The slow drift away from principle

Foreign minister Penny Wong has reaffirmed that Australia has not wavered from its conditions for recognising a Palestinian state, after they were dropped from Labor’s draft conference platform.

While it is good that the government says it has not wavered, it is still concerning that Labor itself seemingly has. After all, as Jeremy Leibler told The AJN, if the conditions are important enough for Australia to recognise a Palestinian state, they are important enough to remain in Labor’s platform.

In a world of the 24-hour news cycle and bite-sized information, some may feel assured – for now – that the Labor politicians in charge – today – say that Israel’s security is important and they intend to hold the Palestinian Authority to account. But what of the Labor politicians of tomorrow? Successive Labor conferences have seen gradual shifts in language that expose a concerning pattern of slowly abandoning Australia’s only democratic Middle East ally. A Labor government in five or 10 years may no longer bother to hold the Palestinian Authority to any kind of commitment.

Worse yet, opinions such as those voiced by Labor backbencher Ed Husic, who has increasingly become more hostile on Israel and last week called for the AFP to monitor dual Israeli-Australian citizens, may become mainstream and eventually policy.

All of this of course, makes little difference on the ground in Israel or in the Palestinian Territories, aside from adding to the chorus of weak Western nations excusing Palestinian intransigence.