Carney's 'State of Palestine' just cancelled the election that was the price of recognizing it
Mark Carney told Canadians that recognizing a Palestinian state came with conditions, including general elections in 2026 in which Hamas could play no part. On October 8 the Palestinian Authority quietly postponed that election.
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Article by Rebel News staff.
Tonight on The Ezra Levant Show: the "State of Palestine" that Mark Carney recognized has cancelled the very election Canada set as the price of recognition, and the recognition stands anyway, which suggests the conditions were never more than cover.
On July 30, 2025, Carney announced that Canada would recognize a Palestinian state on the strength of commitments by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas "to fundamentally reform its governance, to hold general elections in 2026 in which Hamas can play no part, and to demilitarize the Palestinian state." The Prime Minister's Office repeated that language word for word when recognition took effect on September 21, 2025. On September 22 of this year, at a United Nations two-state event, Carney said Canada "welcomes the progress on these reforms, including the scheduling of Legislative Council elections this fall," and pledged to help "financially, to prepare for the elections."
Seventeen days later, Reuters reported a letter dated October 8 from Palestinian Vice-President Hussein al-Sheikh to the French foreign minister. The vote set for November 28 would be "postponed for several months," he wrote, because holding it now "faces fundamental obstacles affecting their inclusiveness, freedom of participation and the integrity of the electoral process." Palestinian media say it will slide into 2027. Canada has given no sign it will revisit recognition.
The record makes the delay unsurprising. The last legislative election, in January 2006, was won by Hamas, which seized Gaza the next year. Abbas, now 90, was elected in January 2005 to a four-year term, dissolved parliament in 2018 and rules by decree. Freedom House rates the West Bank under his government "Not Free," with a score of 22 out of 100. Carney says recognition rested on commitments Abbas made in a letter, but the Privy Council Office has refused to release it to The Canadian Press.
The obstacles al-Sheikh cites are also well documented. Reuters reported this week that Hamas remains armed, that the technocratic committee meant to govern Gaza has yet to enter it and that the international stabilization force has not been assembled. Polling by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) in October 2025 found 53 per cent of Palestinians called the October 7 attack "correct," rising to 59 per cent in the West Bank, while 69 per cent opposed disarming Hamas. Its August poll put Marwan Barghouti, serving five life sentences in Israel for murder, ahead in the presidential race with 54 per cent.
The machinery behind that stagnation is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), founded in 1949 for about 750,000 refugees and now counting nearly six million because refugee status passes down the generations. It has nearly 30,000 staff, one for every 200 registered refugees, compared with one for every 2,000 at UNHCR. An EU-commissioned study in 2021 found a textbook that "can clearly be characterised as anti-Semitic," and a July review found UNRWA had completed two of 19 promised fixes. The UN concluded nine UNRWA staff may have taken part in October 7. Ditza Heiman, an 84-year-old hostage, was held for 48 days in the attic of an UNRWA teacher, and Israel found a Hamas data centre under UNRWA's Gaza headquarters. In 2014 the agency admitted rockets were found in its schools three times in one month. Canada lifted its funding pause in March 2024, before the UN investigation was complete, and Carney said during the April 2025 leaders' debate that he would keep paying. The Palestinian Authority's "pay for slay" salaries also continued after Abbas decreed their abolition, with an audit finding about US$105 million paid under the old system in the following months.
Washington warned against recognition. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. had told Canada it was "counterproductive," and the White House called it "a reward to Hamas." China and Russia, which have hosted Hamas delegations, pushed statehood hardest. Carney calls his foreign policy "principled and pragmatic," and critics see the principle as an oppressor-oppressed lens and the pragmatism as votes in ridings such as Mississauga, 17 per cent Muslim, and money tied to Qatar. Carney promised conditions, an election in 2026 and no role for Hamas, and the recognition has outlasted all of them without his being asked to explain.
COMMENTS
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Bernhard Jatzeck commented 2026-10-09 22:15:01 -0400 FlagIsn’t Abbas, as some wag put it, in the 20th year of a 4-year term? -
Bruce Atchison commented 2026-10-09 20:47:01 -0400 FlagBoth segments of tonight’s show are linked by leftist destructiveness. Palestinians are oppressed by Hamas but the lunatic university crowd can’t grasp that. And Carney is gripped by the green scam notion as well as his own greed. And though I went to a distant school for blind and deaf children, the past is passed and that’s why it’s called the past. I made something of myself and so can those who don’t except their victimhood.
