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The Australia Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) strongly condemned the motion passed today at the Victorian Labor State Conference calling on the Albanese Government to recognise “Palestine” as a state during this term of parliament.

AIJAC Executive Director Dr. Colin Rubenstein said: “This counter-productive and frankly juvenile motion is phrased as rescuing the two-state solution, but in fact, resolutions such as this are setbacks to the peace process.

“The crucial fact, which this motion clearly ignores, is that the reason there is no peace is the intransigence of the Palestinian leadership, which has repeatedly rebuffed all efforts to achieve a two-state resolution.

“The Palestinian Authority simply walked away from generous offers of statehood made by Israel in 2000, 2001 and 2008 without even making a counter-offer, and has refused to negotiate peace since it abandoned talks in 2014, while Hamas turned Gaza into a terror enclave after Israel totally withdrew from the territory in 2005 in the hope of encouraging peaceful coexistence.

“All Israeli efforts at building confidence between the two sides or negotiating a further agreement have been similarly spurned.

“The Palestinians have instead settled on a long-term strategy of subjecting Israel to continuous terrorism, while demonising it at all available international fora. They hope to ultimately replace Israel with a Palestinian state rather than have one live in peace alongside it. This is simply a recipe for perpetual conflict.

“Rewarding this intransigent and destructive behaviour with motions, such as the one passed by Victorian Labor, will only encourage such rejectionist behaviour to continue, which is to the great detriment of all parties involved.

“The motion states that 138 other countries have recognised Palestine, but omits the crucial fact that Sweden is the only Western democracy to have done so, while most of the others did so in the context of the Cold War, when they did not recognise Israel.

“There are very good reasons why none of our allies have taken this premature and destructive step, and if Labor genuinely cares about Middle East peace, it must emulate them,” Dr Rubenstein concluded.