Who is in charge of Australia’s foreign policy to Israel and the Middle East?

Jason Clare and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Just who is in charge of Australia’s foreign policy in relation to Israel and the Middle East? What is the policy? And, who in the government can actually openly embrace, explain and defend the policy?

The simple answer to all these questions is that nobody knows – no one apparently in the Labor government, certainly no one in Israel or the United States and, curiously, no one in the Albanese cabinet.

What is known is that the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Defence Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Health Minister and the Education Minister, as well as every Labor MP, have all publicly declared positions in the lead up to the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks and appear, at the very least, to be confused and contradict Australia’s previous bi-partisan Israel policy and the United States’ position.

Jason Clare, as the Education Minister and Labor MP for the western Sydney electorate of Blaxland, which has a high Muslim and Lebanese constituency, is the latest to go public and revert to the original position soon after the Israeli retribution in Gaza, of accusing Israel of breaching international law and committing war crimes of bombing hospitals and schools.

“The bombing of schools and the bombing of hospitals, I think, are not complying with international law,” he told the ABC.

“Every country has the right to defend itself, but it also needs to comply with international law,” he said.

He said his electorate did not just see a war on the other side of the world but saw images of people dying who were often family and friends.

“They’re asking for a ceasefire and for the war to end, and I don’t think that is too much to ask,” he said.

Mr Clare’s contribution is the latest in a series of public declarations, which began with Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong’s change of policy in asking for a timetable for a two-State solution and a rejection of any Israeli incursion into Lebanon. That was followed up with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles adopting the US language of Israel’s “right to respond” without specifying Lebanon. Cabinet minister Mark Butler’s unequivocal declaration of Israel’s right to respond to attacks was also throw in, as well as Mr Albanese’s Tuesday “condolence motion” calling for a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza and his Wednesday Sky appearance saying Australia was not contradicting the US position on land action in Lebanon and a ceasefire with Hezbollah or Hamas.

The Australian government policy on Israel and the two-state solution has changed and the position is different to that of Joe Biden’s administration.

It is also seen as being driven by domestic political considerations – such as Clare’s electoral survival – betraying Jewish Australians and encouraging increasingly aggressive and unpopular pro-Palestinian protests.

The government has every right to change its foreign policy on Israel and a duty to do what it can to stem conflict in Australia but the continuing confusion and lack of a clear political and moral position is only making the whole situation worse.