Since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 the Australian Labor government and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have been careful in their approach, spending the past 22 months calling on both sides to cease fire, return hostages, and negotiate.
While maintaining that recognising a Palestinian state was a matter of “when, not if,” Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong made the timing dependent on several factors, particularly a reform of the Palestinian Authority and a guarantee that Hamas would play no role in future governance of the war-torn strip of desert.
