A TREACHEROUS APPEASEMENT FOR DOMESTIC POLITICAL PURPOSES

A gift to Abbas, a betrayal of peace

Australia's leaders are rejecting truth and Western values for empty promises from terrorists. 

 

By Mark Friedgut 

 

JNS

Aug 18, 2025

 

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

 

While Israeli hostages are being brutalized and starved by Hamas and Palestinian terrorists in tunnels deep in the Gaza Strip, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have chosen to reward such terror with the unconditional recognition of the nonexistent “State of Palestine.”

This is not diplomacy. It is treacherous appeasement for domestic political purposes. And it will cost lives.

Wong declared, with self-assured piety, that “it has been more than 77 years since the world promised a Palestinian state,” implying that “the world” made promises to the Palestinians that it never kept.

Unless she is stunningly ignorant of the history of the conflict, she knows that the truth is the exact opposite. It is the Palestinians who have rejected statehood no less than seven times—in 1937, 1947, 1967, 2000, 2001, 2005 and 2008—preferring war to peace.

From 1948 to 1967, Egypt ruled Gaza, and Jordan ruled the West Bank. No Palestinian state was declared. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, which was founded in 1964—three years before Israel controlled a single inch of those territories—existed for one reason only: the eradication of the State of Israel and all who live in it.

Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in the summer of 2005, evacuating every soldier, settler and even the dead from their graves. Since that time, there has been no blockade, no Israeli presence. Within two years, civilians in the coastal enclave had elected Hamas as their government, and then aimed tens of thousands of rockets at Israel. On Oct. 7, 2023, Gaza became the launchpad for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

No Palestinian leader has ever genuinely spoken of a Palestinian state living side-by-side with a Jewish one. Their unwavering demand for their so-called “right of return”—a “right” to flood Israel with millions of Arab descendants who left Israel in 1948, effectively erasing the Jewish majority—demonstrates the vacuity of Albanese’s statement that Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, has committed to recognizing Israel.

Albanese claims that he has secured “commitments” from Abbas that Hamas would have no role in the Palestinian state and that the P.A. will end its “pay-for-slay” policy. These are worthless assurances.

But Hamas is more popular than the P.A., even in Judea and Samaria. And Abbas himself stated last year that he would never stop paying stipends to terrorists who murdered Israelis.

Why does Albanese take at face value the word of a corrupt terrorist—an 89-year-old man in the 20th year of a four-year term, who openly traffics in antisemitic conspiracy theories, blames the Jews for the Holocaust, presides over a corrupt and unpopular regime, and whose institutions incubate incitement and glorify murderers?

Abbas is not a partner for peace. He is a terrorist enabler in a suit.

The hypocrisy runs deeper. Asked whether Australia would arrest democratically elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu based on the International Criminal Court’s disgraceful and legally baseless arrest warrant, Albanese sanctimoniously replied that Australia “respects international law and international legal institutions.”

In other words: Yes.

At the same time, he treats Abbas with deference and throws international law out the window to recognize a non-existent Palestinian state.

Under the “Montevideo Convention” of 1933, a state must have:

• A defined territory,
• A permanent population,
• A functioning government, and
• The capacity to enter into relations with other states.

The so-called “State of Palestine” meets none of these requirements. It is fractured between the P.A. in Ramallah and Hamas in Gaza—two rival and irreconcilable entities. It has no defined borders, no unified government and no capacity to uphold treaty obligations. Unless one is delusional, one cannot recognize that which does not exist.

By extending recognition without conditions, Australia sends the message that the Palestinians need not negotiate, need not renounce terror, need not return the kidnapped hostages and need not accept Israel’s existence. It is a signal to every terrorist faction that terrorism works; if they just hold fast and keep fighting, the rewards will come.

No wonder, then, that Albanese’s decision has been publicly praised by Hamas as reflecting “political courage and a commitment to the values of justice and the right of peoples to self-determination.” High praise indeed from a designated terrorist organization that openly calls for the annihilation of the only Jewish state on the planet, as well as the deaths of Jews everywhere else.

This is not foreign policy. It is a disgraceful capitulation—a moral and strategic betrayal of Australia’s ally Israel, of truth and of the West’s principles.