Western nations' moves still fall short of real pressure on Israel, but there are more options
By Americas editor John Lyons

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?"

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-12/palestinian-statehood-benjamin-netanyahu-analysis/105640700

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