Hamas defeat essential for peace

Realism is needed from all sides if the deepening diplomatic dispute over the post-war prospect of achieving Palestinian statehood is not to become a major impediment to finding a solution that will end the conflict in Gaza and bring home the hostages. Foreign Minister Penny Wong was right when, in Ramallah, she reiterated Australia’s view that “achieving long-term peace and security for Israel in its region requires the establishment of an independent Palestinian state”. But with the war in its 108th day, the tit-for-tat spat between the Biden White House and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underlines a rift between the two allies that shows the Biden administration has little understanding of what the Jewish state has gone through since the October 7 pogrom that slaughtered 1200 Jews.

Speaking after the two leaders talked for the first time in a month, President Joe Biden insisted a two-state solution was achievable, even with Mr Netanyahu in office. He was seeking to increase pressure on the Israeli leader to commit publicly to Palestinian statehood. Mr Netanyahu responded by restating what has been his policy for years, “that after Hamas is destroyed Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty”, his office said in a statement. He also insisted Israel must retain “security control over the entire area west of Jordan”, an area that includes the West Bank.

Given the barbaric slaughter during the October 7 pogrom and the war launched by Hamas, there should be no surprise about Mr Netanyahu’s firm rebuff of Mr Biden’s attempt to pressure him into an immediate declaration of support for Palestinian statehood. Suggestions like that on Friday by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, that a two-state solution should be “imposed on Israel from the outside” whether or not the Jewish state is in agreement, show a lack of reality among some Western leaders that is likely to make the quest for an end to the war even more difficult.

After the horror of October 7 and since, the reality is that the Israeli public, as The Wall Street Journal noted, “is in no mood today to give Palestinians a state, but the US keeps pushing”. Like Mr Borrell’s assertion that Palestinian statehood could be imposed on Israel from outside, there was a touch of “hey, presto” dreamland about US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s address to the Davos conference last week when he said: “If you take a regional approach, and if you pursue integration with security, with a Palestinian state, all of a sudden you have a region that’s come together in ways that answer the most profound question that Israel has tried to answer for years.”

That proposition pays little regard to real events in a world in which Israel has been targeted by such a gruesome invasion and the Palestinian Authority, which is favoured to rule Gaza after Hamas’s destruction, has glorified the massacre, pledged solidarity with Hamas, and is paying salaries for life to the families of terrorists who died during the pogrom. It is a world in which the Jewish state is fighting for its existence against terrorist proxies of Iran hellbent on annihilating all Jews. As Senator Wong said, achieving long-term peace and security for Israel may well lie in Palestinian statehood. But realism needs to prevail. The reality is that the more thorough the defeat of Hamas, the more room Israel will have to compromise in future negotiations. Victory for Israel, as soon it can be achieved, would do most to pave the way to peace and eventual Palestinian statehood.