A UN Vote That Will Live in Infamy

On the 7th of October last year, the terrorist group Hamas, which rules in Gaza and purports to represent the state of “Palestine”, committed the most foul attack upon Jewish people since the Holocaust.  Within days, that atrocity was celebrated all over the world, including in Australia.  Polls have shown the majority of Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank supported that action by Hamas, which is still the nominal government in Gaza. Hamas has vowed to repeat the actions of October 7 as often as is necessary to achieve their aim of eliminating Israel. Does anyone believe that if an election were held in Gaza today, even under, say, UN supervision, Hamas would not win?

Israel is in the middle of defending itself against this future. Australia has now voted in favour of granting Palestine, that non-existent nation, UN membership. In God’s name, what could have convinced the Albanese government that this is the right time to muddy the waters on this vexed question and signal that our support for Israel’s right to exist is less than 100 per cent?  To signal to Hamas that they are winning the propaganda war? To signal Hamas to hang in there, we’ve got your back?

Oh wait, I’m guessing Jason Clare and Tony Burke, inter alia, might have something to do with this appalling decision. The mealy-mouthed defence of this move, i.e., that it is in furtherance of a two-state solution, totally ignores the fact that Israel has offered a two-state solution, on generous terms, on at least three occasions and been rebuffed. From The Weekend Australian:

Australia’s ambassador to the United Nations James Larsen said Canberra had been “frustrated” by a “lack of progress” and wanted to signal “unwavering support for the two-state solution of Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in peace and security within recognised borders”.

So, in order to boost the chance of a two-state solution, our government has supported granting full UN membership to a non-existent state – an entity that does not possess the pre-requisites for nation status – that, under its current governance, repudiates that very same two-state solution.  Regardless of the status of Palestine, I would have thought a non-negotiable pre-condition would be that all its neighbours unconditionally support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself to the maximum extent required.  

We now have the absurd situation that, within the UN only nine countries oppose the inclusion of Palestine.  Yet at the same time, 30 countries do not recognise Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East.

We now have the absurd situation that Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, has a permanent agenda item devoted to it at meetings of the UN Human Rights Council.

We now have the absurd situation in which Taiwan, a vibrant and prosperous democracy, is not even afforded observer status at the United Nations, whereas the dysfunctional ethnic rabble that calls itself Palestine now has all privileges just short of voting rights.

Let me try to parse this debacle.  Our Foreign Minister Penny Wong is quoted in The Australian:

The Foreign Minister said the resolution was only the “extension of some modest additional rights” for Palestine to participate in UN forums.

“I want to be extremely clear again that this vote is not about whether Australia recognises Palestine,” Senator Wong said.

“We will do that when we think the time is right”.

“What it [the resolution] did do, consistent with the two-state solution, was to express the General Assembly’s aspiration for Palestinian membership of the United Nations, noting that this must be recommended by the United Nations Security Council, consistent with the UN Charter”.

The UN resolution in question is ES10/24.  At the time of writing, I have been unable to get hold of a copy of the resolution itself. It is not even available on the United Nations website.  It appears to have two elements.  An overarching one – membership of the UN for Palestine.  From the UN website:

Granting Palestinian membership requires a recommendation from the Security Council. At the same time, the Assembly determines that the State of Palestine is qualified for such status and recommends that the Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”.

In other words, this was a vote for full UN membership.  Absent a veto from the US, full membership is virtually guaranteed.  Wong must be called out on her weasel words.  This was not an expression of an ‘aspiration’, as she claimed. It was a recommendation for membership, pure and simple. 

Certainly, Australian recognition of Palestine as a nation state is a separate question to UN membership. But if I were the people of Israel, and their Australian supporters, I would not be comforted by the assurance that Palestine would only be recognized by Australia when a clearly partisan Penny Wong ‘thinks the time is right’.  And, regardless of that, if Palestine were admitted to full membership of the UN, a New York minute would seem like a year compared to the time in which an Albanese government would be signing off on the lease of the brand-new Palestinian embassy.

