Australia will recognize a Palestinian state in September, announced Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, drawing the condemnation of Israel.
Albanese said on Monday that his government would officially announce this decision when the United Nations General Assembly (Unga) would meet in New York.
“A solution to two states is the best hope of humanity to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East and put an end to the conflict, to suffering and to famine in Gaza,” Albanese said at a press conference in Canberra.
The announcement of Australia comes when Canada, France and the United Kingdom are also preparing to officially recognize Palestine at the meeting next month, joining the vast majority of UN member states which already do it.
The Israeli Ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon, said that the recognition of a Palestinian state will do nothing to end the war in Gaza, telling the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC): “We reject recognition, unilateral recognition.”
Israeli president Isaac Herzog has also criticized the Australian announcement as a reward for Hamas for his attack on October 7, 2023 against southern Israel, repeating the position of the Israeli government on all recognition announcements so far.
The latter recognition occurs about a week after hundreds of thousands of Australians crossed the Port de Sydney bridge to protest the War of Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Speaking one day after the demonstration, the Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Penny Wong, told ABC that “there is a risk that there will be no more Palestine to recognize”.
“Regarding recognition, I have said it for over a year now, it’s a question of knowing when, not so,” added Wong.
The Liberal Party of the Opposition criticized this decision, claiming that it put Australia in contradiction with the United States, its nearest ally, and has reversed a bipartite consensus according to which there should not be any recognition while Hamas remains in control of Gaza.
“Despite his words today, the reality is that Anthony Albanese committed Australia to recognize Palestine while the hostages remain in tunnels under Gaza and with Hamas still in control of the Gaza population. Nothing he said today, the fact of changing,” said the chief of the Liberal Party Sussan Ley in a press release.
“Recognizing a Palestinian state before a return of hostages and the defeat of Hamas, as the government has done today, risks delivering Hamas one of its strategic objectives of horrible terrorism of October 7.”
The Australian Greens, the fourth largest party in Parliament, praised the decision to recognize Palestine, but said that the announcement had not responded to “Australian public calls for the government to take material measures”.
“Millions of Australians went down to the street, including 300,000 last weekend in Sydney, calling for sanctions and at the end of arms trade with Israel. The Albanian government still ignores this call,” said senator David Shoebridge, party spokesperson on foreign affairs, in a statement.
The Defense Network of Australian Palestine (APAN) also criticized the announcement, describing it as a “political figurine sheet, leaving the genocide and apartheid of Israel continued without dispute and distracting the complicity of Australia in Israeli war crimes via weapons and components in progress on the trade of arms and components”.
“Palestinian rights are not a gift to be granted by Western states. They do not depend on negotiations with the behavior or behavior or approval of their colonial oppressors,” Apan said in a statement.
According to Albanian, Australia’s decision to recognize the right of Palestinians to their own state will be “based on the commitments that Australia has received from the Palestinian Authority (PA)”.
These “detailed and important commitments” include that the reaffirms “recognizes the right of Israel to exist in peace and security” and undertake to “demilitarize and organize general elections”, said Albane on the announcement of the decision.
The AP is a director who supervised certain parts of the West Bank occupied by Israeli since the mid -1990s.
He has not held a parliamentary elections since 2006 and has been criticized by some Palestinians for helping Israel keep close control over residents in occupied West Bank.
Albanese said that the commitments guaranteed by Australia were “an opportunity to deliver self -determination to the inhabitants of Palestine in a way that isolates Hamas, disarma and gets it out of the region once and for all”.
Hamas has been in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, when it fought a brief war against the forces faithful to the president of AP Mahmoud Abbas.
New Zealand to decide on recognition next month
Meanwhile, the New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, said on Monday that his country’s cabinet would make an official decision on the Palestinian state in September.
“Some of the partners close to New Zealand have chosen to recognize a Palestinian state, and some have not done so,” Peters said in a statement.
“In the end, New Zealand has an independent foreign policy, and on this question, we intend to carefully weigh the problem, then act according to the principles, the values and the national interest of New Zealand.”
Peters said that even if New Zealand has considered recognition of a Palestinian state for a while, a question of when, not if “, the question is not” simple “or” clear “.
“There is a wide range of opinions strongly organized within our government, our government, and our New Zealand society to the question of the recognition of a Palestinian state,” he said.
“It is just that this complicated problem is approached calmly, cautiously and judiciously. During the next month, we are impatient to request this wide range of views before taking a proposal in the office. ”
Of the 193 UN Member States, 147 already recognize the Palestinian State, representing three -quarters of the countries of the world and the vast majority of its population.
As part of its 1947 plan to partition Palestine, UNGA said that it would give 45% of the land to an Arab state although it has never come.
The announcements of Australia and New Zealand on Monday occurred a few hours after an Israeli attack killed five Tel Aviv Tribune staff in the city of Gaza and as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to threaten a large-scale invasion of the city in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The War of Israel against Gaza killed at least 61,430 people, according to the Gaza health authorities.
According to health authorities, more than 200 people, including 100 children, died from famine under the punishing seat of Israel.