But who will now fin­ish the mis­sion of root­ing out Hamas in Gaza or stop­ping it from dom­i­nat­ing in the West Bank? The Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty? Inter­na­tion­al peace­keep­ers? Only Israel has shown the will­ing­ness and abil­i­ty to con­front Hamas.

The com­mit­ments made by the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty to live in peace, demil­i­tarise and engage in wide­spread reforms are a good start. But con­di­tions that can­not or will not be enforced are mean­ing­less.

Antho­ny Albanese and the For­eign Min­is­ter failed to clear­ly artic­u­late how the com­mit­ments made by the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty will be enforced and the con­se­quences if they fail.

This announce­ment removes any incen­tive or diplo­mat­ic pres­sure for the Pales­tini­ans to do the things that have always stood in the way of end­ing the con­flict, specif­i­cal­ly the recog­ni­tion of ­Israel as a Jew­ish state and the need to nego­ti­ate the five final sta­tus issues that sep­a­rate the sides.

Israel will feel wronged and aban­doned by a long­stand­ing ally.

The Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty will feel that a huge diplo­mat­ic prize has been dropped in its lap, despite its con­sis­tent fail­ures to reform, democ­ra­tise and agree to peace­ful coex­is­tence along­side a Jew­ish state.

Hamas and oth­er Islamist groups will see that bar­bar­i­ty on a grand scale can lead to desired polit­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion.

While we believe that the gov­ern­ment sin­cere­ly believes in a two-state solu­tion and that these moves will help achieve it, we fear that its actions, intend­ed to side­line extrem­ists, will have the exact oppo­site effect.

It will encour­age Hamas to keep fight­ing and heap more ­mis­ery on its peo­ple, and it will ­invig­o­rate the most extreme ele­ments of the anti-Israel move­ment, those who have tar­get­ed elec­torate offices, gal­leries, Jew­ish fam­i­lies, indi­vid­u­als and din­ers in Mel­bourne alleys to esca­late their own activ­i­ties.

There is a sto­ry in Greek mythol­o­gy of Pro­crustes, who sought to fit trav­ellers into a bed by hack­ing or stretch­ing them into size, ­instead of adjust­ing the bed.

It is a para­ble for seek­ing to solve a prob­lem in the most absurd way, of lack­ing the right response to a prob­lem and muti­lat­ing one’s way to a solu­tion.

In its des­per­a­tion to ease our ­fatigue with this war and this con­flict, our gov­ern­ment has now pre­sent­ed its solu­tion. Except it is no solu­tion at all.

Mere­ly a guar­an­tee of more false dawns and the inevitable blood­shed that fol­lows them.