A country suitable for inclusion as a full member of the UN should be one which we are prepared to recognise.  In voting for this part of the resolution – the State of Palestine is qualified for such status – Wong has effectively signalled that, as far as Australia is concerned, that ‘right time’ has actually come. 

The second element, also from the UN website, is:

Here are some of the changes in status that Palestine will have a right to later this year:

To be seated among Member States in alphabetical order,

Make statements on behalf of a group,

Submit proposals and amendments and introduce them,

Co-sponsor proposals and amendments, including on behalf of a group,

Propose items to be included in the provisional agenda of the regular or special, sessions and the right to request the inclusion of supplementary or additional items in the agenda of regular or special sessions,

The right of members of the delegation of the State of Palestine to be elected as officers in the plenary and the Main Committees of the General Assembly,

Full and effective participation in UN conferences and international conferences and meetings convened under the auspices of the General Assembly or, as appropriate, of other UN organs.

Doesn’t sound at all modest to me.  Short of full voting rights, what is lacking?  The key to the executive washroom?  And why do they need voting rights when they can count on the mindless support, for their proposals, of 143 other countries. 

Here is an excerpt from the speech by the Palestinian Observer, Mr Riyad Mansour:

The Permanent Observer said people have to make a decision: stand by the right of a nation to live in freedom and dignity on its ancestral land, standing with peace and recognising the rights of Palestinians or they can stand on the sidelines of history.

A nation ‘living in freedom and dignity on its ancestral land’. That phrase sounds familiar.  Was he referring to Israel, do you think?  No, I thought not.  And no discernible mention in his speech of a two-state solution that I could detect. 

In practical and humanitarian terms, this resolution achieves nothing.  It is virtue signalling on a global scale.  But it is a major propaganda victory for Hamas. The point will not be lost on Hamas that the US now stands virtually alone in opposing UN membership for Palestine.  That it has been abandoned on this issue by its closest allies, in either voting for the resolution or abstaining.  Hamas must conclude from this that its tactics are working.  I imagine the point will not be lost on the USA either. This vacillation is not the message we should be sending to a possibly incoming Trump administration.

That said, however, the US does not escape scot-free.  Its decision to withhold weapons and ammunition will also be seen by Hamas as a sign that 35,000 (claimed) deaths gets results.

This gutless decision is buttressed by the claims of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and many others, that Hamas cannot be defeated militarily, and therefore the civilian deaths occasioned by an incursion into Rafah would not be justified.  If that is true, where does it leave their vaunted two-state solution?  Hamas cannot be defeated at the ballot box, it cannot be starved financially (unless we first starve Iran financially), and despite the appalling atrocities of October 7 it is winning hearts and minds across the Western world.  Now, apparently, it can’t be defeated militarily.  Looks like we’re stuck with Hamas for the foreseeable future.  We had better hope Blinken is wrong and Netanyahu is right.

This cynical vote by Wong also undercuts the government’s limp-wristed effort to rein in the mindless antiSemitism that is infecting our streets and university campuses, and poisoning our social cohesion. 

I don’t believe in the two-state solution.  Not that it shouldn’t happen, just that it won’t, not in any meaningful sense.  Let’s assume some Arab grouping, including representatives from Palestine, agreed to a two-state proposal.   What guarantee do we have that it would hold?  That the players would not just abandon any undertakings ‘when the time is right’ to resume hostilities on some pretext or other?  And what would the UN do about that?  Revoke membership?  How has being a member state of the UN protected Ukraine?  And, more to the point, how has being a member state of the UN inhibited Russia from its depredations on Ukraine?

But even if I’m wrong about that, I’d bet my house that these events have just made such a tenuous outcome even more unlikely.

As I intimated earlier, I have no doubt that this decision – the abandonment of long-standing bipartisan policy – by the Albanese government is driven by the demographics of Western Sydney, exacerbated by uncontrolled immigration.  Don’t be fooled by the overwhelming international support for this move.  The Albanese/Wong vote was driven purely by crass local political opportunism. Is there anything this government can’t stuff up?