Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that Australia will recognise Palestine as an independent state – a move that aligns us with most of the world’s nations, international law, and the long-standing global push for a peaceful two-state solution. For those who believe in diplomacy, human rights, and the possibility that two peoples might one day live side by side without constant bloodshed, it’s a rational and overdue step.
But for the right-wing media and far-right political parties, it’s a five-alarm fire. The reaction has been apocalyptic. Headlines and social media posts read like the opening scenes of a bad disaster film: “Australia backs terrorists!”; “PM sides with Hamas!”
This hysteria conveniently ignores the obvious: recognising Palestine does not mean supporting Hamas. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of endorsing violence – it’s a clear signal that peace, statehood, and negotiations should replace rockets, blockades, and endless cycles of revenge. The far-right’s favourite talking point – that recognition is somehow rewarding terrorism – wilfully conflates a people’s right to self-determination with the actions of an armed faction. By that logic, recognising Israel would be “supporting” every extremist within its borders, which is clearly nonsense.
The critics also overlook the fact that Australia is late to this decision. More than 130 countries have already recognised Palestine, including much of Europe, Asia, Africa, and our Pacific neighbours. Far from being radical, the move simply puts Australia in step with the majority of the world. The only countries firmly opposed to recognition are those who see the conflict solely through the lens of permanent division – and that’s hardly the company we should want to keep.
The irony is glaring. These same commentators often accuse others of being “out of touch with the world” – yet their own position leaves Australia isolated.
In the end, the Prime Minister’s decision is about more than recognition: It’s about choosing the path of diplomacy over fearmongering, and joining the majority of the global community in saying that a just and lasting peace is possible – even if it means upsetting those who prefer the comfort of outrage to the challenge of resolution.
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I would hate to be considered as endorsing in any way the right-wing views of the Murdoch indoctrinated Australian media (and the right-wing Israeli commentariat), but let’s be realistic: this decision is nothing more than a political appeasement of the moral outrage associated with the killing of lots of civilians in Gaza.
For those not familiar with the conventions – the legal ones – that go with the requirements for the recognition of statehood, let me introduce you to the 1933 Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States, which identifies the qualifications for international recognition of statehood as:
A permanent population.
A defined territory.
A government.
The capacity to enter into relations with other states.
Whatever you consider Palestine to be – variously, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, Palestine currently satisfies none of these criteria but the first, because, as British jurist Malcolm Shaw KC in a legal opinion commissioned by British peer Lord Mendelsohn and published on 3 August 2025 says, “its territorial extent is undetermined,” “there is no effective single government authority over the whole of the territory,” and “the capacity of the Palestinian Authority to conduct formal legal relations with other entities, including States, is hampered by the terms of the Oslo Accords, which are still binding upon the parties.”
As Shaw KC observes, “The normal criteria which the government apply for recognition as a state are that it should have, and seem likely to continue to have, a clearly defined territory with a population, a government who are able of themselves to exercise effective control of that territory, and independence in their external relations.”
This cannot be said of any area or organisational structure or control that might qualify Gaza or the West Bank or any combination of them as being a state capable of being recognised.
This “recognition” by various Western countries will achieve nothing.
After last week’s march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Tone the Botty took to twitter and shat that unelected judges were making decisions. He was almost outdone by the Poo Machine Hanson.
Yesterday, someone asked that people stop saying Nazi atrocities and instead say German, but the reason why that is wrong is that there were noted Germans who stood up for the Jews, and others less publicly, and it was the Nazi Party that led Germany into the war.
Hamas is not representative of Palestine. What this will do is create a boundary and it needs to be remembered that you must stay within that boundary to ensure peace. Of course, Jews and Muslims who have intermarried should be able to visit either country without sanctions being imposed.
SVH is right but that is not a reason not to recognise a Palestinian state with the 1967. (?) borders.
This recognition is not only aspirational it sends a clear signal to Israel that most of the countries in the world do not approve of what you are doing, demand that you stop now and that you retire to your original boundaries.
We know that Israel
Under the present regime will ignore these demands but increasingly the weight of the world, and the United (ha ha) Nations are against you. Met as bushy cannot live forever and opposition to what is happening on Palestinian land is growing. A new, less war-hungry regime might, in time, right the grievous wrongs perpetrated by Israel against Palestine and the Palestinians. Then the formal imprimatur of the UN might be able to be given. We live in hope and support aspiration,
Hi RomeoCharlie.
One major problem with your proposal is that pre-June 1967 and the 6 day war, there was no “Palestinian” state: Gaza was a province of Egypt and the West Bank and East Jerusalem were part of what is now Jordan. And neither of them wants to welcome the current residents of those areas into their national folds.
