Sheridan wrong on Wong

Published in Pearls and Irritations, 3 October 2024

Greg Sheridan is doubtless now too long in the tooth to change his journalistic ways. But it really is time that he recognised the force of that immortal observation by Shakespeare’s contemporary, Francis Bacon, that ‘Speaking in perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love’.

No Sheridan article seems complete without some person or policy being labelled ‘insane’, ‘deranged’, ‘obscene’ or the ‘worst ever’, or some variation on these themes, and our foreign minister is subjected to a full such linguistic barrage for her address to the UN General Assembly last week (‘Penny Wong’s UN speech shows Labor has abandoned Israel’, The Australian, 1/10).

His judgment is not one that will be shared by any genuinely fair-minded observer. The core of her speech was a passionate and articulate defence of the fundamental principles of the UN Charter, a cry for peaceful resolution of all the terrible conflicts now roiling the world, not just in the Middle East, and a demand that the principles of international humanitarian law – devoted to the protection of innocent civilians – be universally respected in any state’s military actions, however otherwise justifiable.

Penny Wong did not hold back in describing and condemning the horror of the Hamas October 7 attack, and there is nothing in anything she said in New York – or that any other member of the Albanese government has said anywhere – that suggests indifference to the scourge of antisemitism, or in any way plays into the hands of those who are hostile to Israel’s very right to exist.

What she does say about the scarifying 40,000 death toll so far in Gaza is that ‘Palestinian citizens cannot be made to pay the price of defeating Hamas’ and that ‘Lebanon cannot become the next Gaza’. And in doing so she simply echoes the response of political leaders right around the world, including in those Western countries with whom Australia traditionally most identifies.

Sheridan’s most withering criticism is directed at our foreign minister’s renewed declaration – which he describes as made with ‘sublime and fatuous undergraduate certainty’ – of Australian support for the early recognition by the UN of Palestinian statehood, not just ‘as the destination of a peace process, but a contribution of momentum towards peace.’

Australia is hardly alone in believing, as Wong put it, that a two-state solution – with strong built-in guarantees for the security of both – is the only hope not just of breaking the endless cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, but strengthening the forces of peace and undermining extremism right across the region. Nor is she, and Australia, alone in believing that for the UN to formally recognise Palestinian statehood – as some 140 countries have already individually done—would be a helpful circuit-breaker, in an environment where Israel opposition to even contemplating such a solution is currently so ingrained.

As I have argued elsewhere, the basic case for such recognition is that doing so is vital to restore a balance that has tipped overwhelmingly in favour of Israel. No peace negotiation can succeed if the parties at the table are completely mismatched. For the foreseeable future, the best – and possibly the only – way to counter the current mismatch, giving Palestinians extra leverage and bargaining power, is to show that their self-determination cause has legitimacy not only in the Islamic world and the global south, but also among traditional pillars of the global north, like the UK, Australia, and other US allies and partners.

There are many, more sympathetic to Palestinian aspirations than Sheridan and those who sail with him will ever be, who nonetheless argue that, however much the underlying dynamics might change for the better with such a development, formal recognition of Palestinian statehood is an empty, quixotic gesture. They will say that a two-state solution now looks utterly unattainable, owing to ever more entrenched Israeli hostility, and to the territorial fragmentation created by Israel’s increasingly unrestrained West Bank settlement-building.

All true enough, but the dream of a two-state solution must be kept alive. For the world to recognise Palestine, in an attempt to revitalise a serious two-state negotiation, is not to reward Hamas or Hezbollah but to act in Israel’s own best long-term interests. As Bob Hawke and many others have pointed out over the years, Israel potentially can be a Jewish state, a democratic state, and a state occupying the whole of historical Judea and Samaria. But it cannot be all three at the same time.

The reality is without a political solution that satisfies legitimate Palestinian aspirations, Israel will never be free of the spectre of terrorist attack. My own decades of experience with conflict prevention and resolution, including years of talking to all sides in the Middle East, have drummed home the truth that despair can all too easily turn into rage, and then into indefensible outrage. By the same token, the threat of violence diminishes rapidly during those periods of genuine hope for a just and dignified settlement.

At a time of dramatically heightened tension with Iran, and all the renewed sense of insecurity that comes with it, it has never been more important for Israel to defuse the visceral anger of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and beyond. Most of the rest of the world is now telling Israel that the best way to start is to accept the force of Palestinians' claim to statehood. If Israelis really want a more secure future, it is time for them to listen.

Gareth Evans was Australia’s foreign minister from 1988-96. He is a distinguished honorary professor at the ANU.

This article was first published in Pearls and Irritations on 3 October 2024.