Trump is watching Australia’s decision on Palestine. Does it matter?

Washington: Does Donald Trump care if Australia recognises a Palestinian state? Robert Wilkie believes so.

“The president has, in his career, paid particular attention to the Anglosphere,” he says. “I’m sure he’ll be looking to see how our friends line up.”

Wilkie knows Trump well. He served in his first cabinet as secretary for veterans affairs, and is now at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute. We are speaking in his office just a stone’s throw from the White House.

“He [Trump] has been decrying the position of our major Western allies when it comes to the issue of Israel and Gaza,” Wilkie says.

“I think he looks at these leaders as appeasing the hard left of their polities, as he would say the Democratic Party is [doing] in this country, and they do nothing with their statements other than encourage the leadership of Hamas to carry on in the hopes that somehow this kind of rhetoric will sway the United States to tell [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to stop. They’re the professional peace agitators.”

Wilkie also knows Australia well and indicates Labor’s actions are being closely watched in Washington. The assumption is that Canberra will follow the path of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has said his country will recognise Palestine unless Israel takes substantive steps to peace.

“We’re seeing more movement within the Labor Party to force the prime minister to go down the road that Mr Starmer has gone, and I think it will happen in the next few weeks,” Wilkie says.

“There’s enough agitation on the left of Labor in Australia and in the streets of the major cities that he will do what Starmer has done with his backbenchers in Labour.”

Trump, Wilkie says, is cognisant of what might happen next month when world leaders meet in New York for the start of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly. That is where US allies such as France and Canada have pledged to formally recognise Palestine.

“He would be looking to see where Australia lined up when [French President Emmanuel] Macron tables his resolution,” Wilkie says. “And when the Arab League is taking a more forceful position on this than Canberra, London, Paris and Ottawa, that says something.”

Trump regards the push to recognise Palestine as rewarding Hamas for the attack it unleashed on October 7, 2023, killing 1200 Israelis and taking 251 hostages. Israel’s subsequent military offensive in Gaza has killed 61,000 people, according to the Hamas-linked Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

But the US president has been relatively subdued in his response to announcements of Palestinian recognition from Starmer, Macron and Canada’s Mark Carney.

Trump initially said Canada’s move might imperil trade talks, but then said it was “not a dealbreaker”. Macron’s words were “not going to change anything” because “his statement doesn’t carry any weight”. And when he met Starmer in Scotland, before the change in UK policy, he said he wasn’t going to take a position on the matter.

The Guardian reported that Trump’s indifference in Scotland “moved the dial” for Starmer to act.

Nonetheless, the US has formally opposed all three countries’ bids to recognise Palestine. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called it “clumsy” and “irrelevant”, while White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump disagreed with the move.

“He feels as though that’s rewarding Hamas at a time where Hamas is the true impediment to a ceasefire and to the release of all of the hostages,” she said last week.

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, says other countries’ positions on Palestine have not caused much of a ripple in Washington and were generally below the radar.

There were frustrations within the administration about how Israel was handling the war, Clark said, and in some ways it was useful to have other countries putting pressure on Netanyahu. “I think that’s why we have not really seen any comment from the administration.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has indicated he is not looking for the US’s permission to change position on Palestine, stressing Australia is a sovereign nation.

The White House declined to comment, but an official pointed to the president’s remarks about Canada, France and Britain as indicative of how he would feel about Australia making similar moves.

Derek Grossman, a professor of political science and international relations at the University of Southern California, noted Albanese’s recent call with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.

“That’s a sign Australia is maybe moving more in the direction of Canada and France than sitting on the fence like the UK,” Grossman said. “I think Trump is going to react very negatively to it.”

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