The international condemnation Israel has received after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his plan to assume control of Gaza overlooks one critical fact. Netanyahu has no option other than to embark on this course of military action because Hamas's terrorist leadership has demonstrated unequivocally it has no interest in agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza.
From the moment he returned to the White House in January, US President Donald Trump had made resolving the Gaza crisis one of his key foreign policy objectives. To this end, his negotiating team, led by special envoy Steve Witkoff, engaged in lengthy and extensive discussions in the Gulf state of Qatar with the express intention of implementing a lasting ceasefire.
As recently as early July, hopes were running high that a deal might be possible, especially after the Trump administration indicated that Israel had agreed to the "necessary conditions" to finalise a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the US would "work with all parties to end the War".
"I hope, for the good of the Middle East, that Hamas takes this Deal, because it will not get better — IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE."
Trump's optimism, though, proved short-lived. It was not long before Hamas once again showed its true colours by showing no genuine interest in a deal, prompting the US to abruptly cut short its involvement by withdrawing its negotiating team from the Qatar talks.
Witkoff made his displeasure known, remarking that Hamas's response to the ceasefire deal "shows a lack of desire" to reach a deal.
"While the mediators have made a great effort, Hamas does not appear to be coordinated or acting in good faith. We will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home and try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza."
One of the main sticking points in the Qatar talks was Hamas's insistence that it remains in control of Gaza, despite a number of Arab states issuing a joint declaration for the terrorist organisation to disband and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas's response was to issue its own declaration, insisting that it would not disarm until a Palestinian state had been created and recognised. Rejecting suggestions made by Witkoff that the terror group had "expressed its willingness" to lay down its arms, the leadership of Hamas, which is a proscribed terror group in the US, UK and EU, issued a statement claiming its right to remain the de facto ruler in Gaza.
Hamas issued a statement arguing that it could not yield its right to "resistance and its weapons" unless an "independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital" was established.
As Netanyahu has been consistently clear that he will not tolerate Hamas remaining in Gaza in any shape or form, the terrorists' intransigence has effectively brought efforts to implement a ceasefire in Gaza to a standstill.
Furthermore, it now transpires that Hamas's terrorist leadership was encouraged to adopt this hard-line position after a succession of naive Western leaders announced their intention to recognise a Palestinian state at next month's meeting of the UN Security Council, even though there is actually no such Palestinian state in existence.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been particularly vocal on the subject, being the first Western leader to publicly declare his intention to recognise a Palestinian state next month.
In a post on X, Macron wrote:
"Consistent with its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognize the State of Palestine."
It is unclear how recognizing a terrorist state committed to obliterating its neighbour will bring about any kind of "peace."
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, alluding to the novel Frankenstein, responded to Macron's declaration:
"Macron's unilateral 'declaration' of a 'Palestinian' state didn't say WHERE it would be. I can now exclusively disclose that France will offer the French Riviera & the new nation will be called 'Franc-en-Stine.'"
Other Western leaders soon followed suit. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer attempted to blackmail Israel by suggesting the UK will recognise a Palestinian state if Israel does not end its military operations in Gaza. Meanwhile, Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney joined the growing clamour among naive Western leaders to recognise a non-existent Palestinian state, and, this week, Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, as well.
The pitfalls of this completely unnecessary diplomatic grandstanding, which may well effectively cause the murder of the remaining 50 hostages who might still to be alive, were clearly evident when Hamas responded to Starmer's pledge by publicly hailing it as a "victory."
Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau and the terror organisation's former Gaza "Health Minister", said that Starmer's move meant that "victory and liberation are closer than we expected", and that "international support for Palestinian self-determination shows we are moving in the right direction."
Apart from encouraging Hamas to refuse to accept the ceasefire terms negotiated by the Trump administration, the rush among Western leaders to acknowledge Palestinian statehood was also condemned by the governments of the US and Israel, and by former Israeli hostages who denounced the initiative as moral blackmail and rewarding terrorism.
Emily Damari, a British-Israeli hostage freed earlier this year after 471 days in captivity, directly accused Starmer of "rewarding terror".
"This move does not advance peace – it risks rewarding terror. It sends a dangerous message: that violence earns legitimacy," she said.
"By legitimising a state entity while Hamas still controls Gaza and continues its campaign of terror, you are not promoting a solution; you are prolonging the conflict. Recognition under these conditions emboldens extremists and undermines any hope for genuine peace. Shame on you."
Hamas's intransigence has left Netanyahu with little option but to maintain military operations in Gaza until Israel has achieved its ultimate objective in the war -- namely the complete destruction of the terrorist organisation's military and political infrastructure in Gaza.
Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
