US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Trump administration officials and lawmakers in the US Congress are largely lambasting the decision by allies the UK, Canada, Portugal, and Australia to recognize a Palestinian state on Sunday, saying that the declarations reward terrorism and serve as a setback for peace negotiations in the Middle East.

“Our focus remains on serious diplomacy, not performative gestures,” a US State Department spokesperson told AFP. “Our priorities are clear: the release of the hostages, the security of Israel, and peace and prosperity for the entire region that is only possible free from Hamas.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has similarly repudiated the decision as “reckless,” arguing it will only make peace a more distant prospect.

“We warned them that we thought that was counterproductive.  We actually think it’s undermined negotiations, because it emboldened Hamas, and we think it undermines future prospects of peace in the region,” Rubio told reporters while traveling to Israel last week. “Right now, we’re focused on how we can end what’s happening in Gaza. How can we end Hamas, how can we get the hostages freed, and how can we create a framework so that the people of Gaza can have a much better life than they ever had under Hamas? That’s what the president wants and that’s what we’re going to continue to work on.”

US President Donald Trump “disagrees” with the countries that officially recognized a Palestinian state and “believes it is a reward to Hamas,” according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. She said on Monday that Trump views the move as “just more talk and not enough action from some of our friends and allies” and “feels this does not do anything to release the hostages” in Gaza and “does nothing to end this conflict and bring this war to a close.”

On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, US lawmakers expressed similar criticism of the decision to recognize a Palestinian state.

“Recognition of a ‘State of Palestine’ is empty virtue signaling that only rewards the Hamas butchers and rapists,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) said in a statement. 

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) echoed these sentiments, rebuking Western allies for “rewarding” Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, mass slaughter of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 hostages across southern Israel.

“To those Western leaders who embrace this, I do not believe you are antisemitic, just shockingly ignorant and blind to what you are doing,” Graham said. 

“Western Democracies recognizing a mythical Palestinian state – one without leaders, one without borders, one without a capital, and one without accommodations for Israel’s security – is truly rewarding the largest slaughter of Jews since World War II,” he continued. 

In a landmark shift on Sunday during the United Nations General Assembly, the UK, Canada, Portugal and Australia formally recognized a “State of Palestine,” breaking with decades of Western diplomatic hesitation and signaling deepening frustration with Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. The coordinated declarations were presented as a move to revive the two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to affirm what they described as Palestinian rights to self-determination.

Israel condemned the decisions as rewarding Hamas and warned they could further undermine peace prospects. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lambasted the countries for “giving a huge reward” to the terrorist group.

“I have a clear message to those leaders who recognize a Palestinian state after the terrible massacre on Oct. 7th, 2023: You are giving a huge reward to terrorism,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hamas leaders reacted joyously to the news.

Mahmoud Mardawi, a senior Hamas official, called the declarations “a victory for Palestinian rights and the justice of our cause.”