Statement on the Australian Government’s Announcement to Recognise the State of Palestine

12 August 2025

For 22 months, the Palestine movement has campaigned against the Israeli governments Genocide, calling for a permanent ceasefire and the imposing of immediate sanctions on the State of Israel. To end the bloodshed of innocent men, women, and children. 

The Australian Government’s announcement of its plan to recognise the State of Palestine is the outcome of the consistent campaigning of everyday people fighting for Palestinian justice and liberation.

However, the Albanese government’s announcement is nothing more than a political fig leaf, a cynical smokescreen to cover Australia’s ongoing complicity in Israel’s genocide, apartheid, and military occupation of the Palestinian people.

This so-called recognition comes while Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues in full view of the world:

• Bombing homes, refugee camps, hospitals, universities, schools, mosques, and churches
• Starving more than two million Palestinians as a weapon of war
• Arbitrarily arresting, torturing, and holding Palestinians hostage in what even Israeli human rights groups call “torture camps”
• Assassinating journalists to silence the truth
• Expanding illegal settlements and openly declaring permanent annexation of Palestinian land.

Recognition means nothing if Australia continues to:

• Arm Israel directly and indirectly
• Maintain trade and diplomatic protection for the apartheid regime
• Encourage other countries to normalise relations with a state whose leaders are wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes

Palestinian rights are not a gift to be “granted” by Western states — they are inalienable, legal rights under international law. Self-determination means the right of Palestinians to return to their homeland, to live free from military occupation, and to see Israel’s apartheid system dismantled everywhere it exists — in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and across 1948 Palestine.

We demand the Australian Government take real action:

• Impose full country-level sanctions on Israel and sanction all individuals and entities complicit in war crimes
• Implement a two-way arms embargo — end all military trade, direct and indirect
• Suspend all trade agreements and withdraw support for Israeli normalisation while genocide and apartheid continue
• Support full legal accountability for Israeli leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu, before the ICJ and ICC

Anything less is not justice. It is complicity.

Free Palestine Melbourne stands with the global Palestinian movement in saying clearly: There is no peace without justice, and there is no justice until genocide ends and every war criminal faces accountability.

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