Albanese could make a difference on the ground in Gaza. He’s chosen not to

Australia is set to recognise a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September. This follows similar declarations in recent months by other Western states, including the UK, Canada, and France.

Benjamin Netanyahu is reported to have called this “shameful”. On Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, who is the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in November 2024, attacked Australia and several European countries for both recognising Palestine and urging Israel to end its mass starvation and killing in Gaza.

His remarks tell us two things. First, they reflect a leadership unfazed by the prospect of recognition changing anything on the ground. Second, they expose a confidence, shaped by decades of experience, that Western recognition and diplomacy on Palestine rarely come with meaningful consequences.

While the reality for Palestinians has never been more bleak and suffocating, Israeli colonisation of what remains of Palestine has never been fiercer since Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, even before October 2023, endured their deadliest year on record since that occupation began.

The settlement enterprise has gone into overdrive since the current government assumed office in December 2022. The E1 settlement plan, which would divide the West Bank into two sections and has long been regarded as the final blow to any hypothetical two-state solution, is now being enacted. All of this has been complemented since 2023 by Israel’s systematic, indiscriminate and methodical slaughter and erasure of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – acts that international organisations have clearly described as genocide.

In a conversation with a seasoned Australian former senior diplomat in 2024 – at the height of Israel’s mass killing in Gaza – I was told that Australia would continue to do what “the world’s reputable countries” do. This referred to the club of Western states which, along with Australia, have turned Palestine, and their reaction to Palestinian slaughter, into a diplomatic performance, a public relations exercise by foreign ministers and spokespersons.

That is precisely the danger for Australia. The scramble to avoid making independent, specific policy on Palestine is, in effect, no policy at all. The announcement of recognition, its tone, and the absence of any real discussion of what it stands for, are telling and reflect only the theatrical performance of Australian policy on Palestine. Even when Australia takes a position on Palestine, it is often an inconsequential one.

Recognition, particularly now, is neither what Palestinians have sought nor what would materially improve their lives under Israel’s entrenched control; rather, it risks diverting attention from the urgent dismantling of the structures that perpetuate their dispossession and put an end to the genocide in Gaza.

Given Australia has nonetheless decided to proceed with recognition, the question is whether it will translate this step into clear and enforceable measures that alter the cost–benefit calculation sustaining occupation. Without that, it is just another symbolic gesture with no bearing on the realities Palestinians face.

Symbolism has a place in diplomacy. But Palestinians are not being starved in Gaza or displaced from their homes in the West Bank for lack of symbolism. They are suffering because the structural machinery of occupation and genocide, military, economic and legal, continues to operate without obstruction.

International law already imposes binding obligations on states to end the occupation, prevent genocide and dismantle systems of apartheid. These duties, affirmed repeatedly by the UN’s judicial bodies and the Security Council, require more than diplomatic signalling. They demand measures that decisively shift the political and economic balance sustaining occupation and ensure its continuation comes at a cost too high for Israel to bear. Recognition is not necessary to fulfil these obligations. States could act now through sanctions, embargoes and accountability measures.

Australia should bar economic support for the Israeli settlement enterprise. It should thoroughly review, freeze and suspend all trade and investment that enable it. It should end arms and dual-use technology sales and co-operation with Israel, including revising or withdrawing from supply chains that feed Israel’s war machine, and it should support the prosecution of individuals and entities implicated in international crimes. If recognition is to be followed by more than applause, it must dismantle the incentive structure that sustains the status quo.

The Albanese government is misguided if it thinks recognition constitutes a peace plan, and doubly so if it believes recognition can revive a two-state formula long hollowed out by Israeli facts on the ground, created over decades of occupation and colonisation.

The onus is on the Albanese government to clearly state whether its recognition will be a shallow diplomatic display or a genuine policy shift. Israel can withstand a wave of recognition, but Palestinians cannot withstand the continued absence of meaningful action.

Decades of formal recognition by many states have not slowed settlement expansion or the dispossession of Palestinians, lifted the siege of Gaza or halted the current assault devastating Palestinian society. These gestures, however numerous, have repeatedly failed to translate into material change on the ground.

As the Albanese government prepares to recognise the state of Palestine, it must be prepared to defend that recognition by ensuring it has material consequences.

That means more than a diplomatic statement. It requires a sustained strategy that confronts the occupation, applies legal standards consistently and uses Australia’s economic and political weight to help dismantle – and hold to account – an entrenched system of occupation and apartheid.

Without that, recognition will be exactly what Netanyahu predicts: a passing headline that leaves the underlying realities untouched.

Dr Anas Iqtait is a senior lecturer at the Australian National University and the author of Funding and the Quest for Sovereignty in Palestine (Palgrave, 2023). He previously worked in Palestine on economic development and humanitarian programs with the United Nations OCHA, Oxfam, and the Korea International Cooperation Agency.

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