Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and UK turn on Israel

In a distinctly hostile act - the Foreign Ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom announced in a Joint Statement on 10 June sanctions and other measures targeting Israeli politicians Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

This extraordinary Joint Statement sanctioning duly elected members of the parliament of a fellow democratic nation included the following clause:

“We are steadfastly committed to the two-state solution which is the only way to guarantee security and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians and ensure long term stability in the region, but it is imperilled by extremist settler violence and settlement expansion.”

Absolute rubbish.

An alternative solution was published in the Saudi Government-controlled Al Arabiya News on 8 June 2022: The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution (HKOPS) – which called for the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into one new territorial entity to be governed by Jordan’s ruling Hashemite dynasty.

Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom have not made one mention of HKOPS since its publication or factored it into their respective foreign policies. They need to explain why.

HKOPS (minus Gaza) can still be meaningfully implemented by redrawing the international border between Israel and Jordan in direct negotiations between these two successor States to the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine – as they currently exercise between them sovereignty in 95% of the territory of former Palestine.

The Foreign Ministers statement contains the following further unsubstantiated demand:

“The Israeli Government must uphold its obligations under international law and we call on it to take meaningful action to end extremist, violent and expansionist rhetoric.”

The Foreign Ministers must surely be aware that Israel has the right in international law to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) under articles 6 and 25 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

The Foreign Ministers end their statement with this nonsensical declaration

“We want to see a reconstructed Gaza no longer run by Hamas and a political pathway to a two-state solution.”

Why aren’t these Foreign Ministers calling for Hamas’s unconditional surrender and supporting Israel in its ongoing attempt to achieve that result? Why do they continue to call for a ceasefire which will leave Hamas in control of Gaza?

These Foreign Ministers should heed the words of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations on 11 December 1984:

“Those who accept the notion of a Palestinian people must therefore wonder: how many Palestinian Arab peoples are there? Is there a western Palestinian Arab people and, just across that narrow stream known as the Jordan River an eastern Palestinian Arab people? How many Arab States in Palestine does Palestinian self-determination require? Clearly, in eastern and western Palestine there are only two peoples, the Arabs and the Jews; and, just as clearly, there are only two States in that area, Jordan and Israel. The Arab State of Jordan, containing some 3 million Arabs, does not allow a single Jew to live there. It contains four fifths of the territory originally allocated by the predecessor of the United Nations, the League of Nations, for the Jewish national home. The other State, Israel, has a population of a little over 4 million, of which one sixth IS Arab. It contains less than one fifth of the territory originally allocated to the Jews under the Mandate.

Nothing has changed.

These Foreign Ministers should withdraw their pathetic Joint Statement and issue a new statement calling for the urgent implementation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution.