AARON PATRICK: In Israel, Australia’s two-state solution is not being taken seriously

In Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ situation room, where senior government officials gather during crises, ten digital clocks display the time in important capitals around the world.

Alongside Moscow, Washington and Beijing, there is a clock for Canberra, which last week was rebuked by the ministry’s deputy director general for Asia-Pacific affairs, Aviv Erza, while sitting at the boardroom table that dominates the room.

Mr Erza’s immediate audience was six Australian journalists who had travelled to Israel on a sponsored familiarisation visit. But his message was intended for the Albanese Government, which he accused of making a peace agreement with the Palestinians more difficult by recognising their “state” last September.

“If the big prize has already been given, there is no chance of getting them back to negotiations,” he said.

Mr Ezra’s approach was typically Israeli: blunt, aggressive and undiplomatic. But as Israel prepares to vote in a historic election on Tuesday, the two-state solution to the Palestinian question championed by Australia alongside Britain and Canada seems dead.

Which raises an important question: is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s and Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s position on one of the world’s most intractable conflicts a fantasy designed to appease the pro-Palestinian lobby?

No significant Jewish-led political party supports a separate Palestinian state. Even Israel’s Arab parties, which could determine who will be prime minister, are more focused on local crime than creating a new nation. Hamas hasn’t renounced its desire to destroy the Jewish State. The Palestinian Authority is sliding into moral, political and fiscal bankruptcy.

When The Nightly and other media outlets spoke to a recently arrested Palestinian activist, 44-year-old bookseller Mahmood Muna, he said he didn’t want two states. He wants one – a single nation of five million Arabs and eight million Jews.

The two-state solution, he said, “is obviously dead and physically impossible”.

Photo op

Israel is riven, traumatised and fearful. When Israelis vote on Tuesday, they will do so knowing war could break out at any time.

Speculation is mounting, including among foreign diplomats, that another round of Israeli and US attacks on Iran are imminent. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth visited Jerusalem last week. The US has begun withdrawing diplomats from Gulf states.

On Sunday, Mr Netanyahu argued he needed to remain prime minister to work with President Donald Trump to avoid a nuclear-armed Iran that could lead to a “second holocaust”. His message on social media included an AI-generated photo of a city being destroyed by a nuclear bomb.

On Thursday two men attacked an Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank, killing two soldiers and injuring three. Filmed and posted online, the attack cost the two gunmen their lives – and created a photo opportunity for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the scene of the violence.

The Israelis blocked all access to Hebron, a city of 200,000, and Mr Netanyahu promised to conduct the biggest military operation in the West Bank since 1967, but didn’t say when.

Reminders of war

The October 7, 2023, invasion changed everything. Israel has become a darker, more pessimistic society.

Mr Netanyahu’s opponents want to use the election to hold him accountable for Israel’s failure to see the attack coming and the army’s slow response as thousands of Hamas fighters spread across the south of the country hunting down Jews and others unfortunate enough to be in their way.

The war’s reminders are literally everywhere. A tradition has emerged of families of the dead – mostly soldiers – printing stickers of their fallen relatives to be stuck up in public places. Posters have been erected of dead relatives in some towns.

Three years after the attack the site of the Nova music festival has been turned into a memorial for the slain. When The Nightly visited last Tuesday hundreds of people were present, many listening to survivors describing their experiences.

The hostages who made it home are not quiet either. Among them is Keith Siegel, who was held in Gaza for 484 days.

Much of the time he was forced to lie motionless on his back, fearing that he would either be killed by his captors or Israeli bombs. Suffering broken ribs himself, he saw a fellow hostage, a woman, beaten on the soles of her feet with an iron bar. The bar was also pressed into her forehead.

One day he was left in a school courtyard with Gazans of all ages, including babies. Dressed in Arab clothes, he was warned not to speak. Anything he said could expose him as Jewish, triggering a mob attack, a situation that illustrated that his captors were also his defenders.

Voting is not compulsory in Israel and the turnout last national election was about 70 per cent. This time round, Mr Siegel will be one of them. “We need change,” he said last week, speaking in a soft but clear voice. “We need leaders who will care for the people and not be looking out for themselves and their positions.”

‘Don’t let them win’

Surrounded by enemies, Israel shifted to the right in recent decades. Whether this election will pull the country leftwards is unclear. Polls indicate a hung parliament that will require a coalition government or even another election.

Support for Mr Netanyahu’s Likud is concentrated in Jerusalem, home to many orthodox Jews, and the working-class cities. The more secular and affluent Tel Aviv leans toward Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israeli Defence Force chief who created the Yashar political party last year. Yashar means straight or honest in Hebrew.

Likud’s campaign ads emphasise the Muslim the threat to Israel. One Likud ad has photos of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, Iran leader Sayyid Mojtaba Khamenei, Hezbollah leader Naim Qasem and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“They want Netanyahu to lose,” the ad says. “Don’t let them win.”

A report in the Jerusalem Post newspaper on the weekend said the opposition was working on a plan to take power without forming a parliamentary majority. This could be possible if Arab MPs abstained from a confidence vote to test which bloc has the most support, the paper said.

Mr Eisenkot has promised concessions to the Palestinians, including arresting Jews who attack Palestinians on the West Bank, allowing more Palestinians to work in Israel and freeing up funds for the Palestinians Authority.

But he has ruled out supporting the creation of a Palestinian state, irrespective of what foreign countries say.