Benjamin Netanyahu calls out Australia’s historic retreat from Israel on the world stage

Benjamin Netan­yahu’s stinging rebuke of the Albanese government’s position on Israel has all but fractured two decades of bipartisan Australian support for the Jewish state.

The critical question the government needs to answer is why change course now, when fighting is continuing in Gaza and when Hamas is still holding hostages and is yet to surrender?

The break has been coming for months, but Benjamin Netan­yahu’s stinging rebuke of the Albanese government’s position on Israel has all but fractured two decades of bipartisan Australian support for the Jewish state.

Known as Bibi, the Israeli Prime Minister doesn’t mince words, claiming Australia’s progressive abandonment of Israel in the UN will reward anti-Semitism and terrorism, as he made it clear he no longer sees Australia as a “key” ally of Israel.

This is a big moment for Australian policy in the Middle East. The supposedly rock-solid support Australia gave to Israel in the wake of the October 7 massacre of its people by Hamas has suffered a death by a thousand cuts to the point Australia is edging closer to being an open critic of Israel’s conduct of its war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Put simply, Foreign Minister Penny Wong by her many actions in recent months has made it clear she believes Israel’s retribution against Hamas in Gaza has caused such excessive civilian deaths that Israel can no longer claim the moral high ground it initially held after the horrific events of October 7.

This has demoted Australia’s traditional willingness to go the extra mile to defend Israel in ­international forums and on the world stage.

Hence we saw Australia give qualified support for the recent decision by the International Criminal Court to issue warrants for Netanyahu’s arrest, refusing to state whether it would actually ­arrest the Israeli’s leader if he visited the country.

Now we have seen Australia reverse 20 years of abstaining to support a resolution urging the “the realisation of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, primarily the right to self-determination and the right to their independent state”.

That same resolution also demanded that “Israel bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible”.

The controversy here for Australia is not so much in the wording of these resolutions. It has long been standard bipartisan policy for Australia to support an eventual two-state resolution and to be critical of the continued push, by Netanyahu especially, to extend destabilising Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

A total of 156 other countries also backed this resolution, including all of western Europe, the UK, New Zealand and Canada.

The critical question the government needs to answer is why change course now, when fighting is continuing in Gaza and when Hamas is still holding hostages and is yet to surrender?

The timing of these progressive moves against Israel in the UN – a body famously hostile to Israel – gives the impression to every anti-Israeli terrorist group that there will be diplomatic rewards for bloodshed against the Jewish state. What’s more, the war in Gaza has made a two state-solution more unlikely and more distant than ever before.

The corrupt and anti-Israeli Palestinian Authority is hardly suited to running a Palestinian state even if a final agreement could be reached. But the cauldron of war in the Middle East during the past 14 months means any two-state solution is so far from being realised that it has become – for now – almost a hypothetical concept.

The notion that Australia suddenly wants to fast track a process that is clearly unworkable at this time reeks of political opportunism ahead of next year’s election rather than any genuine effort to seek a constructive solution to conflict in the Middle East.