Albanese plans to recognise Palestine but the timing is crucial
Albanese may have been re-elected with a thumping majority in May, but he is indicating he will continue to exercise a cautious approach to foreign policy, even if this frustrates party loyalists.
Albanese co-founded the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group in the late 1990s, and has consistently argued that an independent Palestinian state needs to sit alongside Israel. Within Labor, Albanese's left faction led the push for recognition of Palestine to be inserted into the party's policy platform, a goal it achieved in 2021. He is increasingly aghast at the way Israel has conducted the conflict in Gaza, including restrictions on the delivery of aid to starving civilians.
There's no doubt Albanese wants to recognise Palestine and intends to do so while he is prime minister. The question is one of timing, and how to ensure any intervention by Australia amounts to more than a controversial, yet ultimately tokenistic, gesture.
'Is the time right now? Are we about to imminently do that? No, we are not,' Albanese told the ABC's Insiders on Sunday when asked about recognition of Palestine.
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Foreign Minister Penny Wong put the issue up in lights in April 2024, when she said that ' the international community is now considering the question of Palestinian statehood as a way of building momentum towards a two-state solution'.
'There are always those who claim recognition is rewarding an enemy,' she said. 'This is wrong.'
Wong was laying the intellectual foundations for nations like Australia to recognise Palestine before any final peace settlement with Israel. Fifteen months later, though, the government still does not officially recognise Palestine as a state.
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