Recognising Palestinian statehood won’t stop Israeli terror

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has declared that Australia will vote to “recognise” Palestinian statehood at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly next month. This is a cynical response by his government to mounting public pressure and mass starvation in Gaza.

The government’s cynicism is reflected in Albanese’s spurious claim that “this is about much more than drawing a line on a map—this is about delivering a lifeline to the people of Gaza”. If his government were serious about providing a lifeline, it could start by ending Australia’s ongoing export of weapons components to Israel, including armoured steel in Israeli armoured vehicles and F-35 aircraft components.

The government could cancel deals with Israeli weapons companies (such as the $917 million contract signed last year with Elbit Systems) that facilitate the Israeli war machine. And the government could expel the ambassador, cut all diplomatic ties and impose sanctions on the Zionist state.

When Defence Minister Richard Marles was asked, on the ABC’s Insiders program, about Australia’s ongoing military exports to Israel, he clarified the government’s position. Marles repeated the lie that Australia does not supply weapons to Israel (a statement premised on the claim that only fully assembled arms count as weapons), described Australia as an “F-35 nation” and said that the exports of parts and components would continue.

As Amal Naser from the Palestine Action group pointed out in an 11 August article for the Sydney Morning Herald: “You cannot ‘recognise’ a state while you allow Australian-made components to help arm the regime destroying it. You cannot fight for the dead while helping make the weapons that kill them”.

Less than a fortnight ago, Albanese declared that he would not recognise Palestine anytime soon. But after widespread anger over Labor’s complicity in the genocide was expressed on 3 August in the massive march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, his government has been trying to contain those sentiments, following the lead of the other US-aligned imperial powers that had already made such moves.

Australia now joins a chorus of Israel’s Western collaborators—the UK, France and Canada—that have announced plans to recognise a Palestinian state in September. All these countries continue to support and participate in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians through arms sales, intelligence sharing and the repression of pro-Palestinian protests.

But the starvation of 2 million people by Israel in Gaza is now too politically embarrassing for many Western governments that have supported Israel’s slaughter from the outset. As Israel commits new atrocities every day—starvation, murder, annexation—its claims to uphold “humanitarianism” grow increasingly thin. Israel’s self-image has long been that of a liberal democracy. But the horrors of genocide mean increasing numbers of people are seeing through the West’s sham commitment to “humanitarianism”.

The vote on recognition will do nothing to obstruct or halt Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, nor the extension of its ethnic-cleansing operation in the West Bank. This was bluntly asserted by Israeli Prime Minister and war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, who declared that the recognition announcements are “not going to change our position”. Netanyahu’s proposed plan for the permanent occupation of Gaza City has made it clear that the only solution it will “recognise” is the conquering of the entire territory and the ethnic cleansing of its inhabitants.

The move to recognise Palestinian statehood has taken place under the banner of the so-called two-state solution—the recognition of a Palestinian mini-state alongside that of Israel. Albanese argued that it “is humanity’s best hope to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East and bring an end to the conflict, suffering and starvation in Gaza”.

But neither Albanese nor any of the other leaders calling for a “two-state solution” have any intention of forcing Israel to allow the Palestinians to have a genuine state of their own. That is because any sovereign Palestinian state—one in control of its own security, borders, trade and a host of other functions typically carried out by a state—is practically impossible as long as Israel exists as an apartheid ethno-state.

Israel is an aggressively expansionist state that is intrinsically hostile to Palestinian national self-determination. Israel has been in a permanent state of war against the Palestinians since it was established through a project of mass ethnic cleansing and genocide in 1948. It is the only state in the world that refuses to define its own borders—precisely because it is premised upon the permanent expansion into, and occupation of, Palestinian territory.

According to its proponents, the territorial basis for a Palestinian state consists of the West Bank (the area to the west of the Jordan River), East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. But ever since Israel invaded the West Bank in 1967, Zionist settlers backed by the Israeli military have been relentlessly seizing land and expelling Palestinians from their homes. That process has accelerated under Netanyahu’s far-right government and during the genocidal war on Gaza. The two-state solution of a Palestinian state alongside Israel is unviable.

Proponents of a “two-state solution” are fully aware that the trajectory on the ground is not towards the establishment of a Palestinian state, but towards the annihilation of the basis for one. Labor Foreign Minister Penny Wong herself noted as justification for fast-tracking the recognition process that “there is a risk that there will be no Palestine left to recognise”.

The false promise of a Palestinian state existing alongside Israel has also been used to extract concessions from the Palestinians while Israel has continued their dispossession. This can be seen in the demand, issued by all the governments pushing for recognition of a Palestinian state, that such a state must have no weapons or army. Israel, of course, is not expected to disarm.

Indeed, most of the world is engaged in an enormous, terrifying arms race. But the Palestinian people are expected to be satisfied with a so-called state that lacks the capacity for self-defence, and is entirely dependent on Israel for fiscal, energy, resource and trade access to the outside world.

As well, the project of “recognising” Palestine is an attempt to rehabilitate the Palestinian Authority, which collaborates with Israel to repress any resistance to the occupation in the West Bank. It has little credibility left—just 19 percent of those in the West Bank approve of the authority’s performance, according to a May poll for the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research.

For years, the PA has been a corrupt and pliant puppet of the US and Israel. But Albanese has indicated that the recognition discussions are being used to render it even more subservient. The PA has pledged to halt payments to the vulnerable families of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. The organisation has also committed to “demilitarise”.

In the unlikely event that some token Palestinian state were created under these conditions, it would be a state of rubble in Gaza and a West Bank under Israeli control, with no armed forces and a puppet government hand-picked by Israel and its imperialist backers.

Such a state would not deliver peace but only continued Israeli domination and terror. It would do nothing to challenge Israel’s position as a watchdog state for Western imperialism in the Middle East, armed to the teeth by the US.

Until Israel is recognised for what it is—a genocidal, terror state—any talk of a Palestinian state existing in its shadow is simply cover for those complicit in ethnic cleansing and genocide.