You cannot support a two state solution when you only recognise one of those two states.
Besides What’s the story with Hasty? He is trying so hard to be the hard nosed, strictural, military leader we really don’t ever need. Heard him on the radio putting the words “very important” and “Australian Flag” in the same sentence too many times and then spruiking Australian flags to stick on your garbage bins available from his offices. (Kickback maybe?) Moving on to advertise National flag day where we need only celebrate the one flag that shows our misguided allegiance to a foreign power and our disgust for our first nation’s peoples. Heaven help us if he can do a Trump and convince the voting public that China wants to lower its national IQ by taking over a country that would vote for a person like him!
Various meetings, declarations, conventions, congressess, sessions, etc., held over time should carry little weight or authority about Palestine. The institutional perversions and stupidities of “international law” are notoriously fairy flossy flawed and never ever much accepted by those who pose in disagreement. Palestine existed centuries ago in a seeable form, and also in 1919, and in 1939 and in 1947-8. Palestinians were discounted, reduced, ignored, betrayed, silenced, sacrificed, to the world’s deepest nastiest, most murderous thieving superstition of no truth or merit. There is no god, no proof, no fact, nothing, no promised land, no chosen race, no supremacist right to murder and thieve. Let us all accept fair decent rights for all, NOW.
Much of the media and many of our politicians fail to accept Israel was created as a recognition of Zionist terrorism.
If we are to abide by “the conventions – the legal ones” , how was Israel created?
It is worthwhile reading a summary of the New York Declaration issued following a high level conference chaired jointly by Saudi Arabia and France in late July 2025.
https://una-oic.org/en/palestinians/2025/07/30/New-York-Declaration%3A-Taking-Specific-Concrete-Steps/
At this high-level international conference led by France and Saudi Arabia, Middle Eastern and European powers committed to taking “time-bound” and “irreversible” steps for the settlement of the question of Palestine, and the implementation of a two-state solution.
On the same day the New York Declaration was settled, the United Kingdom announced its intention to recognise a Palestinian state, following France’s move a few days earlier.
Canada signalled its intentions to recognise the next day, and now Australia has also followed. Whilst the resolutions of this conference have received minimal media coverage it is quite likely that it was the unanimity of the delegates to this conference that encouraged Australia and others to finally make the decision to recognise the Palestinian state.
Netanyahu may finally have bitten off more that he can chew and the world has had enough, we shall see !
The current RRWNJ obsession with supporting Israel in its determination to eliminate Palestinians is a glaring example of the level of cognitive dissonance of which they’re capable, because usually there is no group so thoroughly hardline anti-Jew. Israel is getting a pass in this case for two reasons: first, the extremist white supremacists and RRWNJBs hate Muslims more and second, the survival of Zionism and the Jews’ conversion to christianity (in their “ancestral homeland”) are necessary steps prior to Armageddon and the Rapture.
SHV:
It’s a bit difficult to define your national territory when it keeps being invaded and taken over by “settlers” from another nation. Ditto establishing an overarching government and entering into relations with other states. Sometimes the cart needs to go before the horse in order to achieve anything.
Thanks Terry M,
Your direction towards the New York Declaration provided reading of the sitting and resolutions I’d not encountered elsewhere. It gives detail and context to the flood of recognitions by the big players in this (other, of course than the US).
The September sitting of the UNGA is certainly going to be crucial.
Clakka
Our mainstream media is not serving us well by not highlighting the developments in the Middle East that have influenced Western nations to say, enough is enough.
For instance the recent petition from a group of some 600 retired Israeli security officials, including former heads of intelligence agencies, to Donald Trump calling for his influence to pressure Israel to immediately end the war in Gaza, has received very little coverage here including from our national broadcaster.
“It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel,” the officials said.
They told Trump,”Your credibility with the vast majority of Israelis augments your ability to steer Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and his government in the right direction: End the war, return the hostages, stop the suffering,” they wrote.
This at a time when Netanyahu is pushing to expand military operations in Gaza as indirect ceasefire talks with Hamas have stalled.
Our own coalition have fallen for the Zionist trap of saying that recognition of Palestine rewards Hamas when it is clear that Hamas as a fighting force is finished and the only remaining resistance in Gaza comes from small groups of poorly equipped guerillas maintaining the right, as they see it to self defence against an overwhelming IDF war machine.
I recognise Palestinian statehood, does mean that I also recognise Hamas? No, it bloody doesn’t! The RRWNJ’s conflate it into you can’t have one without the other. One is the way overdue idea that Palestine should be recognised (Netanyahu and his cronies will do everything in their power to prevent that occurring) and the other is a murderous bunch of thugs who should be removed. Kick Netanyahu and gang out of power at the next election as well.