The Israeli ambassador calls him ‘wonderful’. But Palestine’s top envoy is heading home

When Israel’s ambassador to Australia held a press conference in Canberra last month, he heaped praise upon a surprising recipient: his Palestinian counterpart, Izzat Abdulhadi.

Amir Maimon said he had “lots of respect” for Abdulhadi, adding he was “very sad” that his lengthy tenure as the head of the general delegation of Palestine in Australia was about to end.

“He’s a wonderful man,” Maimon told the reporters gathered at the Israeli embassy on the day the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne was firebombed.

Izzat Abdulhadi’s major regret: his tenure ended without Australia recognising Palestinian statehood, despite momentum steadily building for such a move for years within Labor.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“And I’m not just saying it because I’m a diplomat and you expect diplomats to use nice language. He’s a real fine gentleman.”

Asked about the comments, Abdulhadi appears somewhat bemused, saying he and Maimon had previously held civil discussions at functions in Canberra but had not met since the war in Gaza began 15 months ago.

“Usually, it’s very difficult dynamics between the occupier and the occupied,” Abdulhadi says.

“It’s very difficult to try to separate the policy of government from a person who represents the government that colonised you. For them, it’s easier to do something.”

While most ambassadors hold short postings of three to four years, Abdulhadi, 67, has represented Palestine in Australia since 2006 – a time when John Howard was in power, social media was in its infancy and the militant group Hamas had just claimed a majority of seats in the Palestinian parliament.

“It was a very difficult mission,” he says, adding he did not receive a salary or other financial support to carry out his duties for the first two years because of sanctions on the Palestinian Authority.

Originally from Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, Abdulhadi spent two decades running a Palestinian non-profit organisation before arriving in Australia. A self-described “technocrat”, he speaks in the analytical manner of a university professor and is not a member of either of the main Palestinian political parties: the Islamist group Hamas (now a designated terrorist organisation in Australia) or Fatah, the more secular party founded by Yasser Arafat.

Although far from a firebrand, he reveals he was rebuked last October by officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). His offence? Being too complimentary of the government in an interview with The Australian Financial Review.

With two new political groups, The Muslim Vote and Muslim Votes Matter, seeking to harness anger over the war in Gaza in safe Labor seats with large Muslim populations, Abdulhadi had warned Arab voters against taking revenge on Labor at the ballot box and said they should not let their interests be hijacked by outside forces.

“DFAT told me they don’t like this kind of interference in domestic issues,” he says. “I told them it’s not interference.”

While the Greens and some pro-Palestinian advocates have accused Labor of being too supportive of Israel and enabling a genocide in Gaza, Abdulhadi has adopted a more conciliatory approach, praising the Albanese government for taking a “balanced position” on the conflict.

“They’ve had the courage to take difficult positions that have sometimes attracted a lot of criticism,” he says.

Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni recently argued that the idea of a two-state solution is “absolutely dead”, in part because of the huge growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Abdulhadi disagrees, saying there is still hope for an independent Palestinian state beside Israel despite the formidable obstacles.

“First, the most important thing for us is to have a state,” he says. “People sometimes ignore the importance of a state for self-determination, for organising people, for empowering communities.”

Because Australia does not recognise Palestine as a state, Abdulhadi is not technically an ambassador and has not enjoyed the privileges most other diplomats enjoy. The upside is that rules limiting the amount of time diplomats can spend in the country have not applied to him, allowing him to remain in Australia for almost two decades.

Now, having passed retirement age, his time in Canberra is over (Abdulhadi’s posting officially ends next week but he has returned to the West Bank early because of family issues). His major regret: his tenure ended without Australia recognising Palestinian statehood, despite momentum steadily building for such a move for years within Labor.

“While I was in Australia, my dream all the time was to raise the Palestinian flag when I’m still an ambassador,” he says. “Now that will be up to my successor.”

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