Viewed through a shifting kaleidoscope of antipodean politics, Australia’s relationship with Israel and its local lobbyists has for the most part followed a relatively even course, with some ups and downs.
Perhaps the most dramatic shift came during the Whitlam era, when prime minister Gough Whitlam proclaimed a move in government policy in favour of “even-handedness” towards Israel and Palestine. Whitlam infuriated the most vocal Jewish organisations in Australia by separating his government from that of United States in UN votes on issues relating to the Middle East: in one case, provocatively from Israel’s standpoint, refusing to condemn Egyptian and Syrian attacks on Israel in the Yom Kippur war of 1973.
Until now, that period between 1972–75 marked a nadir in relations between Canberra and the Jewish state, as it did between Canberra and Washington. Now, a new nadir appears to have been reached with the Albanese government’s support for a UN General Assembly resolution that Israel and its supporters in Australia regard as anathema.
Australia joined 156 other countries in supporting a resolution urging Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza and commit to a peace process aimed at achieving a sustainable resolution of the conflict in compliance with international law. This would include ceasing all settlement activity in territory occupied in the 1967 war.
Its unequivocal wording called on the Netanyahu government to “bring to an end its unlawful presence in the occupied territories as rapidly as possible.” It also referred to reparations, and the need for genuine efforts to end the Israel–Palestine conflict with agreement and implementation of a two-state solution.
For the purposes of this resolution, “occupied territory” includes East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. East Jerusalem and West Bank, the first two of which are home to a total of about 750,000 settlers.
Australia’s friends and allies voting for the resolution included Britain, Canada, New Zealand, France and Germany — among virtually all members of the European Union — Japan, Scandinavian countries and Asian neighbors, principally Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.
In the sweep of history going back to the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel seized East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, Gaza and Sinai from Egypt, the General Assembly resolution represents a signficant diplomatic challenge for Israel.
International opinion has solidified on the illegality of Israel’s continued settlement activities in territories occupied in war. Australia, which had abstained before on these sorts of resolutions, has now joined a global majority censorious of Israel, leaving Israel and the United States isolated diplomatically.
Of course, it needs to be said such resolutions can, and will, be ignored by Israel, but international disapproval is building against the Jewish state’s disregard for repeated calls to wind back its settlement-building activities and embrace a genuine effort to reach a compromise with the Palestinians.
In the annals of Australian Middle East diplomacy this is a potentially watershed development and one that now clearly divides Labor from the Coalition. Opposition leader Peter Dutton was quick to describe Labor’s UN vote as a “sellout” to garner support from Muslim voters in electorates made vulnerable by what is regarded as Canberra’s limp responses to the Gaza war. Whether this latest development neutralises Muslim voter displeasure remains to be seen.
This week’s decision invites comparison with Labor’s previously warm alignment (though not always uncritical) with Israel, and, conversely, a certain standoffishness, at least initially, on the part of the Coalition.
In the early stages of Israel’s life after it fought, and won, its war of independence against Arab armies in 1948, the Coalition tended to associate itself with Britain’s coolness towards the new enterprise. There was no hostility, simply a wariness.
This contrasted with Labor’s enthusiastic support and, indeed, pivotal role in securing the partition of Palestine under the 1947 Partition Plan, which divided what had been Palestine under the British mandate between Jewish and Palestinian entities, the latter under Jordanian rule.
Labor’s foreign minister, Bert Evatt, brought this outcome to fruition in his role as chair of the ad hoc UN committee on Palestine, thus forever endearing him to the Jewish establishment in Australia. Ben Chifley’s government further earned the gratitude of Australian Jews when Australia was instrumental in Israel becoming a full member of the UN in 1949.
This is a very far cry indeed from the curdling of relations today between the Albanese government and the main Jewish organisations in Australia. In contrast with its predecessors, the Jewish establishment today has become more attached to the conservative side of politics — an attachment rewarded by an indulgent approach to Israel among Coalition figures who have been advocating a virtual carte blanche in Israel’s approach to the Gaza war.
Looking back, Whitlam’s departure from virtually unconditional support for Israel among the major parties was a sign of things to come, albeit a generation later. Arguments during 2012 within Julia Gillard’s government about whether Australia should support the granting of Palestine observer status at the United Nations were an indicator of shifting sentiment on Palestine.
Gillard had insisted Australia vote against the Palestine observer status resolution, but pressure from colleagues, and principally foreign minister Bob Carr, forced her to accept that Australia should abstain.
Significantly, former prime minister Bob Hawke, regarded as primus inter pares among senior Labor figures in his support for Israel, lobbied behind the scenes for that shift. The Israel that Hawke had sworn fealty to in championing of the cause of Soviet Jewry had ceased to exist in his view because of its continued illegal settlement of territory seized in the 1967 war and its subjugation of the Palestinian population there.
The governments of Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison effectively reverted to the approach to Israel adopted during the John Howard years in which Australia was regarded in international forums as one of Israel’s most reliable supporters. Morrison’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, thereby short-circuiting the issue as a final status matter, certainly endeared him to Australia’s Jewish establishment. Labor was quick to reverse the Morrison decision when it got into government.
Viewed historically, it was probably inevitable that Labor would become more critical of Israel, or at least more sceptical of claims by its leadership that it was open to a reasonable compromise with the Palestinians. Under Benjamin Netanyahu’s nationalist government, with its reliance on settler support to remain in power, reasonable compromises are off the table.
Netanyahu’s record — as opposed to his occasional indications that he might countenance a two-state solution — has left little, if any, room for manoeuvre. The 7 October Hamas pogrom against Jewish people and Israel’s response exposed an issue that was festering inside the Labor Party in any case. That issue is whether Labor in government would recognise the state of Palestine as a means of advancing prospects for a “two-state solution” and peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
The Gaza war with its horrific images on TV news of war casualties, including women and children, has forced Labor in government to take seriously the Palestine question, especially given risks to its voter base among traditional supporters in places like Sydney’s western suburbs, and from the progressive left.
At its August 2023 federal conference delegates called on a future Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state and “expects that this issue will be an important priority for the Australian government.”
These calls by the rank and file for urgent action on Palestine had tended to be ignored in the past by a Labor leadership anxious to avoid a showdown with the Jewish establishment.
Labor support for this week’s contentious UN resolution shows that it is edging towards recognition. The party of Evatt, Chifley and Hawke has moved a long way from its pro-Israel positions, but then again Israel itself, in its lurch to the hard right, is hardly the same country of an earlier fraternal Labor movement. •
