Rewarding Hamas will not bring a peaceful Palestine

A general view of UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, Picture: AFP

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The UN has scheduled a high-level conference on Palestine and the two-state solution in June in New York. The main aim of the conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, is to obtain recognition of a Palestinian state from UN members.

The Albanese government should not reward terrorism by making a meaningless gesture of recognition in June before a peace agreement is negotiated directly between Israel and the Palestinians, encouraging Hamas supporters in Australia.

It would be handing a victory laurel to Hamas for its warmongering and terror-driven campaign across the past 19 months. It would undermine any incentive for the Palestinian leadership to engage in the measures essential to achieving a lasting peace.

It would be far more appropriate for Labor to be guided by its own declaration that Hamas can’t be part of the governance of a Palestinian state and work vigorously towards the outcomes that would make that a reality.

Labor should ask itself how it could help to build the sinews of a state, such as aligning with the EU in freezing funding of the Palestinian Authority until its heinous education materials are sanitised of hate-filled precursor material to savagery. This would give us a chance to build a state that isn’t a mirror of the bleak landscape across the Middle East and Africa where a liberal democracy other than Israel is impossible to find.

We should step forward in advocating for a new international framework for delivering aid and development to the Palestinian territories that would bring an end to the compromised UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Aid services can be supplied by other UN agencies, private contractors and non-government organisations. We could offer a meaningful role in assisting with assurance and accountability regimes on funding deployed through this framework. After education, the biggest impediment to a viable Palestinian state is systematic corruption.

The government should heed the Global Imams Council, an international body of Muslim religious leaders. In September 2024 the council held Hamas “directly responsible” for the suffering and innocent lives lost since October 7 because Hamas’s actions “have not only brought death and destruction upon the region but have also led to immense suffering for the Palestinian people”. The council noted Hamas’s “reckless and inhumane tactics, using civilians as shields and exploiting their plight, have only escalated the cycle of violence and undermined the cause of justice and peace”.

Our government also should listen to the Assembly of Southern Gaza Clans. In March, the clans called for an uprising against Hamas, accusing it of gambling with Palestinian lives for “its own narrow, self-serving interests”. The government should note the tyranny Hamas has demonstrated repeatedly through the looting of aid relief and summary executions and torture of all who speak out against it. This tyranny, in place for the past 18 years, includes repression of women, free trade unions and democracy, and the execution of LGBTQI people.

There might well have been a state of Palestine if constant efforts by the PA to get Hamas to agree to the Quartet Principles and form a unity government had succeeded. If the Israeli plan to use Gaza as a test case for a peaceful and economically sound Palestinian state in 2005 when it withdrew from the territory had succeeded and Gaza had been spared the Hamas and PA civil war, there already might have been a Palestinian state. If Mahmoud Abbas had accepted the Olmert plan in 2008 and the world mobilised around it, there could have been a Palestinian state. But none of these things came to pass because of Hamas. To attempt to gloss over that fundamental flaw won’t get us any closer to a viable Palestinian state.

In accordance with article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention the question of aid relief in war is subject to regulation by the power controlling the access to ensure the material is not diverted to the benefit of enemy forces. To ensure relief is being effectively and legitimately delivered under this provision Israel can make this conditional on distribution being conducted under reliable supervision and the technical arrangements for this. Relief materials to date have been systematically exploited by Hamas to support its fighters and revenue stream. Gazan civilians have been the victims of this extortion and denial.

On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Britain was suspending free-trade talks with Israel because the block on aid to Gaza had been “cruel and indefensible”. But the latest tactics adopted by the Israel Defence Forces aim to bring the humanitarian situation under the sort of control specified in the fourth convention.

As the war continues it is necessary to remember it is not in the interests of Gazans or Israelis for the conflict that has existed with Hamas over 18 years to continue. It took the Allies six years of war to defeat the fascist regimes in World War II. The same relief and threat problems confronted coali­tion forces, including Australia, in Mosul from 2016 and were not resolved until Islamic State was defeated. The war with Hamas will never end until its tyrannical regime is removed as a threat.

All civilised people abhor the death and suffering that Israelis and Gazans have endured. If we are sincere about wanting an end to this we must mount a determined international effort to force Hamas to lay down its arms, renounce violence and release the hostages.

Mike Kelly is co-convener of Labor Friends of Israel; Anthony Bergin is a senior fellow at Strategic Analysis Australia.