ECAJ statement on the Australian government’s recognition of the “State of Palestine”.

The ECAJ express­es its dis­may at the recog­ni­tion by the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment of the “inde­pen­dent and sov­er­eign State of Pales­tine”.

The deci­sion:

• impos­es no pre-con­di­tions on the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty (PA);
• does not require the PA express­ly to hon­our any of the “direct under­tak­ings” it has appar­ent­ly giv­en to Aus­tralia;
• pro­vides no expla­na­tion as to how the state­ment that “Hamas will have no role in Pales­tine” will be achieved; and
• does not indi­cate what will hap­pen if any of the under­tak­ings are not hon­oured, or if Hamas con­tin­ues to con­trol Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ry.

The joint state­ment of the Prime Min­is­ter and For­eign Min­is­ter that “fur­ther steps” con­se­quent on recog­ni­tion will be con­sid­ered as the “PA makes progress on its com­mit­ments to reform”, is so vague as to be mean­ing­less, and pro­vides no reas­sur­ance that the PA will be held to hon­our its “direct under­tak­ings.”

Australia’s past prac­tice has been to recog­nise new states such as East Tim­or and South Sudan after they have begun to oper­ate as states, not before, and after their gov­ern­ments have demon­strat­ed a capac­i­ty to con­trol their ter­ri­to­ry and deliv­er on their inter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments, not before. There is no Pales­tin­ian enti­ty that comes close to meet­ing these cri­te­ria.

Far from cre­at­ing momen­tum towards a two-state peace, recog­ni­tion of a Pales­tin­ian state in these cir­cum­stances will set the process back. Hamas and the oth­er ter­ror­ist groups have already hailed the move as a reward for their vio­lence and rejec­tion­ism towards Israel, the “fruits” of the atroc­i­ties it com­mit­ted in Israel on Octo­ber 7. They will now have less incen­tive, not more, to release the hostages and dis­arm.

Australia’s recog­ni­tion of a state of Pales­tine before any of these con­di­tions are ful­filled will there­fore pro­long Hamas’s sur­vival, which in turn will pro­long the war and the suf­fer­ing on both sides. It will cre­ate the con­di­tions for Hamas to regroup and rearm in prepa­ra­tion for an even more cost­ly round of blood­shed in the future.

Progress towards a two-state solu­tion is total­ly illu­so­ry in cir­cum­stances where the PA:

• has nev­er accept­ed and still does not accept Israel as the State of the Jew­ish peo­ple, while insist­ing that Pales­tine will be an Arab State;
• demands an unlim­it­ed “right of return” not only for the refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars but also for their descen­dants ad infini­tum, to live in Israel; and
• lacks the sup­port of the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple.

The deci­sion to recog­nise a Pales­tin­ian state in the present cir­cum­stances has no real­is­tic prospect of achiev­ing its stat­ed aims, aban­dons the hostages and the peo­ple of Gaza to the con­tin­u­ing atroc­i­ties of Hamas, and will only serve to make the con­flict even worse.