Fresh pressure on Albanese govt to recognise Palestine

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Rank and file Victorian Labor members have heaped fresh pressure on the Albanese government to follow through on an official party policy to recognise Palestinian statehood.

Labor member for Macnamara Josh Burns speaks to media during a visit to the Hotel Esplanade, Melbourne, Monday, January 30, 2023.

On the second and final day of the Victorian party conference, Labor delegates voted in favour of calling on the federal government to recognise the state of Palestine within this term of parliament.

“In re-affirming the resolution carried at the 2018 and 2021 national conferences, the Albanese government will join with 138 countries, and the Vatican, which have already done so,” Sunday’s motion read.

Many of Australia’s closest allies do not recognise Palestine as a state, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan and Canada.

Labor’s official policy platform backs Palestinian statehood, but the Albanese government has not formally adopted the position after angering Israel when it announced Australia would no longer recognise West Jerusalem as its capital last year.

Federal MP Josh Burns, who represents the Melbourne seat of Macnamara which has a large Jewish population, said Palestinian recognition was an emotional and personal issue for many people.

“It is for me and I dream of seeing a negotiated outcome and peace between Israelis and Palestinians. I’m committed to doing that at the national conference,” he told the crowd.

“We almost got there on an agreement. (The motion) sits a little bit outside of the national platform. That’s why I won’t be supporting it.”

Although the motion was passed, resolutions are non-binding on Labor’s federal and state parliamentary party rooms.

The Zionist Federation of Australia expressed its deep disappointment in the Victorian Labor state conference’s resolution on Palestine.

ZFA President Jeremy Leibler said, “It is a truism that if you reward bad behaviour, you’ll get more of it. From its support for terrorism, its rejection of negotiations and its promotion of vicious antisemitism, the Palestinian leadership actively undermines peace. By calling on the federal government to reward this behaviour with diplomatic recognition, the Victorian Labor resolution implicitly celebrates this.”

Mr Leibler continued, “The resolution is entirely inconsistent with the stated position of the Foreign Minister Penny Wong who has repeatedly rejected any unilateral actions on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.”

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 has taken this premature and destructive step, and if Labor genuinely cares about Middle East peace, it must emulate them,” Dr Rubenstein concluded.

“The resolution passed by the Victorian Labor conference is short-sighted and actively mitigates against efforts to bring peace to the region,” said Zionism Victoria President Yossi Goldfarb.

“It also betrays a lack of sophistication concerning the issues between Israel and the Palestinian Authority or even the simple realities on the ground.

“If the conference does recognise Palestine as the Victorian Labor Party is demanding, who will they convey this message to? To Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, who is currently in the 18th year of his four-year term as President of the Palestinian Authority? The same Mahmoud Abbas whose corruption-riddled regime encourages terrorism by offering financial incentives to those who aspire to kill – and do kill – innocent civilians?

“Perhaps the conference should also bestow recognition on the genocidal, terrorist organisation Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in a bloody coup in 2007, where it is illegal to be gay and where members of the LGBTQI + community are routinely subject to discrimination and violence. The same Hamas who squander millions in aid to fund their murderous attacks on Israeli civilians and who launch rockets from schools and hospitals targeting innocent civilians across the border in Israel.

“In short, like the Victorian Labor Party, we too look forward to the day when a Palestinian state is recognised, but this must be as part of a negotiated, peaceful solution. Pre-empting the outcome of those negotiations will only embolden the corrosive forces that are hell-bent on destruction and violence while muffling the voices that call for peace.

The resolutions: