Only two weeks ago, Prime Minister Albanese assured Australians his government would not recognise a Palestinian state at the UN in September for ‘very important’ reasons. ‘How do you exclude Hamas from any involvement there? How do you ensure that a Palestinian state… does not threaten the existence of Israel?… You’d need guarantees… you need a structure… You need to make sure that a decision takes forward the operation of two states effectively,’ he said, promising he wouldn’t make any decision just as a gesture.

Supporters of Western civilisation were surprised and impressed at the PM landing a foreign policy response firmly located in the sensible centre.

It didn’t last.

If a week is a long time in politics, a fortnight was more than enough for the Elmer Fudd of Australian politics to be outwitted by the ‘wascally wadicals’ in his party into handing Hamas a propaganda victory.

All it took was a telephone chat with President Abbas, the 89-year-old, Holocaust-denying head of the Palestinian Authority, and Bob – or Mahmoud – was his uncle, providing all the answers he needed to the intractable obstacles to a two-state solution he’d identified a fortnight earlier.

As Albanese explained this week, the bold new policy was predicated on guarantees given by Abbas that the Palestinian Authority would recognise Israel, hold elections, reform itself, disarm and exclude Hamas from any role in the new Palestinian state.

The decision is unprecedented in the history of Australian foreign policy. Australia will recognise a state without recognised borders or a central government, controlled by extremists who don’t recognise each other, and one of whom is at war with the neighbour who supports them financially and keeps their vital infrastructure functioning, and both of whom refuse to negotiate a two-state solution without setting impossible preconditions.

This is the Palestinian state that Australia will recognise, controlled in Gaza by fanatics committed to the annihilation of Israel and in the West Bank by clapped-out terrorists who, despite putative support for a two-state solution, preach two-tongued rhetoric – terrorist in Arabic and begrudgingly accepting of the Oslo Accords in English, as they hoover up Western taxpayer money.

In Arabic, Abbas stresses the right of return for all Palestinian refugees and their descendants, which is irreconcilable with the survival of Israel as a democratic Jewish state, since Jews would be outnumbered by Muslim Arabs. Fatah’s charter has never removed language calling for the ‘liberation’ of all Palestine. Abbas has said that if the two-state solution becomes impossible due to Israeli actions, Palestinians would pursue a one-state model, meaning the annihilation of Israel. And PA-controlled media and schools continue to incite antisemitism and violence, and pay stipends to the families of terrorists, with only cosmetic changes to the system.

Incredibly, Albanese adopted Palestinian double-speak at his Canberra press conference this week, when he parroted the line that the PA has pledged to abolish payments to the families of ‘martyrs’. Martyrs? These are the men, women and children strapped with explosives to turn them into walking improvised explosive devices.

Unsurprisingly, Albanese has faced a few questions while stumbling through this foreign policy minefield. Here are a few more he should answer:

If it’s going to be so easy for the PA to disarm Hamas, why haven’t they done it already?

If Abbas is committed to creating a democratic Palestine, why has he never held an election since coming to power in 2005? Could it be because his idea of democracy is ‘one man, one vote, one time’?

How can Hamas, which enjoys more support in Palestine than Abbas, or Albanese in Australia, for that matter, be excluded from any role in the new state?

What hope is there for peace when a survey in May 2025 reported that almost 90 per cent of Palestinians deny that Hamas committed atrocities on 7 October?

Why is Australia circumventing a peace process when it is one of the few ways to build trust in a two-state solution that, sadly, most Israelis and Palestinians no longer support?

How can Abbas disarm Hamas, when it was Hamas that had the power to expel Fatah from Gaza in 2007, which it controls to this day?

The PM insisted it could be done ‘if you have all of the Arab states in the Middle East, all speaking as one, as well as the Palestinian Authority, as well as the international community’, ignoring the fact that key powerbrokers in the Middle East, like Turkey and Iran and its Arab proxies, continue to support Hamas.

It’s all wishful thinking to imagine an armed jihadist movement, committed to the annihilation of Israel and the creation of a global caliphate, is going to lay down its weapons and walk into the sunset because a motley crew at the UN recognises a state it rejects.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was scathing about France’s unilateral move to recognise Palestine, blaming it for rewarding Hamas, which walked away from ceasefire negotiations that day, and damning the rush to recognise Palestine because, ‘The future of that region is not going to be decided by some UN resolution.’

When Liberal Senator Dave Sharma said Albanese was rewarding Hamas, the PM angrily protested that Hamas would be ‘totally opposed’ to recognition because ‘they support one state, in their own words, “From the river to the sea”, from the Jordan River to the… ocean.’ The ocean? What is the PM talking about? Could he even find Israel on a map?

Then came the bombshell. Hamas announced it was delighted at Australia’s move to recognise a Palestinian state, declaring it a vindication of its 7 October massacre, and rejecting calls to put down its arms.

As Hamas Politburo member Ghazi Hamad gloated on Al Jazeera last week, it was the Hamas massacre of 7 October that had ‘brought the Palestinian cause back’.

As such, disarming was out of the question. On the contrary, as Hamad said after 7 October, ‘We will do this again and again… On Oct. 7, on Oct. 10, on October one-millionth, everything we do is justified.’

Perhaps, as Stephen Spartacus observed on his Substack, Hamad can be Palestine’s new foreign minister.

Worn down by the scepticism about his magical thinking, Albanese snapped to the people who are saying this is not the way, ‘OK, what’s your plan?’, snarling that, ‘The plan of Prime Minister Netanyahu is just to… occupy Gaza City… How will that provide a resolution…?’

Well, Israel could destroy what’s left of Hamas, demilitarise Gaza, liberate the surviving hostages, and provide a chance for someone other than terrorists to run the Strip.

Asked what he would do if the US voted against recognition, Albanese admitted Australia is not one of the ‘big players in the Middle East’. For that we can all be grateful.

This decision is not the PM’s most consequential, but it is revealing. Unfortunately, what it discloses is that he is completely out of his depth.