Recognising Palestine is both a strategic and moral act

“How are you... all things considered?” is how nearly every conversation starts these days—with Jewish friends and with Palestinian friends.  

For nine months in 2023, “all things considered” referred to the internal collapse of Israeli democracy under its far-right government. Then came October 7, and our worlds were shattered. Hamas’s horrifying attacks killed over 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds of hostages in a single day. The trauma was profound, personal, collective. 

Since then, “all things considered” has come to encompass the continued captivity of Israeli hostages, but also the death of more than 60,000 Gazans, the forced displacement of nearly the entire population, and the fact that half a million children no longer have homes or schools. Starvation is now widespread. It is a manmade catastrophe of unthinkable scale. 

Into this pain comes a political question: Should countries like Australia join the more than 140 UN member states that formally recognise the State of Palestine, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today promised Australia will do at the next United Nations General Assembly meeting in September? 

Recognition won’t stop the war in Gaza tomorrow. But it may help end the moral paralysis that has allowed mass suffering to become normalised. And it may finally open a political horizon that’s been shut for too long.