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.