Western nations' moves still fall short of real pressure on Israel, but there are more options

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21 hours ago

While the Israeli government resents countries such as Australia recognising a Palestinian state, it is more of an irritant than a substantial setback. But there is one thing Israel dreads the prospect of: economic sanctions.
From my six years living in Jerusalem and talking to hundreds of Israelis — senior politicians, army officers and ordinary Israelis — sanctions are seen there as the main game to be prevented.
Israel and its lobby groups in countries like Australia spend many millions of dollars every year with two objectives in mind: to minimise criticism of Israel from people in power and to convince politicians, editors and journalists around the world that any sanctions against Israel would be wrong.
The main Israeli lobby group in Australia — the Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) — even protested in June when the Albanese government sanctioned two of Israel's most influential far-right ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
AIJAC said the sanctions against "two democratically elected but controversial ministers" represented "a major escalation of the ongoing regrettable trend by the current ALP government of abandoning our long-standing bipartisan tradition of good relations with the Jewish state."
What the AIJAC statement did not mention was that, in fact, it is Israel — rather than the ALP — which has dramatically changed. Governments of former prime ministers Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin would have tried to rein in ministers who called for the "annihilation of Gaza", as minister of heritage Amichai Eliyahu did recently.
And to give a sense of where AIJAC's executive director Colin Rubenstein stands politically, during an earlier Gaza war in 2014, he stood on the steps of the Victorian parliament and said: "Israel does more than any other country to avoid killing civilians."
The effect of his words was to give the Israeli army a higher ranking in terms of protecting civilians than that of the Australian army.
In that speech, Rubenstein went on to list the measures he said the Israeli military used to avoid civilian casualties, including "phone calls, texts, leaflets and the knock on the roof to warn civilians, even if that means it loses some military advantage."
Public comments by both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have long been blatantly racist and anti-Palestinian, with the US State Department under Joe Biden — normally loathe to criticise Israel — describing them as "inflammatory" and "all racist rhetoric."
Both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have questioned whether Palestinians are in fact even real.
Smotrich has made clear that he does not believe Palestinians have any place in Israel — a place where 20 per cent of the population is of Palestinian heritage.
As he told Arab members of the parliament in 2021: "You're here by mistake, it's a mistake that [founding Israeli prime minister David] Ben-Gurion didn't finish the job and didn't throw you out in 1948."
It is a sign of how far right the Israeli government is today that a man who made clear he thinks Palestinians should have been ethnically cleansed upon the formation of Israel is now one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's key advisers.
And it is a sign of how far right AIJAC is that it condemns the sanctioning of "two democratically-elected but controversial ministers."
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are driving much of the direction of Israel today — they do not want an end to the war in Gaza, and have argued against humanitarian aid.
Several Israeli ministers no longer try to hide their desire to "cleanse" Gaza of Palestinians. Eliyah declared recently: "The [Israeli] government is in a race against time to annihilate Gaza. We are in the process of eliminating its inhabitants. Gaza will be entirely Jewish."
In most normal democracies, a minister who spoke about "annihilating" a place with 2.1 million inhabitants would not keep their job. Not today's Israel.
The Albanese government's decision to recognise Palestine and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in line with the policy set out by John Howard in 2006 when he was prime minister.
Howard said at the time: "Australians want the fighting to stop, and Australia also wants everybody to address the root cause of the problem, and the root cause of the problem is still, in the whole of the Middle East … the settlement of the Palestinian issue."
He was correct in 2006 and that analysis remains correct today. As bruised and damaged as the two-state model is, it still appears to be the only tenable option. The choice is either a two-state solution or a forever war.
The Albanese government has returned Australia to a long-accepted bipartisan policy — supported by Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison.
Israel's conduct in this Gaza war appears to reflect a view that it can act with impunity.
Few other countries — if any — are able to kill five media workers one the grounds they claim one of the journalists was a member of Hamas.
At the weekend, Israel targeted Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, claiming that he had headed a Hamas militant cell.
