PETER WERTHEIM

“Australia’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister have repeatedly acknow­ledged that Hamas can have no role to play in any Palestini­an gov­ern­ment. Even Hamas itself has acknow­ledged it, by announ­cing a hand-over of its gov­ern­ment functions to a US-backed tech­no­crat­ic committee. But appar­ently the ALP National Con­fer­ence cannot quite bring itself to acknow­ledge it. The best it can do is refer to Hamas, in passing, as a terrorist group.

“The government’s decision last year to recognise a State of Palestine was expressly pre­dic­ated on there being no role for Hamas and on written com­mit­ments the gov­ern­ment had received from the Palestini­an Authority to reform gov­ernance, terminate prisoner payments, institute schooling reform, demil­it­ar­ise and hold general elections.  

“The draft platform says nothing about any of this, or the fact that there has not been the slightest progress towards ful­filling the com­mit­ments made by the Palestini­an Authority to the Aus­trali­an gov­ern­ment.   Instead of providing an honest assess­ment of the lead­er­ship on both sides of the conflict, the draft platform regur­git­ates the same old one-eyed obsession with blaming Israel.

“It is a reas­on­able question to ask why the ALP National Con­fer­ence is not backing in the Albanese gov­ern­ment in expressly recog­nising the gov­ern­ment’s position on excluding Hamas and requiring the Palestini­an Authority to honour the com­mit­ments for gov­ernance reform upon which the government’s recog­ni­tion of a Palestini­an State was expli­citly based.

“Failing to hold the Palestini­an Authority account­able for its bad faith and perennial incom­pet­ence is not doing the Palestini­an people any favours. It’s holding them back.”

Peter Wertheim AM is the co-CEO of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry