Today, France finds itself faced with a dilemma which, in truth, is no dilemma at all: should it have recognized the State of Palestine? Or persist in endless waiting, punctuated by solemn statements, as if time, by sheer erosion, could somehow transform injustice into compromise? Those who oppose recognition brandish, with the regularity of a metronome, the argument that has become a slogan: doing so would strengthen, even reward, Hamas. But this reasoning does not withstand scrutiny—neither logical nor factual.

First, one must recall an obvious fact that many pretend to forget: Hamas has never accepted the two-state solution. Its vision, laid out in its founding texts, rests on a permanent confrontation that rejects any recognition of Israel. It is precisely this doctrinal deadlock that propelled it, in minds and at the ballot box, as a radical alternative to a Palestinian Authority bogged down in endless negotiations and concessions. Believing that delaying recognition of Palestine would weaken Hamas is like assuming that thirst can be fought by drying up the source.

So what does it mean to recognize the State of Palestine? It means giving legitimacy and substance to the two-state solution—the very same solution that Paris, Brussels, Washington, and the international community keep presenting as the only possible horizon. In other words, it means establishing a political framework that effectively excludes Hamas. By denying the Palestinian people recognition of their state, one only validates the Islamist claim that diplomacy is dead and that confrontation is the only way forward. Delaying recognition, therefore, would have strengthened Hamas, not weakened it.

The argument of those who oppose recognition is not only fragile: it is cynical. It assumes that an entire people must remain hostage to the intransigence of a terrorist movement—as if the future of a nation could be confiscated on the grounds that an armed faction claims to represent it. Applied to other contexts, this reasoning would appear grotesque: should one have refrained from recognizing Ireland for fear of empowering the IRA? Or South Africa, for fear of strengthening the ANC’s military wing? History, on the contrary, has shown that recognizing the legitimate rights of a people is always the best antidote to absolutisms that pretend to speak in their name.

It must also be recalled that the obsession with Hamas often serves as a smokescreen. Behind the security pretext lies the will to maintain ambiguity, to postpone the moment when diplomacy must assume the courage of its own principles. Recognizing Palestine means breaking with a convenient fiction: that of a “peace process” reduced to a string of meetings, photo opportunities, and suspended promises. It means telling Israel—but also the world—that international law is not an incantation but a foundation.

And finally, it means doing justice to a simple truth: recognition does not create the State; it acknowledges it. Palestine already exists—in the minds of its people, in the embryonic institutions of the Palestinian Authority, and in the daily resilience of millions of men and women who aspire to the normalcy of citizenship, rather than survival under the tutelage of Hamas or Israeli occupation.

By recognizing the State of Palestine at the UN General Assembly on September 22, France remained true to its history and its standing. This highly symbolic gesture does not, of course, create a fully sovereign Palestinian state. But it is a major political act: it pulls the Palestinian cause away from the deadly alternative between indefinite occupation and radical Islamism.

Yes, recognizing Palestine weakens Hamas just as much as Israeli supremacists. Because it amounts to saying: there is another path besides total war or the illusion of turning back the clock to an occupation that would be a disaster. It breathes life back into diplomacy, credibility into the two-state solution, and above all, dignity into a people tired of being reduced to a variable in someone else’s terrorism or security equation.

The time for sophistry is over. Every delay, every hesitation, fuels despair and, with it, extremism. Recognizing the State of Palestine is not bowing to ideological pressure or terrorist threats. On the contrary, it is reclaiming political initiative and rolling back the influence of those who thrive on hopelessness. Today, courage and clarity do not mean postponing. They mean saying: yes, Palestine is a state. And affirming it loud and clear—not against Israel, but in the name of peace, in the name of law, and in the name of that universalism that France so proudly claims, and which the world so eagerly expects to hear from her lips.