Al Jazeera, press freedom groups and the journalists who worked with Al-Sharif categorically reject the claim, but even if it were true, why should the driver, two camera operators and a fellow journalist who walked into the tent with Al-Sharif be blown apart because of an Israeli army?
The Committee to Protect Journalists says 186 journalists in Gaza have been killed since October 7, 2023.
The fact that it is only now — 22 months into the war — that governments such as Australia are moving against Israel is itself noteworthy.
On UNICEF's figures, Israel killed more than 17,000 children and injured 33,000 others in the first 21 months of the war. Or, in the words of UNICEF's executive director Catherine Russell, Israel is killing the equivalent of a classroom of children every day.
"Consider that for a moment," Ms Russell said.
"A whole classroom of children killed every day for nearly two years."
While Israel had killed 17,000 children until July, by August it had killed a reported 18,500. The Washington Post took the extraordinary move of publishing the names of every one of the dead children.
Few other countries — if any — could kill the equivalent of a classroom of children every day and continue diplomatic relations with countries such as Australia.
In terms of the decision to recognise a Palestinian state — taken in recent weeks by France, the UK, Canada and now Australia — Israel and its supporters claim that "the timing is not right."
"This rewards Hamas and terrorism" is the standard Israeli line.
One thing I learnt from my years working in Israel is that as far as the government is concerned — and the public who has elected Netanyahu three times — the time is never right.
For those in power in Israel, there always seems to be a reason that a Palestinian state cannot be created.
When I first arrived in Israel, in 2009, Israeli politicians told me that they wanted a Palestinian state but that the time was not right: how could they agree to a Palestinian state when the Palestinians were divided, with Fatah, or the Palestinian Authority, running the West Bank and Hamas running Gaza?
To me this seemed a fair point. To address this concern of Israel's, Palestinian politicians from both the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza began "unity talks." If the Israelis wanted to negotiate with a unified Palestinian leadership, then the Palestinians made moves to remove this obstacle to peace.
So in 2014, the Palestinians agreed upon an in-principle "unity government." Having taken Israeli leadership in good faith, I assumed that negotiations for a Palestinian state could begin.
But then Israeli politicians said they could not have talks with a Palestinian government that included Hamas.
Then the Palestinians arranged affairs so that no-one with a Hamas affiliation could be part of a unity government. Then the Israeli politicians said the Palestinians could not be taken at face value on this.
Despite several efforts by Palestinians, no serious peace talks were resumed. At every turn, Israel had a reason they could not.
And then, of course, came October 7. The new refrain was: "How could we sit down and negotiate with such savages?"
What has brought the Palestinian statehood issue to a head now are the images of starving children from Gaza. That is what has galvanised world opinion and led to change in countries including Australia.
Over the last two years, Israel has limited the amount of food, water and medicine going into Gaza. Sometimes it has stopped it completely. That has not just led to babies and children dying but has isolated Israel on the world stage, with the US one if its few remaining supporters.
This war has been a disaster for Palestinians and it will, in coming years, remain a reputational stain for Israel.
It is fast becoming a pariah on the world stage — for a generation, many people will think of dead and dying children when they think of Israel.
Israel does not like to have the sort of backlash it is facing at the moment, but as long as the US continues to support its military campaigns, it will live with being unpopular.
The issue goes much deeper than Netanyahu. It is too convenient for the international community to blame everything on Netanyahu.
Israelis have elected Netanyahu three times — knowing that his signature policy is to oppose the Palestinians ever having what the international community voted for in 1947.
Australia was one of the leaders of that resolution. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations adopted Resolution 181 that divided the British-governed Palestinian Mandate into a Jewish state alongside an Arab state.
Now, the straw that has broken the camel's back for Australia and so many other countries is the view that nothing the international community does or says will stop the Israeli government from pursuing the apparent complete demolition of Gaza.
Scores of Israeli military and intelligence experts have said that the war should stop — that Israel as long as a year ago achieved its goal of defeating Hamas and that an end to the war would mean the release of the 50 hostages remaining in Gaza, though more than half are believed to have died.
