With few exceptions, politicians in Australia and across the western world have recently expressed concern that the two-state solution is under threat by Netanyahu’s now-postponed annexation plans (which are perhaps best understood by examining Trump’s ‘conceptual map’). These positions may reflect the growing popular support for the Palestinian struggle across the world, one expression of which is the protest statement signed by hundreds of Australian academics and artists published last week in Overland.
However, calls by politicians to uphold international law can also be interpreted as an attempt to maintain the West’s sense of moral superiority without investing in racial justice for Palestinians, for they do not disturb the Israeli settler-colonial project. The rhetorical commitment to the two-state solution works as an ideological weapon that serves Israel’s criminal impunity while legitimating Zionism as a settler-colonial, ethno-nationalist project.
Unconditional support for the Israeli state, regardless of its apartheid practices and ongoing colonial project, has been a long-standing bipartisan position in Australia that protects Israel from censure. As Ben Saul reminded us last week in a piece urging Australia to join global condemnation of Israel’s annexation plans, Australian and Israeli forces train together. Australian citizens who are also Israeli citizens serve legally in the Israeli army and have joined military operations that breach international and human rights.
It wasn’t long ago, in December of 2018, that Scott Morrison recognised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital while holding back on moving the Australian embassy from Tel Aviv (my colonised home city of Yaffa) to West Jerusalem. The move made Australia the only western nation to follow the United States in in supporting the expansion of the Zionist settler-colonial project across internationally-recognised Palestinian land. The recognition, alongside Australia’s consistent opposition to United Nations resolutions condemning Israeli international law violations, points to a perverse kinship between the two nations.
Read the article by Tasnim Mahmoud Sammak in Overland.
[This appalling article has been eviscerated by Ambassador Alan Baker in an article How to Dismantle the Distorted Western Discourse on Israel]