Australia/Israel Review

France and Saudi Arabia are co-hosting a UN conference this month about creating a Palestinian state.

Before or during the conference, France will likely recognise Palestine as a state, and is urging other countries to join it. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong keeps indicating she is considering similar recognition. Because Australia typically moves in concert with likeminded countries, France’s initiative might encourage her to follow suit. 

There are at least four possible motivations (separately or together) for making such a move: 

• A belief that Palestine is a state; 
• While acknowledging it’s not, using recognition to punish Israel for supposedly preventing this; 
• While acknowledging it’s not, using recognition to reward Palestinian state-building efforts; or 
• While acknowledging it’s not, offering recognition to virtue-signal to domestic constituents.

Let’s look at why none of these motivations would make sense today. 

1. Palestine is not a state

And nor has it ever been. 

The 1933 Montevideo Convention defines a state as having a permanent population, defined territory, a government and a capacity to enter into relations with other states. Not only is much of its population not permanent (they define themselves as refugees), the ‘State of Palestine’ does not have defined territory. Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) agreements with Israel specifically state that final borders will be determined in future negotiations. 

The West Bank and Gaza Strip ‘borders’, which numerous entities, including the International Criminal Court (ICC) and UN, claim are Palestine’s borders, are not international borders but temporary armistice lines from the 1947-49 war. The relevant treaties that created them say as much. 

Moreover, Senator Wong and others speak of the need to create a Palestinian state. That means they know that Palestine is not a state, even if they might like it to be. Recognising the existence of something that doesn’t exist is nonsensical.

2. Which Palestine?

The Palestinian Authority (PA) only has limited control over parts of the West Bank. It has not controlled Gaza since 2007. Hamas, proscribed as a terrorist organisation in many countries including Australia, had exclusive control over Gazan territory between 2007 and 2023. It wasn’t Israel that prevented the PA from effective control of Gaza. Ironically, Gaza under Hamas was closer to meeting the definition of statehood than the PA has ever achieved.

3. It undermines the rules-based order

Under still-binding Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements, both sides agreed that Palestinians would form a government with limited autonomy over parts of the West Bank and Gaza and that neither side would take steps to change the status quo, including on ‘final status’ issues, such as borders, Jerusalem and relations with other states, except via negotiations. 

When Palestinians seek to upgrade the status of ‘Palestine’ to a state, and have that recognised, any state-level body like the UN or country like Australia that goes along with that farce is undermining the rules-based order.

Current global chaos is due to countries like Russia, China and Iran challenging the rules-based order. Now, the international community wants to reward Palestinians for doing the same.

4. Israel has not blocked Palestinian statehood

There is a long history of Israel offering the Palestinians statehood, or acquiescing to others doing so. Palestinians have either rejected or refused to respond to such offers in 1937, 1947, 2000, 2001, 2008 and 2014. Palestinians have refused to negotiate on final status issues since 2014 because such negotiations typically end in them being offered a state, which they keep refusing – very awkward for a movement that professes to desire statehood. 

5. Palestinians have not earned a “reward”

If recognition is not punishment for Israel, what is the international community seeking to reward? Notwithstanding frequent rejections of statehood, Palestinian efforts at building the institutions of statehood have been woeful. The PA is weak, corrupt and dictatorial, and is unable or unwilling to face down the armed gangs dominating several areas of the West Bank. None of this is Israel’s fault. If Israel were to pull out of the West Bank tomorrow, the result would be Somalia, not Singapore.

Beyond the lack of proto-state bona fides (despite billions of aid dollars to create them), Palestinians have been pursuing ‘lawfare’ against Israel, including seeking membership of state-level organisations, like the ICC. Once inside, their primary focus is not to build “Palestine”, but to use them for diplomatic warfare against Israel, by launching or facilitating court cases, sanctions and resolutions targeting Israel. 

Rather than pushing back, the international community lavishes diplomatic largesse on Palestine. Rewarding anti-peace behaviour does not encourage peace.

