Yesterday the Sydney Morning Herald ran a headline, “‘The time is right’: Labor luminary calls for Netanyahu sanctions, Palestine statehood”. The Labor luminary was Australia’s former foreign minister of the 1990s, Gareth Evans. In it journalist Matthew Knott did a good job explaining Evans’ crusade but got one point wrong. It read:

The international community has grown increasingly alarmed by Netanyahu’s determination to continue the war in Gaza and assert control over most of the devastated strip, with leading aid organisations warning of a humanitarian catastrophe unless Israel allows more food and medical supplies to enter Gaza.

Thing is, the “international community” is not “alarmed” over Palestine. It’s more cutthroat than that. Rather, it’s alarmed over the prospect of losing the funding that the UN and NGOs currently receive while Palestine doesn’t yet exist. How do we know that? Palestine currently takes up more UN time than any other subject in the world and it’s been doing so for 77 years.

After a long political career, Evans joined an NGO that his Labor government helped seed with funding called the International Crisis Group. The Crisis Group’s gross annual income exceeds $20 million and it receives part of this funding through the UN.

No. The only true road to a Palestinian State is to end the UN’s business called “Palestinianism” surrounding it.

I’ve defined Palestinianism before:

The business where people protest for a Free Palestine but never want one because the money is too good protesting for it.

Today the call for a Palestinian State remains more lucrative than actually achieving it: once Palestine is ever born, the UN and its NGOs will become irrelevant.

That the former diplomat Evans, whom I’ve liked, would call for a Palestinian State now while Hamas still holds Israeli hostages for a financial deal (alive or dead) will not solve the eternal Muslim sectarian war that has stopped Palestine becoming a state since 1948.

Evans should know that. As should Australia’s current foreign minister Penny Wong.

If Israel and Egypt; Israel and Jordan; and Israel and the UAE can make peace—why isn’t there a Palestinian State? Because it has never had a reliable government willing make money from peace.

Instead, the Arab World has used Egypt’s land in Gaza and Jordan’s in the West Bank as pawns. Within which Sunnis and Shiites, and clans vs families, have fought each other for preeminence. But why?

For control of the endless billions of dollars given in Palestinian “aid” they’ve been able to siphon off—while using the excuse of Jihad to obtain it.

© 2025 Adam Parker.

Picture credit: Cover, “Inside the Hawke–Keating Government: A Cabinet Diary”. Evans is centre with beard. Image © 2025 Simon & Schuster Australia.