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.