Paul Murray: Many Australians only became familiar with Gaza after Israel October 7 terror attacks

What exactly is the Palestine that Anthony Albanese has wanted to “recognise” ever since he was a radically left-wing student at Sydney University in the 1980s?

Because the devil will be in the detail.

And Albanese needs to be very clear with the Australian public, because a lot of those people who marched over the Sydney Harbour Bridge last weekend think Palestine includes Israel.

And that’s why they chant: From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

Between the river and the sea lies Gaza, the West Bank and the modern sovereign state of Israel, formed in 1948 from part of a geopolitical entity known at the time as the Palestine Mandate.

Israel was accepted into the United Nations the following year.

The rest of the mandate territory, the Gaza strip and the West Bank, went under the control of Egypt and Jordan respectively. Both were occupied by Israel after it fought the Six Day War against those countries and Syria in June, 1967.

Many Australians only became familiar with Gaza after October 7, 2023 when the Hamas terrorist organisation that has controlled it since 2007 raided Israel, killing 1200 people and capturing 251 hostages, of which only 148 have been returned alive.

But they are maybe less familiar with the West Bank, which since 1994 has been controlled by the highly corrupt Palestinian Authority. The authority is run by Fatah, the biggest political party in the Palestine Liberation Organisation, after it finally split with Hamas in 2007.

Albanese – who was a founder of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group in 1999 – and his fellow leftist, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, say the geographical state they intend Australia to recognise includes both Gaza and the West Bank.

And they say that our recognition would be conditional on the security of the state of Israel suggesting that Albanese thinks he can hold back the ideological tide in the Middle East forever threatening to sweep Israel away. Or does he?

The fine print detailing Labor’s steady campaign to nudge Australia from its longstanding bipartisan position on Palestine and into a new one which isolates Israel, shows that the land included in our “recognition” contains what is known as East Jerusalem as part of the West Bank.

Both Israel and those purporting that Palestine is a recognisable state – which remains legally unclear – declare that Jerusalem is their capital. The PLO was based in East Jerusalem until the 1967 war when they were pushed out to Jordan, which later expelled them.

In 1980, Israel’s Knesset passed a law proclaiming all of Jerusalem as the country’s capital. The UN Security Council has declared the annexation of East Jerusalem “null and void” and most countries, including Australia, do not recognise Israeli sovereignty over it.

Some 360,000 Palestinians live in East Jerusalem, roughly 37 per cent of Israel’s Palestinian population.

And it will be a major sticking point in any moves for a two-state solution. However, neither Hamas nor Israel supports a two-state solution, something that is conveniently sidelined by the Albanese Government.

This push for early recognition is not a change of heart by Labor brought about by recent pictures of malnourished Gazan children.

Wong’s stealth campaign can be traced back to early last year – with the October 7 invasion only months before and Israel retaliating strongly against Hamas – to expose her ambitions.

It is wrong, however, to report that the Albanese Government position on recognition has been “when, not if” since last year. That position crystalised only recently in most opportunistic fashion.

Wong now repeatedly says that it has been her position since last year – carelessly regurgitated by the media as fact – but there is no public record of her using those words until this month.

It’s typical of the way Labor shifts position. They say “we’ve been absolutely clear” about X and Y when they’ve been anything but.

In an April, 2024 speech Wong said the international community was “now considering the question of Palestinian statehood as a way of building momentum towards a two-state solution”. Really?

“There are always those who claim recognition is rewarding an enemy,” Wong said, but asserted that sound position was wrong.

“First, because Israel’s own security depends on a two-state solution. There is no long-term security for Israel unless it is recognised by the countries of its region.

“But the normalisation agenda that was being pursued before October 7 cannot proceed without progress on Palestinian statehood.”

Both assertions, stated as fact, are obviously arguable propositions. But they signalled Wong was pursuing recognition, which had not previously been the policy of any Australian Government.

It fell in line with Labor’s new platform from its August 2023 national conference – before the Hamas assault – calling on the Albanese Government to recognise Palestine.

So nothing to do with starving children, just the achievement of a long-held Labor Left ambition, incrementally.

Which makes Wong’s despicable assertion this week that there is a need for haste unless there would be “nothing left of Palestine to recognise” even more egregious. The West Bank and East Jerusalem have been untouched by the fighting since October 7.

Wong started this process talking about recognition being contingent on Hamas having no role in Gaza, but now clearly wants to vote at the UN by September to support it with the terrorists still in charge and refusing to disarm.

Is that really what most Australians want?

On July 27 on the ABC’s Insiders, Albanese was pushed by David Speers on the conditions for recognition: “So at the moment you’re not convinced right now that Hamas would not be involved?”

Albanese: “Not so much that, but you’d need guarantees of that, and you need a structure. There’s been no elections in the Palestinian Authority for a long period of time.”

Speers: “Does that need to happen before you recognise a Palestinian state?”

Albanese: “Well, you need to consider all of the circumstances at any particular time, and you need to make sure that a decision takes forward the operation of two states effectively.”

Speers: “It doesn’t sound like you’re about to do this in September or this year, listening to the preconditions that you’re laying out.”

Albanese: “Look, what we will do is we’ll make a decision based upon the time. Is the time right now? Are we about to imminently do that? No, we are not.”

Speers: But at the General Assembly?

Albanese: “Are we about to do that, no we are not.”

And then some people marched over a bridge a week later. But more than 27 million Australians didn’t.

Activism should not be confused with being right, nor with majority sentiment. Some 60,000 marched over that bridge to support the Indigenous Voice in July 2023 before it died in the referendum three months later.

The left always marches. The rest often sit at home and shake their heads – or just don’t care. And with the intractable grievances of the Palestinian conflict, that’s understandable.

Albanese and Wong are now at a dangerous juncture which will test their basic morality. They’ve already failed the duplicity test.

The Hamas leader who ordered the October 7 massacre, Yahya Sinwar, was quoted in messages obtained last year, before his unfortunate death by drone, describing the high civilian death toll in Gaza as “necessary sacrifices”.

He told Hamas leaders and mediators that civilian casualties would benefit the cause more than a ceasefire and instructed since-assassinated political chief Ismail Haniyeh that the deaths of his sons and grandchildren would “infuse life into the veins of this nation, prompting it to rise to its glory and honour.”

And the naïve fools advancing early recognition of Palestine with Hamas still in charge think these maniacs will lay down their arms and move on?

So here’s a real-world proposition, completely divorced from Albanese and Wong’s undergraduate posturing and their gutless reaction to the emoting marchers.

If a free state of Palestine means one free of Hamas – as Albanese and his European and Canadian socialist mates profess – then Benjamin Netanyahu is the best thing they have going for them.

Who else will take Hamas’ arms from them and rid the world of the pernicious system of dictatorial power they have established in Gaza? The UN? Spare us.

There are useful idiots and blind collaborators and all shades of appeasers between those points. None should be given any heed.

Those advancing this bad idea fall into the latter camp because they are guided by their own domestic political objectives. And that’s the real story behind this misguided charade.

Australia on Tuesday shamefully turned its back on the remaining hostages – alive and dead – with Wong demanding that their repatriation should wait until the war is over. Hamas must have cheered again.

What won’t Labor give away of Israel’s right to exist to get a gold star from the international choir?