For Western leaders, recognising a Palestinian state — which a number of Western countries will do in the coming months in a wave started by France’s Emmanuel Macron — is likely to only delay the bigger challenge of how to resolve Benjamin Netanyahu’s relentless aggression toward Palestinians.
Netanyahu now desires to extend the assault on Gaza to full occupation, to be possibly followed at some vague point, he claims, by the establishment of a buffer zone and control of Gaza by unspecified Arab states. This reflects both his desire to prolong the war as long as possible to escape the political repercussions of its ending, and his longstanding opposition to a two-state solution.
For Netanyahu, Gaza can never be part of a Palestinian state. Indeed, Israeli colonists, backed by the IDF and support from the Israeli government, have accelerated terrorism, destruction of economic assets and displacement of Palestinians to prevent a viable state in the West Bank.
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For Western governments — including Australia, which has leaned heavily on a two-state solution as the set-and-forget answer to any question about a Western response — Netanyahu’s commitment to preventing a Palestinian state from happening will eventually strip whatever cover has been provided by mindlessly endorsing a two-state solution, even as it receded from plausibility.
Ironically, Netanyahu and others on the Israeli right have long pushed the lie that a two-state solution and proper peace accords were impossible because Israel had no negotiating partner. But for as long as Netanyahu has been in power, it is Israel that has refused to engage and been intent on sabotaging a Palestinian state and peace — and if that needed Netanyahu to prop up Hamas, he did so.
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Recognition of a Palestinian state might assuage some domestic political pressure in countries like Australia, but it doesn’t address the underlying issue of an Israeli government hell-bent on preventing a two-state solution. All recognition might do is bring to a head the tension between the reality of Israeli aggression and the Western fantasy of a peace settlement.
For recognition to be meaningful, Netanyahu has to be deterred from expanding Israeli colonies in the West Bank and his genocide and forced displacement brought to an end in Gaza. That’s only likely to happen if his government is the subject of real sanctions and international opprobrium, including calls for Netanyahu and other members of his government to face trial for crimes against humanity, alongside the remaining leaders of the depraved Hamas.
Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong have crabwalked to accepting they will have to recognise a Palestinian state sooner rather than later — though they are only doing so because Macron jolted the UK and Canada into shifting on the issue, and because the electorate is outraged by the images coming out of Gaza.
But they have zero appetite for anything serious, such as sanctions on Israel itself (rather than just a couple of its most objectionable fascists). Albanese says he doesn’t want recognition to be a mere gesture, but that is almost certainly what it will be. Netanyahu will continue to pursue genocide and ethnic cleansing with the goal of preventing a viable Palestinian state, and Australia, along with other Western countries, will likely let him.
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In domestic political terms, however, at least Albanese has recognised the imperative of doing something to address electoral concerns about Gaza, hitherto dismissed by Labor as angry Muslims trying to undermine our social cohesion by bringing a foreign conflict here.
The Coalition, in contrast, is locked in a relentlessly pro-Israeli mindset. Sussan Ley first suggested Palestinian children were merely suffering from “a complex situation” before admitting starvation exists in the region, though she declined to indicate who might be responsible. The party has said recognition of a Palestinian state can only happen once there’s a peace settlement (so, never). It claims Hamas is blocking aid to Gazans, not Israel (a proven Israeli lie). And it has linked pro-Palestine protests to Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The Coalition aligned itself strongly with Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in Australia before the election. Clearly it learnt nothing from the hiding it took on May 3 and insists on being the party of genocide denial and hostility towards Palestinians.
But Albanese is the one stuck with the dilemma: what happens after recognition — when it becomes about how to stop it from being a mere gesture?
Is recognising a Palestinian state any more than an empty gesture?
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