Recognising Palestine now only rewards Hamas, the side with clear genocidal intent

Sydney Morning Herald

3 days ago

Amid the furore of the public debate about the war in Gaza, and whether Australia should now recognise Palestine, it is too often forgotten that recognition of a Palestinian state is the outcome preferred by both sides of politics. Since the first Oslo Accord, which created the Palestinian Authority and set in train the long-since interrupted peace process, the ultimate goal has been to achieve a 'two-state solution'.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge since that sunny day in the White House Rose Garden in September 1993 when then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with PLO Leader Yasser Arafat, under the benign gaze of President Bill Clinton. Today, peace between Israelis and Palestinians is much further away than it seemed then. Nevertheless, the two-state solution remains the objective; the question is not whether Palestinian statehood should be recognised, but when and on what conditions.
As with most other democracies, Australia has long taken the view that that should not happen until Israel's right to exist is acknowledged – as it was by the Oslo Accords – and its security credibly assured by the Palestinians.
Since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, the Palestinian Authority has been unable to give that assurance. The consequences for Israel of Hamas' control of Gaza – against which Israeli leaders long before Benjamin Netanyahu warned – were made horrifyingly clear on October 7, 2023.
However critical one might be of Israel's response in the nearly two years of warfare since, nothing can alter what happened that day, and the intent those events revealed: the elimination of the people of Israel. That had always has been the explicit objective of Hamas, declared in its foundational documents. The Nova Music Festival massacre merely made it manifest. Notwithstanding the destruction of Hamas' senior leadership and killing of many of its fighters, its objective remains unchanged.
The chilling irony of the debate about the Gaza War – in Australia, as elsewhere – is that those who most volubly condemn Israel for genocide are acting, wittingly or unwittingly, as apologists for Hamas, whose very raison d'etre is genocide.
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Like 'fascist' before it, 'genocide' has become the go-to word of abuse for the left, a denunciation invoked with such indiscriminate carelessness that it has become unmoored from its true meaning. International law defines 'genocide' in the 1948 Genocide Convention as 'acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical [sic], racial or religious group'.
The forcible occupation of territory may be a violation of international law, but it is not genocide. Israel's announcement last week that it intends to deploy armed personnel to secure Gaza City is not a threat of genocide.