottawa with an ambassador-rank representative. Like Taiwan, Palestine has not been recognized as a state by Ottawa and does not have full diplomatic relations with Canada.

Normalization would involve upgrading the Palestinian Authority’s delegation in Ottawa to a full embassy and would extend certain privileges to the top envoy from Palestine.

To get there, the Palestinian Authority needs to follow through on pledges to demilitarize and hold an election in 2026 — one in which Hamas could not participate.

Senior government officials, who were authorized to brief media on the condition they not be named, said last week Friday that the Palestinian Authority has doubled down on its commitments to reform.

Those reforms include revising school curriculums so that Palestinian students aren’t taught harmful messages about Jewish people and Israelis, and ending the Palestinian Authority’s payments to families of those imprisoned for killing Israelis.

Ottawa says it believes this can help set the conditions for long-term peace in the region, but Jewish groups say the Palestinian Authority has demonstrated over time that it can’t be trusted.

There are longer-term questions for Israelis and Palestinians to work out, such as where the borders would be set, whether citizens would be able to move freely between each state, and whether the millions of Palestinian refugees and descendants living in neighbouring countries would be allowed to move back to their homeland.

Does that mean an election in Gaza?

Canada is only asking the Palestinian Authority for an election, which would take place in the West Bank. Ottawa’s aim is for the Palestinian Authority to eventually have the legitimacy and capacity it needs to govern both the West Bank and Gaza.

Hamas violently ejected Fatah from Gaza in 2007 and has said repeatedly it “will not recognize Israel.” Carney has said a Palestinian state must recognize the right of Jewish people to a country in their ancestral land.

Israeli government officials have discussed working with local clans as part of a possible governance structure in Gaza that excludes Hamas. Some of the clans have been implicated in gang activity in Gaza.

Canada is part of discussions on possible alternatives, such as a security force led by Arab nations that would oversee a temporary post-Hamas government and set the stage for democratic elections.

What does Israel say?

Israel says that recognizing a Palestinian state only rewards Hamas for its violence and will inspire further attacks. It argues its actions in Gaza have been distorted by the outside world, something it blames in part on propaganda from hostile states.

While Israel insists it has met its obligations on humanitarian aid, U.S. President Donald Trump and most major global organizations say Israel has allowed starvation to take hold in Gaza.

The Palestinian Authority’s delegation in Ottawa has said it’s up to Palestinians alone to decide how they are governed, and blames Israel for policies it says have driven people to take up arms.

Why don’t Palestinians move elsewhere?

Many Palestinians use the word Nakba or “catastrophe” to refer to the establishment of Israel and their dispossession.

Millions of Palestinians fled decades ago to refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories. Israel rejects calling these people refugees, saying they can integrate into other Arab societies.

Many Palestinians say they refuse to be moved off their land, even if they face dire living conditions in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is governing in a coalition that relies on Jewish supremacist parties that have called for the displacement of Palestinians to other countries and the full annexation of the Palestinian territories.

Trump at one point endorsed vacating Gaza in order to make the area the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has called for placing the entire population of Gaza in one city — something former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert described as “a concentration camp.”

Egypt has constructed a large barrier on its border with the Gaza Strip — in part because of concerns about the proximity of terror groups like Hamas and in part to keep Palestinians from being forcibly displaced into Egypt.

Those concerns have grown as the Gaza City offensive has pushed more Palestinians south toward the Egyptian border.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 22, 2025.

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press