Malcolm Turnbull is attempting to walk a diplomatic line where Australia supports the two-state solution, but publicly rebukes critics of Israel’s aggressive settlement building, as the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu touches down in Sydney for a four-day visit.
In a column for the Australian newspaper on Wednesday, the prime minister said Australia recognised that Israel and the Palestinians “need to come to a settlement and we support a directly negotiated two-state solution so that Palestinians will have their own state and the people of Israel can be secure within agreed borders”.
But he continued the government’s rebuke of the United Nations over a resolution passed in December condemning Israel’s controversial settlements program in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, made it clear at the time Australia would not have supported the resolution on settlements, which was co-sponsored by New Zealand. In a conversation with the New Zealand foreign affairs minister, Netanyahu reportedly declared the resolution “tantamount to a “declaration of war”.
Israel threatened diplomatic reprisals against the countries that voted in favour of the UN resolution. Diplomatic ties with New Zealand were temporarily severed and ambassador Itzhak Gerberg was recalled.
On Wednesday Turnbull was critical of unnamed critics who viewed Israel “exclusively through the lens of its conflict with the Palestinians”.
“They demand that the government take the side of those in the international community who seek to chastise Israel – and it alone – for the continuing failure of the peace process.
“In a speech to the UN general assembly in 2015, prime minister Netanyahu pointed out that in the preceding 12 months, the general assembly had adopted 20 resolutions critical of Israel, compared to just one in response to the war in Syria, which has resulted in more than 250,000 killed and millions driven from their homes.”
Turnbull said his government would “not support one-sided resolutions criticising Israel of the kind recently adopted by the UN security council and we deplore the boycott campaigns designed to delegitimise the Jewish state”.
As he arrived in Sydney, Netanyahu said the visit was to celebrate a 100-year friendship between the two countries.
“I’ve been here before and counted the years wanting to come back again, and I’m very proud to be here as the first Israeli prime minister to make an official visit to Australia.”
He said the two countries had ties that went back to before the birth of the modern nation-state of Israel.
“We’re celebrating 100 years of friendship between Australia and Israel,” Netanyahu said. “I always remember, it was Australian light horse that liberated Beersheba, an old city in our history. We have been friends, extraordinary friends, ever since.”
Turnbull and Netanyahu will sign bilateral agreements covering air services and science and technology during the visit, and will also discuss the progress of an innovation hub helping Australian entrepreneurs do business in Israel.
During private meetings, the Israeli prime minister is also expected to hear concern about aggressive settlement building both from the Turnbull government, and from the ALP, which has already telegraphed publicly its intention to raise the issue during bilateral discussions.
Ahead of the visit, divisions within Labor over Middle East policy have been on display. Two former prime ministers, Bob Hawke and Kevin Rudd, and two former foreign affairs ministers, Gareth Evans and Bob Carr, have called for the diplomatic recognition of Palestine on the basis that Israel’s aggressive settlement building conduct is undermining the peace process.
Labor has been moving incrementally in the direction of adopting a more pro-Palestinian policy stance since 2012, with the ALP national conference in July 2015 passing the strongest resolution yet seen at the national level.
The form of words adopted by the conference says if “there is no progress in the next round of the peace process, a future Labor government will discuss joining like-minded nations who have already recognised Palestine and announcing the conditions and timelines for the Australian recognition of a Palestinian state, with the objective of contributing to peace and security in the Middle East”.
While the national conference resolution clearly references Labor being in government when it would provide recognition for Palestinian statehood, a number of current Labor parliamentarians believe the “no progress” threshold has already been reached – some assert a majority of the caucus holds this view.
But Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong, has argued any change in policy should not be executed from opposition, and she’s indicated the ALP will speak up with Israel when it judges conduct is unhelpful to a resolution of the conflict.
The US president, Donald Trump, used a visit by Netanyahu to Washington last week to dump America’s 20-year commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel as part of a permanent Middle East peace agreement.
After the Trump development, Bishop said the government in Canberra still favoured a two-state solution to the conflict but she nuanced that position slightly.
Bishop suggested on Sky News that Australia’s support for a two-state solution might shift in the future if Israel and Palestine favoured another means of resolving the conflict.
She said Trump had merely been pointing to the necessity for both parties to agree on the way forward. “The two sides need to sit down and negotiate a resolution – it can’t be imposed from outside.”
Bishop said if the parties came up with “another solution that they were prepared to live with, that ensured the Israelis and Palestinians could live side by side, together, between internationally recognised boundaries, then of course the world should support that”.
