In policy shift, Australia backs UN call for Israeli pullout from Palestinian areas
Canberra supports measure for first time since 2001, calling for two-state solution and peace conference; country’s opposition accuses government of ‘selling out’ Jewish community
Australia on Tuesday voted in favor of a UN General Assembly resolution calling on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, breaking with its position of opposing the measure for two decades.
In a resolution passed by a 157-8 vote, with the United States and Israel among those voting no, and seven abstentions, the Assembly expressed “unwavering support, in accordance with international law, for the two-state solution of Israel and Palestine.”
The Assembly said the two states should be “living side by side in peace and security within recognized borders, based on the pre-1967 borders.”
It called for a high-level international meeting in New York in June 2025, to be co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, to breathe new life into diplomatic efforts to make the two-state solution a reality.
The assembly called for the “realization of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, primarily the right to self-determination and the right to their independent state.”
A spokesperson for Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Canberra sought to use its vote to “contribute to peace and a two-state solution.” The last time Australia voted for the resolution was in 2001.
“On our own, Australia has few ways to move the dial in the Middle East. Our only hope is working within the international community to push for an end to the cycle of violence and work toward a two-state solution,” the spokesperson said.
Australia’s UN Ambassador James Larsen stood up in support of the resolution at the meeting, saying that “a two-state solution remains the only hope of breaking the endless cycle of violence, the only hope to see a secure and prosperous future for both peoples.”
Australia’s Opposition Leader Peter Dutton slammed the government’s change in policy, charging that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had “sold out” the country’s Jewish community for progressive voters.
“The best we can do for peace in the Middle East is defeat Hamas and Hezbollah and make sure their proxy in Iran does not strike with nuclear weapons, or through the Houthis, or others they are finding because innocent women and children are losing their lives,” he told reporters in Sydney.
Australia over the past year has largely departed from its policy of voting against or abstaining from pro-Palestinian resolutions in the UN. In another shift Tuesday, the country abstained on a resolution giving resources to a UN office on Palestinian rights, changing its position held since 2003.
In May it voted for a resolution recognizing the Palestinians as qualified to become a full UN member and recommending that the UN Security Council consider the matter, while last month it backed a resolution recognizing “permanent sovereignty of the Palestinians” in the West Bank and Gaza.
Canberra abstained from a resolution in September demanding an Israeli pullout from Palestinian territories within 12 months.
The United Nations considers the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip to be unlawfully occupied by Israel.
Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt — all areas the Palestinians want for a state — in the 1967 Six Day War. It has since built settlements in the West Bank and steadily expanded them. It had settlements in the Gaza Strip until it removed them under the 2005 Disengagement plan, following which the Hamas terror group took control of the territory.
Alluding to recent rulings by the International Court of Justice, the assembly called on Israel to end its “unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as rapidly as possible” and halt all new settlement activity.
“The question of Palestine has been on the UN agenda since the inception of the organization and remains the most critical test to its credibility and authority and to the very existence of an international law-based order,” Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour said.
It was a UN General Assembly resolution in 1947 that divided British-ruled Palestine into two states — one Arab and one Jewish.
But only Zionist leaders accepted the resolution, resulting in the creation of Israel on May 14, 1948, while its Arab neighbors rejected the move, sparking the War of Independence.
The hard-right Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is implacably opposed to Palestinian statehood and most Israelis remain deeply mistrustful of the Palestinians following decades of terror, culminating in the October 7 massacre last year that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.
Israeli leaders have said a Palestinian state would reward Hamas for its devastating cross-border attack, which killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and saw 251 people abducted as hostages to Gaza.
