Albanese plans to recognise Palestine but the timing is crucial
Anthony Albanese has made it clear he will not be rushed into recognising Palestinian statehood, despite energetic lobbying by French President Emmanuel Macron and rising demands from the Labor Party’s rank-and-file.
Albanese may have been re-elected with a thumping majority in May, but he is indicating he will continue to exercise a cautious approach to foreign policy, even if this frustrates party loyalists.
Albanese co-founded the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group in the late 1990s, and has consistently argued that an independent Palestinian state needs to sit alongside Israel. Within Labor, Albanese’s left faction led the push for recognition of Palestine to be inserted into the party’s policy platform, a goal it achieved in 2021. He is increasingly aghast at the way Israel has conducted the conflict in Gaza, including restrictions on the delivery of aid to starving civilians.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is weighing up whether Australia will join France by recognising Palestine. Credit: Aresna Villanueva
There’s no doubt Albanese wants to recognise Palestine and intends to do so while he is prime minister. The question is one of timing, and how to ensure any intervention by Australia amounts to more than a controversial, yet ultimately tokenistic, gesture.
“Is the time right now? Are we about to imminently do that? No, we are not,” Albanese told the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday when asked about recognition of Palestine.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong put the issue up in lights in April 2024, when she said that “the international community is now considering the question of Palestinian statehood as a way of building momentum towards a two-state solution”.
“There are always those who claim recognition is rewarding an enemy,” she said. “This is wrong.”
Wong was laying the intellectual foundations for nations like Australia to recognise Palestine before any final peace settlement with Israel. Fifteen months later, though, the government still does not officially recognise Palestine as a state.
Macron, who sees himself as a global statesman, has been trying to breathe life into the dormant two-state solution process and rally other nations to take action. France and Saudi Arabia planned to co-host a high-profile forum on the two-state solution in June, but it was postponed because of Israel’s war with Iran and has since been downgraded to a ministerial event.
Macron initially intended to recognise Palestine alongside other world leaders, but he has encountered reluctance. Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni says her nation will not recognise Palestine before such a state exists, and Germany says it has no plans to recognise Palestine in the near term. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said last week that statehood is “the inalienable right of the Palestinian people” but has not committed to join Macron. By foreshadowing that France will recognise Palestine in September, Macron is trying to increase the domestic pressure on leaders such as Starmer and Albanese to join him.
The situation is in flux. A group of Arab countries will next week condemn Hamas and call for its disarmament for the first time, a move designed to make it easier for more countries to recognise Palestine.
Albanese on Sunday suggested that he wants the war in Gaza to end and Hamas removed from power before Australia recognises Palestine. “How do you exclude Hamas from any involvement there?” he asked. “How do you ensure that a Palestinian state operates in an appropriate way, which does not threaten the existence of Israel? And so we won’t do any decision as a gesture. We will do it as a way forward if the circumstances are met.” Similarly, Starmer has said that a ceasefire in Gaza will put Palestine on a pathway to recognition.
It remains unclear how meaningful recognition would be beyond offering a symbolic expression of solidarity with the Palestinian cause. The vast majority of the world’s countries already recognise Palestine, with Spain and Ireland among the most recent to do so. Yet a two-state solution remains elusive, a situation for which both Israelis and Palestinians bear responsibility.
Palestinian leaders Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas walked away from serious offers of statehood, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has worked assiduously for decades to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. The growing international push to recognise Palestine is driven by a desperate desire to do something – anything – to break the cycle of inertia. Meanwhile, the barriers to a breakthrough – the expansion of Israeli settlements, disputes over borders and the status of Jerusalem to name a few – remain immense.
Labor sources say Albanese is not ruling out recognising Palestine by the end of the year, and that he wants to move alongside other like-minded nations including Britain, Canada and New Zealand. “You can only have an impact once,” a senior Labor figure says, speaking on condition of anonymity.
It’s all a matter of when, and how.
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