The horrific pictures of dead and dying children coming out of Gaza, along with Netanyahu's insistence that there is no starvation and his plans to move troops into the final part of the Gaza not yet demolished, has prompted Australia to join other like-minded countries.
Netanyahu's claim that there was no starvation has even been contradicted by US President Donald Trump.
While Israel still has the support of the Trump White House, it is becoming dangerously isolated on the world stage.
Inside Israel, however, this will be dealt with.
The only thing that will make the current Israeli government move from its course of destroying Gaza as a habitable place is the fear of financial pain.
This is the same scenario that played out to end apartheid in South Africa.
The white racist regime of South Africa found it unpleasant that their Rugby and cricket teams could not compete on the world stage, or, if they did, were hounded when they went on tour.
As is the case with Israel today, pariah status in South Africa was an unpleasant cost of a race-based system that delivered power and benefits to the white Afrikaner regime who fought to the end to hold onto it.
A similar situation exists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Just as the South African regime benefited from cheap labour of the black townships, Jewish Israelis benefit from cheap land — indeed, often free land — taken from Palestinians in the West Bank.
Groups of Jewish settlers such as the Hilltop Youth simply look for a location they like — the clue is in the name, the land or choice is usually a hilltop on the Palestinian Territory of the West Bank — and they simply take it.
I have seen these settlers up close. They are often masked, usually carry guns and are completely unaccountable.
As my colleague Eric Tlozek recently reported, a Rabbi was physically assaulted by Jewish settlers — he had his head smashed — when trying to intervene on behalf of Palestinians.
As to Australia's position, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is correct when he says a two-state solution will isolate Hamas. Hamas is as opposed to a two-state solution as Netanyahu is.
The challenge for the international community is that the Netanyahu view, that there should never be a Palestinian state, is now deeply established — he is Israel's longest serving Prime Minister, and his efforts are well entrenched.
In 2001, after he lost the prime ministership, he travelled to a Jewish settlement in Ofra in the West Bank. He had his eye on another run at the leadership, so wanted to convince the settlers that he was their friend.
Not realising he was being secretly filmed, Netanyahu was more frank than he normally would be. Usually, he would talk about "two states for two people" but go on to talk about the many complications and how it would take time.
But on this day, he spoke honestly. He boasted how he had sabotaged the Oslo peace process begun by President Bill Clinton.
Speaking about a two-state solution, he said:
"They [the US] won't get their way. They asked me before [the 1996 Israeli] election if I'd honour [the Oslo Accords]. I said I would but … I'm going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the 67 borders."
Netanyahu said he "stopped the Oslo accords" by defining large sections of land that would have been set aside for a Palestinian state as "defined military zones."
"How did we do it?" he said.
"Nobody said what 'defined military zones' were. 'Defined military zones' are security zones; as far as I'm concerned the entire Jordan Valley is a 'defined military zone'. Go argue."
Then he added: "I de facto put an end to the Oslo accords."
The result of Netanyahu's long march away from a two-state solution is now being seen in the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
With Israel bombing Gaza to the extent that it is barely habitable — its sewage system, water system, road system, hospital system, communications system and education system have largely been destroyed — Netanyahu may well have succeeded in ensuring a Palestinian state never happens.
The problem for Israel is that influential countries such as Canada, the UK, France and Australia have decided this is a fight worth having.
The nightmare for Israel would be that having destroyed Gaza, the European Union — the world's second largest trading block — and the Arab world tell Israel that it is to be hit with sanctions until it helps to rebuild both Gaza and the prospects of a Palestinian state.
And if the current trajectory of Israeli isolation continues, should the US ever abandon Israel then it will be completely on its own.
And just as Israel will be a pariah, hopes of a Palestinian state will be largely demolished.
Former Israeli ambassador to France Elie Barnavi and French historian Vincent Lemire recently wrote an opinion piece in the Le Monde newspaper urging French president Emmanuel Macron to immediately impose sanctions on Israel.
The reason this was urgent, they said, was that while it may seem a principled thing to acknowledge a Palestinian state, "if immediate sanctions are not imposed on Israel you will be forced to acknowledge a graveyard."