I’m still a supporter of Israel, insists Anthony Albanese

Anthony Albanese says his government is ‘a strong supporter of Israel’ after branding the West Bank and Gaza as ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories’ and Israeli settlements as ‘illegal’.

Anthony Albanese meets with students from the The Australasian Union of Jewish Students after his policy shift on Palestine. Picture: Twitter / @AlboMP

Anthony Albanese argues his government remains “a strong supporter of Israel” after his policy shift to declare the West Bank and Gaza as “Occupied Palestinian Territories” and Israeli settlements as ­“illegal”.

Peter Dutton accused the Prime Minister on Wednesday of a making a “unilateral” determination of Israel’s borders to avoid an embarrassing factional fight over the AUKUS submarine pact at the upcoming ALP conference.

But Mr Albanese, who has previously accused Israel of “systematic repression” of Palestinians, defended the new policy position, which had been condemned by Jewish groups.

“There has been no unilateral action by my government. My government is a strong supporter of Israel and its right to exist within secure borders,” the Prime Minister told parliament. “We also support a two-state solution that includes a Palestinian state.”

His comments came as pro-­Israel Labor figure Stephen Conroy declared the ALP’s support for a Palestinian state was “meaningless” because there was no such thing.

Mr Conroy pointed to terrorist group Hamas’s control of Gaza, and dominant West Bank political group Fatah’s fear that Hamas “are going to kill them”.

“I mean, this is not a government. This is not a state,” he told Sky News.

Mr Conroy sought to justify the Prime Minister’s policy shift by attacking the Netanyahu government’s support for the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, arguing it was seeking to “appease 4 per cent” of the population.

The Right faction boss also ­argued there was no link between Labor’s policy change and an ­expected backlash at next week’s ALP conference over the government’s nuclear submarine plan. “Let me just put that right to bed,” he said. “The Left will do what they’re going to do on AUKUS at the national conference, and they will lose, and they will lose comprehensively. So there’s no need to do any sort of trade-off.”

Prominent Jewish Labor MP Josh Burns, 16 per cent of whose constituents are Jewish, has refused to comment.

The Zionist Federation of Australia and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said in a joint statement that the change in Labor’s language on Palestine was “counter-productive”.

“Describing East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza as ­‘Occupied Palestinian Territories’ effectively denies any Jewish claim to the West Bank and Jerusalem,” the statement read.

“The most important Jewish holy sites of the Temple Mount and the Western Wall are in East Jerusalem, and there has been an unbroken Jewish presence in the West Bank for thousands of years.

“Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to negotiate the division of the West Bank between them. Describing the territories as ‘Palestinian’ not only pre-empts the outcome of negotiations but is counter-productive.”

It emerged that a delegation from the Australasian Union of Jewish Students questioned Mr Albanese on the new Palestine policy shortly after it was agreed by caucus. AUJS president Alissa Foster declined to provide details of the discussion but said the students were “grateful” for the meeting, of which Mr Albanese released a picture on Twitter.

Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser ­Mashni said the policy change was a “sensible, modest move”, and urged the government to now recognise a Palestinian state.

It came as the Biden administration took the rare step of ­accusing Jewish settlers on the West Bank of terrorism for shooting dead a Palestinian youth.

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