6. It will encourage terrorist violence

Many Palestinians interpret the diplomatic momentum flowing their way over the last 20 months as an achievement attributable to the October 7 Hamas attack that began this war. After Spain, Ireland and Norway recognised Palestine last year, Hamas, Al Jazeera and numerous Palestinian commentators openly claimed that it was brought about thanks to the October 7 attacks.

Palestinian violence has a long history of success. The first intifada brought about Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The second led to the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. October 7 led to recognition by three Western countries, and maybe many more. Does this teach Palestinians that terrorist violence doesn’t pay?

The PLO, despite its many problematic policies, is still officially wedded to using diplomacy to seek Palestinian statehood. However, if it turns out that Hamas violence – of a barbarity and scale not seen since the Holocaust – is what brings about mass Western recognition, it will be the final nail in the coffin for any Palestinian movement that seeks to achieve statehood via diplomacy.

7. It would (further) undermine Israeli trust in international intentions

Viable Palestinian statehood requires Israeli cooperation. Israel will only cooperate if reassured that the West takes seriously Israel’s concerns about the security risks posed by Palestinian statehood. Few Western governments do. This is because the basic Western perception is that Palestinian statehood would end the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. It wouldn’t, because a critical mass of Palestinians want to fight Israel until it is destroyed. Until these people are greatly reduced in number and influence, Israeli-Palestinian peace is almost impossible. By undermining Israeli trust that the West will back its essential security requirements, premature recognition of Palestinian statehood reduces the prospects of actual Palestinian statehood.

8. Palestinians have been prepping their people for perpetual conflict

As noted, a decisive number of Palestinians want to fight Israel in perpetuity – in large part because Palestinian leaders have been prepping their people for this for decades. Consider the promotion of a Palestinian “right of return”, the state-sponsored antisemitism in schoolbooks, the oft-violent rejection of normalisation with Israelis, the PA’s financial rewards for terrorism, the naming of schools for terrorists and on and on. This lays the foundation for rejection of any peace. Even if Palestine were to achieve independence tomorrow, many or most Palestinians would still want to fight Israel. Diplomatic rewards, such as recognition, tell Palestinians that their actions to date have been correct.

Offering Palestinians the carrot of statehood was and should remain the West’s way to get Palestinians to temper their violent methods and messaging.

9. Domestic appeasement

The most likely reason centre-left Western governments are entertaining recognition of Palestine is because a very vocal minority in their rank and file is constantly making loud noise about it. These people have drunk the pro-Palestinian Kool-Aid, and no amount of reasoning (see 1 to 8 above) will convince them otherwise.

But feeding this crocodile won’t satisfy it. The ‘Free, Free Palestine’ crowd won’t be happy with just recognition. They won’t stop until Israel is completely ostracised and sanctioned, and will constantly campaign for ever more extreme action until Israel is destroyed. Recognition of non-existent Palestinian statehood will only encourage their disruptive, divisive tactics, not dampen them. Leadership therefore requires standing up to them, not acquiescing. 

Further, Australia prematurely recognising Palestine would constitute a highly concerning politicisation of foreign policy. Australian foreign policy could start swinging wildly depending on which party holds government. This is not good for Australia’s global reputation, or the welfare of the Australian Jewish and Arab communities. Instead, Labor and the Liberals should focus on maintaining a bipartisan position on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, as they used to.

A final word

Western impatience to finally resolve the long and bloody Israeli-Palestinian dispute is understandable. But attaining viable peace should be the motivating principle in Australian foreign policy, not angry impatience and certainly not domestic political considerations. Senator Wong told a February Senate Estimates hearing that a Palestinian state needs a reformed Palestinian Authority. If recognition is to come before statehood, it must be used, at minimum, as a reward for significant Palestinian reforms that actually cultivate both peace and viable Palestinian governance. It should absolutely not be used in a way that will further undermine the prospects for peace – as it would today.