Albanese’s backflip has consequences
In Australia, 67 per cent who answered an AJN poll believe it will lead to more antisemitism.
On July 27, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the ABC’s Insiders that recognition of a Palestinian state was not imminent. “We won’t make any decision as a gesture,” he added, explaining that certain conditions needed to be met.
On July 30, he made the same assurances in a meeting with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
Just 11 days later, Albanese backflipped. That none of the circumstances he had previously cited have come to pass means he was either being dishonest then, or is dangerously improvising policy as he goes on a fragile and complex issue. Neither option instils faith in the Prime Minister as a statesman or as a leader.
Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong may truly believe – however mistakenly – that prematurely recognising a State of Palestine will somehow help to bring about peace.
They may deny the obvious truth that their announcement is a reward for Hamas, who they insist should not be part of a Palestinian state as if their proclamation will miraculously make that so, even as they condemn Israel for acting towards that outcome.
But they are, with eyes wide open, throwing their lot in with a hopelessly corrupt Palestinian Authority, with a Holocaust denier at its helm, that has rejected every single peace offer so far extended by Israel that would have given its people a state.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 20th year of his four-year-term, even admitted of Ehud Olmert’s 2008 offer that went as far as withdrawing Israeli sovereignty over the Old City of Jerusalem, “I rejected it out of hand.”
If he would not negotiate in good faith then, this gift from deluded Western nations means he certainly won’t negotiate in good faith now. And back to Hamas, it is clear that pressure from the international community on Israel led to its backflip on previously agreed ceasefire conditions.
Back home in Australia, 67 per cent who answered an AJN poll believe the decision to recognise a Palestinian state will lead to more antisemitism.
But the Jewish community has weathered far worse storms than political opportunism masquerading as diplomacy. And when history judges this moment, it will not be the leaders who mistake virtue signalling for statesmanship who are remembered, but those who stood firm in the face of expedience.