former diplomat Ian Parmeter on an Israel-led ‘one-state solution’

International politics is centre stage again, with world leaders in New York this week for the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly. On the forefront of the agenda has been the recognition of a Palestinian state.

Australia joined several other countries in recognising Palestine, despite warnings from both the United States and Israel. The Opposition is openly critical of the government’s move.

To discuss what’s going on at the UN, conflict in the Middle East and what Australia should be doing about it, we’re joined by research scholar at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Ian Parmeter.

Parmeter is a former diplomat, who worked in various countries in the Middle East and Russia, including as Australian ambassador to Lebanon. He stressed he was speaking as an analyst, not an advocate.

On how significant Australia’s recognition of Palestine is, Parmeter said:

I think the best way to look at it is what would be the converse be. If Australia and the other states had done nothing, it would essentially be condoning Israel’s actions in Gaza, and for that matter the West Bank with the expansion of settlements that’s occurring there.

Parmeter said Israel had global sympathy after Hamas’ October 7 attacks, in which almost 1,200 people died and 251 men, women and children were taken hostage, which was “the worst individual attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust during the second world war”.

But over the past two years, he said the escalating death toll in Gaza had ramped up public pressure on all governments, including in Australia, to intervene.

The Harbour Bridge March was particularly dramatic and it underlined, I suspect, for the Albanese government that it really did need to start responding to the way Australians were feeling about this.

The other aspect that I think in terms of justifying what all of these states are doing in recognising [Palestine] is to underline to Israel that it cannot wish [the] Palestinian problem away, that it’s going to stay and it will need to be dealt with by Israel.

Asked about the prospects of Israel and Palestine ever being able to peacefully co-exist as two neighbouring, separate states, Parmeter said “the two-state solution looks further and further away”.

[Israel’s] Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu has said, when he was reacting to the recognition of Palestine by all of these states early this week, ‘I’ve got a message for you – there will never be a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean’. And he certainly means that.

So if there is to be some sort of settlement, it’s going to have to be a very creative one. And it’s very hard to see how that might happen at this time. But the real issue is that the issue is not going to go away, so it’s very important for Israel to start thinking hard about solutions.

[…Instead] we are potentially headed towards what has been called a ‘one-state solution’, which would be Israel ruling over all of the land of Israel, plus the West Bank and Gaza.

On the Australian prime minister finally booking a date for a formal meeting with US President Donald Trump on October 20, Parmeter said it comes with risks but is still necessary.

It’s very difficult to make forecasts about meetings that leaders hold with President Trump in the Oval Office. I mean, as we’ve seen, they can go off in directions that neither side perhaps anticipated at the start.

[…] I think we have bigger issues that we would want to discuss, clearly the trade aspects of tariffs and to see if we can perhaps get them reduced or some sort of agreement worked out on them. And AUKUS of course, which is a much bigger issue as far as the government is concerned.

At that stage […] it will be getting on for at least six weeks since the announcement about the Palestinian state and everything will have moved on. I’m not sure that that issue will play very large at that time. But I caveat that by saying it’s extremely hard […] to forecast what’s going to happen in those Oval Office meetings.