Category World News

Australia will recognise a Palestinian state in September, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced.

Albanese said on Monday that his government would formally announce the move when the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meets in New York.

“A two-state solution is humanity’s best hope to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East and to bring an end to the conflict, suffering and starvation in Gaza,” Albanese said at a news conference in Canberra.

Australia’s announcement comes as Canada, France and the United Kingdom are preparing to formally recognise Palestine at the meeting next month, joining the vast majority of UN member states.

It also comes about a week after hundreds of thousands of Australians marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to protest Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip.

Speaking a day after the protest, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that “there is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise.”

“In relation to recognition, I’ve said for over a year now, it’s a matter of when, not if,” Wong added.

The opposition Liberal Party criticised the move, saying it put Australia at odds with the United States, its closest ally, and reversed a bipartisan consensus that there should be no recognition while Hamas remains in control of Gaza.

“Despite his words today, the reality is Anthony Albanese has committed Australia to recognising Palestine while hostages remain in tunnels under Gaza and with Hamas still in control of the population of Gaza. Nothing he has said today changes that fact,” Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley said in a statement.

“Recognising a Palestinian state prior to a return of the hostages and defeat of Hamas, as the Government has today, risks delivering Hamas one of its strategic objectives of the horrific terrorism of October 7.”

The Australian Greens, the fourth-largest party in parliament, welcomed the move to recognise Palestine, but said the announcement did not meet the “overwhelming calls from the Australian public for the government to take material action”.

“Millions of Australians have taken to the streets, including 300,000 last weekend in Sydney alone, calling for sanctions and an end to the arms trade with Israel. The Albanese Government is still ignoring this call,” Senator David Shoebridge, the party’s spokesperson on foreign affairs, said in a statement.

The Australian Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) also criticised the announcement, describing it as a “political fig leaf, letting Israel’s genocide and apartheid continue unchallenged, and distracting from Australia’s complicity in Israeli war crimes via ongoing weapons and components trade”.

“Palestinian rights are not a gift to be granted by Western states. They are not dependent on negotiation with, or the behaviour or approval of their colonial oppressors,” APAN said in a statement.

According to Albanese, Australia’s decision to recognise Palestinians’ right to their own state will be “predicated on the commitments Australia has received from the Palestinian Authority (PA)”.

These “detailed and significant commitments” include the PA reaffirming it “recognises Israel’s right to exist in peace and security” and committing to “demilitarise and to hold general elections”, Albanese said while announcing the decision.

The PA is a governing body that has overseen parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the mid-90s.

It has not held parliamentary elections since 2006 and has been criticised by some Palestinians for helping Israel to keep tight control over residents in the West Bank.

Albanese said the commitments secured by Australia were “an opportunity to deliver self-determination for the people of Palestine in a way that isolates Hamas, disarms it and drives it out of the region once and for all”.

Hamas has been in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, when it fought a brief war against forces loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

New Zealand to decide on recognition next month

Meanwhile, New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters said on Monday that his country’s cabinet will make a formal decision on Palestinian statehood in September.

“Some of New Zealand’s close partners have opted to recognise a Palestinian state, and some have not,” Peters said in a statement.

“Ultimately, New Zealand has an independent foreign policy, and on this issue, we intend to weigh up the issue carefully and then act according to New Zealand’s principles, values and national interest.”

Peters said that while New Zealand has for some time considered the recognition of a Palestinian state a “matter of when, not if”, the issue is not “straightforward” or “clear-cut”.

“There are a broad range of strongly held views within our Government, Parliament and indeed New Zealand society over the question of recognition of a Palestinian state,” he said.

“It is only right that this complicated issue be approached calmly, cautiously and judiciously. Over the next month, we look forward to canvassing this broad range of views before taking a proposal to Cabinet.”

Of the UN’s 193 member states, 147 already recognise Palestinian statehood, representing some three-quarters of the world’s countries and the vast majority of its population.

Under its 1947 plan to partition Palestine, the UNGA said it would grant 45 percent of the land to an Arab state, though this never eventuated.

The announcements by Australia and New Zealand on Monday came hours after an Israeli attack killed five Al Jazeera staff members in Gaza City, and as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to threaten a full-scale invasion of the city in the north of the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,430 people, according to Gaza’s health authorities.

Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud, speaking over the phone, gives more details on the Israeli attack that killed five of his colleagues, including Anas al-Sharif, in a strike on a journalists’ tent in Gaza City.

United States President Donald Trump has pledged to evict homeless people from the nation’s capital, after days of musing about taking federal control of Washington, DC, where he has falsely suggested crime is on the rise.

“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.

“The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong. It’s all going to happen very fast.”

The announcement comes after Trump earlier this week threatened to deploy the National Guard as part of a crackdown on what he falsely says is rising crime in Washington, DC.

Trump’s Truth Social post on Sunday included pictures of tents and streets in Washington, DC with rubbish on them. “I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before.”

The White House declined to explain what legal authority Trump would use to evict people from the city. The Republican president controls only federal land and buildings in Washington.

Washington, DC, is ranked 15th on a list of major US cities by homeless population, according to government statistics from last year.

According to the Community Partnership, an organisation working to reduce homelessness in Washington, DC, on any given night, there are 3,782 single people experiencing homelessness in the city of about 700,000 people. These figures are down from pre-pandemic levels.

Most of the homeless people are in emergency shelters or transitional housing. About 800 are considered unsheltered or “on the street”, the organisation says.

A White House official said on Friday that more federal law enforcement officers were being deployed in the city following a violent attack on a young Trump administration staffer, which angered the president.

Crime in DC at ‘a 30-year low’

Alleged crimes investigated by federal agents on Friday night included “multiple persons carrying a pistol without license”, motorists driving on suspended licences, and dirt bike riding, according to a White House official on Sunday. The official said 450 federal law enforcement officers were deployed across the city on Saturday.

The Democratic mayor of Washington, DC, Muriel Bowser, said on Sunday that the capital was “not experiencing a crime spike”.

“We have spent over the last two years driving down violent crime in this city, driving it down to a 30-year low,” Bowser said on US media MSNBC’s news segment The Weekend.

The city’s police department reports that violent crime in the first seven months of 2025 was down by 26 percent in Washington, DC, compared with last year, while overall crime was down about 7 percent.

The city’s crime rates in 2024 were already their lowest in three decades, according to figures produced by the Department of Justice before Trump took office.

While Bowser did not directly criticise Trump in her remarks, she said that “any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false”.

Trump’s threat to send in the National Guard comes weeks after he deployed California’s military reserve force into Los Angeles to quell protests over immigration raids, despite objections from local leaders and law enforcement.

The president has frequently mused about using the military to control US cities, many of which are under Democratic governance and hostile to his policies.

Bowser said that Trump is “very aware” of the city’s work with federal law enforcement after meeting with Trump several weeks ago in the Oval Office.

The US Congress has control of Washington, DC’s budget after the district was established in 1790 with land from neighbouring Virginia and Maryland, but resident voters elect a mayor and the City Council. Trump has long publicly chafed at this arrangement, threatening to federalise the city and give the White House the final say in how it is run.

For Trump to take over the city, Congress likely would have to pass a law revoking the legislation that established local elected leadership, which Trump would have to sign.

Trump is planning to hold a news conference on Monday to “stop violent crime in Washington, DC”. It is not clear whether he will announce more details about his eviction plan then.