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The announcement by the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, that the Albanese government would recognise a Palestinian state is a crass domestic political statement.

Not only does the announcement break the long-standing bipartisan position for a two-state solution in the Middle East, it fails to establish the necessary preconditions for the recognition of Palestine.

This tragic saga started with the Hamas massacre of 1,139 people in southern Israel. Some 240-250 innocent civilians were taken as hostages, some of which remain in captivity.

The Wong announcement follows the Israeli determination to eliminate Hamas from Gaza, during which an aid convoy was wrongly attacked, and aid workers killed, including an Australian.

The statement fails to recognise that Palestinians have repeatedly rejected a solution to the ongoing conflict over many years.

Pandering

It reflects two underlying domestic political factors: the influence of the left in the Australian Labor Party; and the campaign against Labor MPs by Muslim groups, especially in Western Sydney.

The newly established website, Muslimvotesmatter, lists some 32 seats that it claims are vulnerable to loss. Most of these seats are held by the Labor Party, some with small margins.

Prominent amongst them are the seat of Watson held by Tony Burke with a margin of 15 per cent, but with 27 per cent of Muslim voters.

Jason Clare in Blaxland has a margin of almost 15 per cent, but 35 per cent of voters are Muslim.

Similarly, Chris Bowen in Werriwa has a margin of 9.5 per cent and almost 15 per cent of Muslim voters.

All three are members of the right faction.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 29 of the 151 federal electorates have 5 per cent or more people of Islamic faith. Significantly, 27 of those 29 seats are held by Labor.

Of those 29, four are marginal – the Labor-held seats of Werriwa and Parramatta; Fowler, which Labor lost to independent Dai Le at the 2022 election; and the Liberal-held Banks – while 16 are held by Labor on margins of 10 per cent or more.

This electoral panic is reinforced by the Labor left’s pro-Palestinian leanings. Both the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, are prominent members of the left faction, which now has the ascendancy.

State branches of the Labor Party are mostly controlled by the left. And prominent figures such as former NSW premier Bob Carr have supported Palestinian ambitions for many years.

Fearing electoral attack from the Greens, the Labor Party has caved in to domestic political pressures.

Weak Leaders

Speaking in 1975 on the 27th anniversary of Israel’s Independence, then-president of the Labor Party, Bob Hawke, said:

“Essentially Israel is asking this question – is the world going to insist on the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign independent state, or will the world increasingly succumb to an array of economic pressures, unremitting propaganda and attempts to weaken the American commitment which in combination, will leave Israel friendless and expendable?”

It is concerning that this position – indeed the national interest – is being abandoned by Labor.

Acting in the national interest involves members of parliament standing up to vocal minorities, even in their own electorates, from time to time. Otherwise, they surrender their essential role to consider the issues free from partisan pressure and local sentiment and become more like delegates.

This role was eloquently expressed more than two centuries ago by the significant Irish statesman, Edmund Burke.

Speaking to the electors of Bristol, where he had been elected as their member in 1774, Burke said:

“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

“Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.”

This was a clear and courageous statement. Edmund Burke was proclaiming that his foremost duty was to participate and consider the debates on national issues and then to form a considered judgment, not simply to act upon the loudest voices in his electorate.

But this is exactly what the Labor government in Australia, and President Biden in the United States are doing with regard to the Middle East, particularly the conflict in Gaza.

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Republished with thanks to Kevin Andrews. Image courtesy of Chrisna Senatus, Pexels.