Can You Hear People Partying?

On 11 August Prime Minister Albanese announced that Australia would recognise Palestine as an independent and sovereign state. Former Liberal prime minister John Howard and his former foreign minister Alexander Downer released a joint statement condemning the move, saying that ‘Gaza is controlled by Hamas, a group designated as a terrorist organisation by Australia, the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. There is no unified, effective government’. ‘Recognition … entrenches division,’ they argued, and ‘teaches the Palestinian leadership that peace is unnecessary for statehood’.