Anthony Albanese’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state is a cover for his ongoing refusal to take any action that would make a difference over Gaza—and impose sanctions.
Australian Palestine Action Network’s Nasser Mashni rightly described it as “a cynical political smokescreen, an empty gesture designed to shield Australia’s economic, military and diplomatic ties, protect Israel and enable this rogue state to continue its deadly war crimes with impunity”.
But it is also proof that the protests for Palestine are having an impact. The decision comes a week after the massive 300,000-strong march over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It saw Albanese reverse his declaration just two weeks ago that recognition of a Palestinian state was not imminent.
The Labor government is scrambling to try to put some distance between itself and Israel’s war criminal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as horror at Israel’s brutal starvation and massacres grows.
Netanyahu is moving to escalate the savagery even further, announcing that Israel’s military is seizing full control of Gaza City, with the aim of forcing out hundreds of thousands of people. This is a further step towards moving Palestinians into the south of Gaza to carry out ethnic cleansing.
He says Israel will eventually occupy the whole of the Gaza strip. Israel has dismissed any notion of a ceasefire or an end to the war.
On Sunday it carried out the brazen assassination of Al Jazeera journalist in Gaza Anas al-Sharif, along with four other Al Jazeera staff, in a targeted strike.
The Albanese government has begun to use stronger words of criticism of Israel. This week it signed yet another statement alongside other countries calling for aid to be allowed into Gaza and describing the situation there as “unimaginable”.
The German government, Israel’s biggest arms supplier after the US, has announced a halt to further weapons exports. But Albanese still refuses to ban the export of weapons parts being used in the genocide, or to impose wider sanctions on intelligence sharing and trade—actions that would actually impact Israel and impose real pressure to halt its genocide.
Two-state solution
Labor’s shift on recognition comes after the UK, France and Canada all announced plans to recognise a Palestinian state in September at the meeting of the UN General Assembly.
Albanese says his announcement is designed to strengthen the push for a two-state solution, claiming this is the “best hope to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East”.
For decades Western leaders have presented this as the way to deliver peace. But it has always been a fraud.
The promise of a Palestinian state has been used to demand concession after concession from the Palestinians while Israel has continued to entrench their dispossession.
This continues to be true.
Albanese says that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has agreed to new conditions demanded by Western states, including demilitarising so any state would have no army. Israel, however, is not expected to disarm. The PA has also committed to ending payments to Palestinian prisoners (many of them held in military prisons without charge) and holding elections.
Albanese said it was part of an effort he hopes “isolates Hamas, disarms it, and drives it out of the region once and for all”.
This is because they prefer to see control of the Palestinian Territories in the hands of the PA, which collaborates with Israel to repress any resistance to the Israeli occupation in the West Bank.
As a result it has little credibility left among Palestinians. Just 19 per cent of Palestinians in the West Bank approve of the PA’s performance, according to a May poll for the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. Hamas remains more popular than the PA.
But Palestinians have a right to resist Israel’s brutal military occupation and murderous onslaughts in both the West Bank and Gaza.
Israeli apartheid state
Israel has imposed a system of apartheid in the West Bank benefiting Israeli settlers, where Palestinians are denied basic legal rights as it continues to drive them from their homes and to steal more land.
There are 750,000 Israelis living in settlements across the supposed area of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Israel has been continually expanding settlements there for almost 60 years.
In May it announced a sweeping plan for 22 new settlements across the area, in what Defence Minister Israel Katz described as “a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state”.
Since the genocide in Gaza began in October 2023, violent Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians have escalated, through vandalising and setting fire to businesses, homes and fields. Almost 1000 Palestinians have been murdered in near-daily attacks.
Any Palestinian state in this context would not deliver peace but only continued Israeli domination and oppression.
It would do nothing to challenge Israel’s position as a watchdog state for Western imperialist interests in the Middle East, armed to the teeth by the US and its allies like Australia.
But the possibility of any Palestinian state alongside Israel today is virtually zero.
The moves to recognise a Palestinian state have enraged Netanyahu. Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, overwhelmingly voted to reject any form of Palestinian state by 68 votes to nine a year ago, claiming that it was “an existential danger”.
Donald Trump has backed Israel. A Palestinian state is no longer an aim of US policy, its Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said in June.
Israel is not willing to concede any return of Palestinian land and intends to continue escalating its murderous campaign against the Palestinian people.
Diplomatic support for a separate Palestinian state is one sign of Israel’s growing pariah status globally. But justice for Palestine requires an end to the West’s arming of Israel and serious sanctions.
It means an end to the apartheid state of Israel. It is a single democratic secular state from the river to the sea, with equal rights for all, that holds the hope to free Palestine.
By James Supple
