Back in early August Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, together with Foreign Minister Penny Wong, announced that the Australian government will recognise a ‘State of Palestine’. This followed similar announcements by French President Emmanuel Macron, and the British and Canadian Prime Ministers Sir Kier Starmer and Mark Carney. Albanese confirmed the recognition in the UN General Assembly on the eve of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. It was not conditioned on the terrorist entity Hamas laying down its arms and releasing the remaining hostages. It is an insult to Jewish people all over the world.Rewarding Terrorism or Pursuing Peace?
What good will this recognition achieve? Will it bring peace? One of the achievements is that it has been seen as a reward for Hamas’s terrorist atrocities on 7th October 2023. PM Albanese has denied that, but the fact is that Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef sees it exactly that way, and along with other Hamas officials, and has said so publicly. So, the message to these terrorists from the international community is that the murder, rape, butchery and burning of people alive is legitimised – especially if the victims are Jews.
Let us turn our attention to the entity that PM Albanese and many in the international community believe should govern this so-called Palestinian state – the Palestinian Authority (PA). Its President, the supposed ‘moderate’ Mahmoud Abbas, is now in the twentieth year of his first four-year term. The reason he hasn’t held an election is that he knows very well that Hamas would unseat him, even now. Abbas is only answerable to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), of which he is the Chairman. The two organisations are effectively one and the same.
The Palestinian Authority’s Troubled Record
A major obstacle to peace is the PLO National Charter. It is well-known that the Hamas Charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of all Jews. What is generally ignored is that the PLO Charter of 1968 “aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine” (Article 15) and that “Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine” (Article 9). Armed struggle = Terrorism. The widely heard chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is straight out of the PLO Charter.
The PA today continues to behave as if the PLO Charter is still in operation, which it is. Recently Albanese had a phone call with the President Abbas in which he said he was assured that the PA would reform, end ‘pay-for-slay’ and incitement to hatred, and also recognise Israel’s right to exist. The PA has a long track record of saying what they want Western ears to hear in English, and something entirely different in Arabic to Arab/Muslim ears. The PA has broken every single commitment it made in the ‘Oslo Accords’, and it would seem that our Prime Minister has fallen for Abbas’s lies hook, line and sinker.
“Recognising something that doesn’t exist is saying that international law is nonsense.”
In recent statements on various policy issues, whether it is ‘net zero’, defence spending, or even the decision to recognise a Palestinian state, the Prime Minister has reminded the public that (allegedly) he is acting in “Australia’s interests as a sovereign nation” regardless of what other nations – e.g. the USA – might think. The question I would like to ask the Prime Minister is this: does the government of Israel have the same right? Since the atrocities of October 7, the Israeli government has declared that agreeing to a Palestinian state is a non-starter. The 120-seat Parliament of Israel – the Knesset – has voted 99 to 9 against the formation of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. Clearly this had widespread support from Opposition parties, as well as the government itself. So, as far as the sovereign State of Israel is concerned, the ‘Two-State Solution’ is now dead. Who do Albanese and Wong – and indeed the international community – think they are to try to override that? To be sure, the United Nations does not have legal authority do so.
Israel’s Sovereign Right to Decide
The recognition of a Palestinian state by the UN General Assembly in the so-called ‘West Bank’ has no basis in international law either.
However, what international law does encourage is that minority groups such as the Kurds, and even the Palestinians, should at least have the right of self-determination. The PLO was given the right of self-determination for their people through the 1993 Oslo Accords, and had they concluded negotiations with Israel in good faith, that would have led to statehood for them years ago. But the Palestinian leadership squandered that opportunity. The Arabs living west of the Jordan River had been offered statehood alongside Israel in 1947 by UN General Assembly Resolution 181, but they rejected it. After ‘Oslo’ Yasser Arafat was offered statehood at Camp David in 2000. He walked out, went home and started a war – the Second Intifada. In 2008 Mahmoud Abbas was offered statehood by then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Again, the offer was rejected. The Arabs living west of the Jordan River have been offered their own state on at least two other occasions. The stumbling block in every case has been the refusal by the Palestinians to recognise the right of the Jewish people to statehood in any boundary and, finally, to end the conflict. October 7th – as well the 70% support it has from Arabs living in Judea and Samaria – is proof of that fact.
A Pattern of Missed Opportunities
Another deep flaw in the recognition of Palestinian statehood is that ‘Palestine’ does not qualify as a state according to the 1933 Montevideo Convention, which is an international treaty, and therefore an instrument of international law.
Natasha Hausdorff, who is Legal Director of UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust, held a webinar in August with Professor Douglas Feith who has a distinguished career as a legal academic, and served as Under Secretary for Defense in the Bush Administration, where he helped to devise a strategy for the war on terrorism. He had this to say about the recognition of Palestinian statehood by France, Britain, Canada and Australia: “The Palestinians do not have a state under the definitions of international law. For these governments to say they are going to recognise something that doesn’t exist is showing contempt for the international legal concept of what a state is. Recognising something that doesn’t exist is saying that international law is nonsense. They are effectively saying ‘in the name of “international law” we’re going to ignore international law’.”A Decision Without Legal Standing
So not only is the Albanese/Wong endorsement of this fictitious “State of Palestine” throwing both the State of Israel and the Australian Jewish community ‘under the bus’, but arguably it is unlawful. It will likely contribute to further bloodshed in the Middle East, as well as further Jew-hatred at home. Ironically, this premature and reckless recognition may well ensure that a real “State of Palestine” never eventuates. Israel is already considering alternatives that will give self-governance to the Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, and who want to live peacefully with the Jewish state.
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