Australia’s changing position on a Palestinian state

Australia’s vote this week in support of a UN General Assembly resolution aimed at creating and “irreversible pathway” to a Palestinian state caps a year of important symbolic changes by the Albanese government on this issue.

But there is a fatal flaw at the heart of the government’s policy of creeping recognition of a Palestinian state: the rate of creep cannot possibly match the pace at which the mirage of Palestinian statehood is evaporating.

Shifts in Australia’s voting at the United Nations accompanied by the mantra of a two-state solution do not compete with facts on the ground, in both Israel and the US. Still, with a federal election looming, these factors might help to soothe anger inside and outside the ALP over the government’s handling of the Gaza war.

Last May, Australia was one of 143 United Nations members to support a General Assembly resolution providing the Palestinians with what Foreign Minister Penny Wong described as modest additional rights to participate in UN forums. Wong made clear then that Australia’s support for the resolution did not equate to recognition of a Palestinian state.

At a UN meeting in late September, Wong repeated the time-worn call for a two-state solution to break the cycle of violence, with a Palestinian state and Israel existing side by side within internationally recognised borders. She added, importantly, that Australia no longer saw recognition of a Palestinian state as occurring only at the end of negotiations. Rather, it was now a way of building momentum for the two-state solution.

Acknowledging the obvious, in early November Wong stated that breaking the cycle of violence remained a distant prospect, not supported by many in the Netanyahu government even though “Israel’s own long-term security required it”.

In mid-November, and for the first time ever, Australia voted to support a UN committee resolution recognising the “permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem … over their natural resources”. Australia’s vote was explained as reflecting concern about Israeli actions that impeded Palestinian access to natural resources, about land dispossession, demolitions and settler violence.

Now Australia has added its support to the idea of an “irreversible pathway” to Palestinian statehood. Ahead of the vote, a spokesperson for Wong commented that “if, on balance, we believe the resolution will contribute to peace and a two-state solution, we will vote for it”.  

The pattern of Australia’s voting in 2024 shows a refreshing independence from joining the US and Israel either to oppose such resolutions or playing safe and abstaining on them. But will it have any practical impact?

Just how can any meaningful peace process, let alone an "irreversible pathway" towards a Palestinian state, emerge from the rubble of the Gaza war? As Australia inched towards recognising Palestinian statehood, the Netanyahu Government actually outlawed the two-state solution itself.

A Knesset resolution in February 2024, sponsored by Netanyahu, rejected the unilateral establishment of Palestinian state. A follow-up resolution in July, passed 68 votes to 9, rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state west of Jordan, even as part of a negotiated settlement [italics added]. Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs described this resolution as a “dangerous” violation of international law.

There is now a predictable flurry of discussion about Trump’s unpredictability. But we have two form guides for his likely approach to Israel-Palestine. One is the first Trump presidency, the other the senior foreign policy appointments for his second. Both are bad news for Australia’s policy approach.

In late January 2020, Trump unveiled his “vision” for Israeli-Palestinian peace. This gave Prime Minister Netanyahu close to everything he could have wished: annexation of Israeli settlement blocs in the West Bank; permanent Israel control of the Jordan Valley; a Palestinian entity so sliced, diced and otherwise enfeebled to make it a mockery of the very concept of statehood.

The air of unreality about Trump’s vision was heightened by his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s economic “vision” for Gaza. There, peace-loving Palestinians, their minds wiped of any memory of mutual Israeli-Palestinian brutality, would pass their days shopping in high-rise malls dotting the Gazan landscape.

Both versions were the stuff of hallucinogenic dreams.

Early in 2024, Kushner contributed to discussion about the “day after” in Gaza by urging Israel to push Palestinians into Egypt or Israel’s Negev desert. That would enable Israel to finish the job in Gaza and clean up its valuable "waterfront property”. Kushner’s views sit all too easily with those of the former Israeli justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, who was recently denied a visa to visit Australia.

Those upset by Australia’s decision might reflect on Shaked’s comments in an interview in late 2023: "We need to take advantage of the destruction that we will wreak upon them in order to tell the countries of the world that each of them should take a quota. We need two million to leave. In all honesty, that's the solution for Gaza.”

Many would rightly see that as a call for ethnic cleansing.

Australia’s thinking about Palestinian statehood has shifted — from being an endpoint to a waypoint. But Australia is well back in the pack. Currently, some 145 of the UN’s 193 member states recognise Palestine as a state. These figures include almost half the G20 states. Norway, Spain and Ireland announced recognition during 2024. That welcome trend now confronts a huge reality check.

Trump’s choices for his second administration make clear there is no chance that the US will permit the UN Security Council to upgrade Palestine’s status from that of an observer to a full state. No US support equals no Palestinian state.

Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, was recently described by the Republican Jewish Coalition as “an outspoken defender of Israel who has always had the Jewish state’s back”.  That sounds like understatement compared to the enthusiasm for Israel the next US ambassador, former Arkansas governor and Christian evangelist, Mike Huckabee, will bring to the job.

He is on record as declaring that Israel has a title deed to Judea and Samaria, that there is no “such thing as occupation, no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighbourhoods, they’re cities”.  

Where does that leave the Australian government’s flirtation with Palestinian statehood?

The government is rightly concerned with community cohesion, as well as its own. Witness the wrath Senator Fatima Payman brought on her own head when she supported a Greens resolution embodying the ALP platform’s position on Palestine.

In the world of Trump, whatever the Australian government does or says about Israel-Palestine will make not one iota of difference within the region. But it just might help shape the Australian government’s domestic electoral prospects — there being more Muslim than Jewish voters to be won over. It could also help to end the farce of Australia preaching a two-state solution, while recognising only one of them.

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