The gov­ern­ment is mov­ing with unstop­pable momen­tum towards recog­nis­ing a Pales­tin­ian state with­out a nego­ti­at­ed end to the con­flict with Israel.

It is long­stand­ing bipar­ti­san Aus­tralian pol­i­cy, and the pol­i­cy of the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry, to sup­port the notion of two states for two peo­ples.

The Unit­ed Nations Spe­cial Com­mit­tee on Pales­tine, con­sti­tut­ed by the UN to rec­om­mend a for­mu­la to end the con­flict, report­ed in 1947 that:

“regard­less of the ori­gins of the con­flict, the rights and wrongs, the Jews and Arabs are dis­sim­i­lar in their ways of liv­ing and sep­a­rat­ed by polit­i­cal inter­ests. Only by par­ti­tion can these con­flict­ing nation­al aspi­ra­tions find sub­stan­tial expres­sion and qual­i­fy both peo­ples as inde­pen­dent nations.”

The the­o­ry expressed here can­not be fault­ed, which is why it has long been embraced. But a the­o­ry with no capac­i­ty to be imple­ment­ed is worth­less.

If it were oth­er­wise, the two-state solu­tion would have become a real­i­ty in 1948, when Israel, hav­ing built the insti­tu­tions of a demo­c­ra­t­ic state, declared inde­pen­dence pur­suant to the UN’s par­ti­tion plan. Instead, it was reject­ed by the Arab side and opposed through inva­sion and civ­il war.

If it were pos­si­ble, it would have become a real­i­ty once Egypt broke the Arab con­sen­sus on per­ma­nent war with Israel and made peace in 1979.

Instead, it spawned a mas­sive diplo­mat­ic and polit­i­cal cam­paign by the Pales­tini­ans, still with us today, to top­ple Israel through inter­na­tion­al iso­la­tion.

If it were pos­si­ble, it would have hap­pened dur­ing the Oslo Process, which estab­lished the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty, con­fined the con­flict to five core issues and pre­sent­ed a roadmap to peace. Instead, this col­lapsed into the hor­rors of the Sec­ond Intifa­da.

And if it were pos­si­ble, it would have become real­i­ty fol­low­ing the Israeli with­draw­al from Gaza in 2005. Instead, it led to the elec­tion of Hamas, the total mil­i­ta­riza­tion of Gaza, and inevitably, the Octo­ber 7 mas­sacre.

Why have all attempts to solve the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict failed?

Because this is not a bor­der dis­pute. It is about the place of an autonomous Jew­ish pres­ence in the Mid­dle East. The sur­vival of a Jew­ish state or its com­plete destruc­tion. And there is no mid­dle ground between life and death.

The his­to­ri­an Ben­ny Mor­ris observed:

“The Jew­ish State had arisen at the heart of the Mus­lim Arab world – and that world could not abide it. Peace treaties were even­tu­al­ly signed by Egypt and Jor­dan, but the Arab world – the man in the street, the intel­lec­tu­al in his perch – refused to accept what had come to pass.”

Things have changed since Mor­ris wrote those words. Four oth­er Arab coun­tries have made peace with Israel. Per­haps even among the man in the street and the intel­lec­tu­al in his perch, there has been some accep­tance that Israel ain’t leav­ing.

But the Pales­tin­ian atti­tude has hard­ly changed since the emer­gence of Pales­tin­ian nation­al­ism in the 1920s.

Why? Because the Egypt­ian, the Emi­rati, the Sau­di might resent Israel as a thorn in the body of Islam, but they are not defined by their oppo­si­tion to it. They can cease war with Israel and still remain who they are.

But Pales­tin­ian iden­ti­ty IS oppo­si­tion to Israel. This is why the Pales­tin­ian flag is tak­en up by those with a fetish for Arab resis­tance and anti-Zion­ist ide­ol­o­gy.

Pales­tin­ian nation­al­ism is inca­pable of accept­ing a two-state solu­tion that would extin­guish their claims to the entire­ty of the land and per­ma­nent­ly entrench a Jew­ish state in the heart of the Mid­dle East. To do so, would not only destroy their dreams of a great return, it would destroy their very iden­ti­ties.

West­ern gov­ern­ments do not grasp this. Through a mix­ture of ide­al­ism and blind­ness, they think this can be over­come by ordi­nary diplo­mat­ic prin­ci­ples of pres­sure and incen­tives. It is a per­fect delu­sion.
In all but destroy­ing Hamas, Israel has removed the pri­ma­ry obsta­cle to the recog­ni­tion of a Pales­tin­ian state.

And we can be sure that con­cur­rent­ly with their pub­lic state­ments on recog­ni­tion, world lead­ers are pres­sur­ing, flat­ter­ing and induc­ing Mah­moud Abbas into say­ing the words need­ed to over­come the final bar­ri­er to recog­ni­tion of a Pales­tin­ian – a com­mit­ment to free elec­tions, mean­ing­ful reform, and peace­ful coex­is­tence.

Once these things hap­pens, or rather, once Abbas says they will hap­pen, there is noth­ing to stop it.

What will this mean in prac­tice?

What will hap­pen to 700,000 Israelis who live in what will be deemed the sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ry of the Pales­tin­ian state? The Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment has shown its will­ing­ness to sanc­tion indi­vid­u­als it con­sid­ers infring­ing on Pales­tin­ian rights in the West Bank, to com­pli­cate the visa process for ordi­nary Israelis, and bar entry to indi­vid­u­als whose rhetoric it doesn’t like.

Will a stu­dent or aca­d­e­m­ic of Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty liv­ing just ten min­utes from cam­pus on the wrong side of the 1949 armistice line be pro­hib­it­ed from trav­el­ling abroad, engag­ing with col­leagues in Aus­tralia? What about Jews who access the West­ern Wall and oth­er parts of the old city of Jerusalem?

Most crit­i­cal­ly of all, what does Israel do? Does it read the writ­ing on the wall, accept that it has emerged from the sin­gu­lar hor­ror of Octo­ber 7 with the great­est advan­tage over its col­lec­tive ene­mies it has ever enjoyed? Does it use that advan­tage, act with tac­ti­cal deft, pledge to nego­ti­ate final sta­tus issues like set­tle­ments, Jerusalem and bor­ders in good faith and put the ball back in the Pales­tini­ans’ court?
Or does it rage and lash out at the West, and seek the diplo­mat­ic cov­er of a whol­ly unpre­dictable US admin­is­tra­tion.

Does it over­play its hand, sub­mit to the demands of the most extreme ele­ments of its coali­tion gov­ern­ment who don’t care if Israel becomes an island cut off from the world, and puni­tive­ly annex­es parts of the West Bank and Gaza think­ing this will show them, when it fact they would be doing exact­ly what the West expects them to do, walk­ing right into the trap it has set.