Hamas enthuses about UN vote

Foreign Minister Penny Wong is being disingenuous by insisting Australia’s “yes” vote in the UN General Assembly debate amounts to no more than “the extension of some modest additional rights” for Palestine to participate in UN forums. The resolution, passed with 143 votes for and nine against, including the US and Israel, and 25 including the UK and Canada abstaining, did not confer full UN membership on Palestine. The General Assembly had no power to do so. What it did, with Australia’s support, was declare that “Palestine”, with none of the internationally accepted requirements for statehood, is “qualified” for full UN membership and, implicitly, statehood. It recommended that the 15-member Security Council, which has the power to confer that status, “reconsider the matter favourably”. If it does, the Biden administration is likely to veto the move.

Excitement at the prospect of Palestinian statehood being expedited is riding high in the Albanese government. Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic welcomed Australia’s vote as an “important step” that could accelerate progress to statehood. Senator Wong said Australia will recognise Palestinian statehood “when the time is right … Australia no longer believes that recognition can only come at the end of a peace process”. But Labor MP Josh Burns was right when he said the move will further isolate Australia’s Jewish community amid a rise of anti-Semitism.

No headway can be made while Hamas is in control in Gaza. Seven months since the terrorists’ slaughter of 1200 Israelis and kidnapping of 250, Australia’s supporting the resolution was badly misguided. Hamas welcomed the vote as “an “affirmation of international co-operation”. As opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham said, the government’s vote “advances the wishes of terrorists (and) sends a shameful message that violence and terrorism get results ahead of negotiation and diplomacy”. It would be hard to see the resolution as anything but a shameful reward for Hamas’s terrorism and the corrupt Palestinian Authority, which has still not condemned the October 7 pogrom and continues to pay stipends to the families of terrorists who kill Israelis.

It is not often that Australia votes alongside Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Yemen and Libya. But that is where we were in the General Assembly as the Albanese government turned its back on key allies. They included our two AUKUS partners, the US and the UK. Canada, with which we also normally co-operate closely on international issues, also abstained. Closer to home, PNG voted no and Fiji abstained.

As Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy and a country with which we have, for decades, enjoyed the closest relations, this week marks the 76th anniversary of its foundation, Senator Wong and Mr Husic’s remarks leave little doubt about where the government is headed. They show how far the government has strayed from longstanding bipartisan policy on Israel, at a time when the Jewish state is fighting for its survival and needs its friends.

As Israel’s Rafah offensive intensifies, the Gaza war is at a critical point. It could “immediately” end, as Joe Biden says, if Hamas released hostages seized on October 7. That has been the case since the war started. Releasing all Israeli hostages is key to ending the war and with it the desperate plight of Palestinian civilians. Australia’s decades of close ties to Israel demand better than the government’s enthusiasm for recognising a non-existent Palestinian state.