The piece has been published in J‑Wire by ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim.

The Victorian ALP Branch res­ol­u­tion over the weekend was all about politics, not principle…writes Peter Wertheim.

The ALP Left had the numbers at Con­fer­ence and most of them oppose the AUKUS alliance which was nego­ti­ated by the previous Morrison gov­ern­ment.  However, polls have con­sist­ently shown that the majority of Aus­trali­ans strongly support AUKUS, as does the current Federal ALP gov­ern­ment.  So the gov­ern­ment is at odds with the majority of the ALP party mem­ber­ship on AUKUS, and did not want a polit­ic­ally damaging debate about AUKUS at the Victorian Branch con­fer­ence.  In order to buy the left’s silence on AUKUS, a deal was done to let them pass yet another res­ol­u­tion in support of Australia recog­nising a Palestini­an State.  The same thing is likely to be attempted at the ALP National Con­fer­ence in August.  It is political “horse-trading”, and has nothing to do with prin­ciples.

Sup­port­ers of the res­ol­u­tion have adopted an ostrich-like approach in ignoring suc­cess­ive failures of the Palestini­an lead­er­ship.  These leaders have missed oppor­tun­ity after oppor­tun­ity to achieve a nego­ti­ated peace and statehood with Israel, and have failed to establish an entity that comes close to sat­is­fy­ing the criteria for statehood. There is no organ­isa­tion that is capable of asserting its authority over the Palestini­an people and the territory they claim and forming a pro­vi­sion­al gov­ern­ment.

As for the 138 countries that recognise Palestine, 102 of them are dic­tat­or­ships or semi-dic­tat­or­ships, according to the respected NGO Freedom House.   Among the world’s free and demo­crat­ic countries, a clear majority (just under 60%) do not recognise a Palestini­an State.  None of Australia’s closest allies recog­nises a Palestini­an State – not NZ, nor the UK, Canada or the US.

The Vatican’s recog­ni­tion of a Palestini­an State arises from a deep concern about the fate of vul­ner­able Christian com­munit­ies through­out the Middle East.  Christian numbers are rapidly dimin­ish­ing in the region – except in Israel, the only country in the Middle East where the number of Chris­ti­ans is growing.