This week's Essential poll shows that 29% of voters support Australian recognition of the "State of Palestine", while 24% are opposed, and 46% either don't know or don't care. Support for recognition is, not surprisingly, concentrated among Greens voters and young voters, and also (I assume, although the poll didn't ask this) among the Muslim community. In other words, this is an inner-city issue, which the rest of the country is indifferent to.
Recognition of the "State of Palestine" by Australia, a long-time friend of Israel, would be an important symbolic victory for the Palestinians and a correspondingly major defeat for Israel, particularly since few other western democracies have extended recognition. But what would it mean in practice?
Presumably, it would mean the establishment of a Palestinian Embassy in Canberra. What would this Embassy do? Since the "State of Palestine" does not actually exist, it would have very little actual diplomatic work to do. It could not issue visas, for example, since Israel controls entry to all the territories claimed by "Palestine." It could not negotiate trade agreements, since "Palestine" has no functioning economy, exports almost nothing, and lives off foreign aid.
What it would mainly do, in fact, is "symbolic diplomacy": hold receptions, issue proclamations and engage in propaganda against Israel. But most importantly, like all the other 119 embassies of "Palestine" around the world, it would provide comfortable jobs for Fatah functionaries, their friends and relatives, in a pleasant (if boring) city far from the discomforts of Ramallah. These jobs would of course be paid for from the billions in foreign aid which "Palestine" receives every year, including from Australia.
These "Potemkin embassies" are representative of the "Potemkin state" which is the "State of Palestine." This pseudo-state has no borders, no legislature, no elections, no economy, no currency, and no armed forces. It collects no taxes (Israel does that for the Palestinian Authority). It provides almost no services to the people who live under its authority (most are provided and/or paid for by international agencies). The 1.3 million people in the Palestinian territories who are recognised as "Palestinian refugees" by the United Nations come under the authority of UNRWA, not the Palestinian Authority.
Most importantly, "Palestine" has no territory over which is exercises sovereignty, which is the most basic requirement of statehood. All of Judaea and Samaria (the West Bank) is controlled directly or indirectly by Israel, and Gaza is currently being fought over by Israel and Hamas. It is a puzzle how the "friends of Palestine" can on the one hand assert that Palestine is a sovereign state, while on the other hand denouncing the Israeli occupation of that state's territory.
In practice, the Palestinian Authority, which claims to be the government of the "State of Palestine," is a kind of Arab Vichy regime, collaborating with Israel in the day-to-day management of the territory where it operates, and keeping order through various violent and lawless party militias, all the while proclaiming its independence and its undying hatred of the Zionist enemy. Most ordinary Palestinians, when they get a chance to speak (which is not often), understand this perfectly well.
The "State of Palestine" is of course riddled with corruption from top to bottom. Self-declared President Mahmoud Abbas is worth about US$100 million, all of it stolen one way or another. His predecessor Yasser Arafat stole an estimated US$1.3 billion, which his widow in Paris continues to enjoy. Theft and corruption are in fact the major activities of the "State of Palestine" and the parties such as Fatah which run it. Thanks to the gullibility of western donors, Palestinian nationalism has been a nice little earner for the Palestinian elite for many decades. Your taxes help to line their pockets and build the ostentatious mansions in which they live.
None of this, however, is the main reason I am opposed to Australian recognition of the "State of Palestine." The main argument against recognition is that it would reward the Palestinian leadership for their decades of rejectionism and refusal to negotiate seriously with Israel to secure a real, as opposed to fake, Palestinian state. If the Palestinian leadership had been willing to give up their fantasy of destroying Israel and driving the Jews into the sea, there would have been a real Palestinian state decades ago - and a much bigger one than any they are likely to secure in the future. Rewarding Palestinian rejectionism with diplomatic recognition of their fantasy state would send exactly the wrong message.
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