Israel's embassy in Australia has issued a detailed complaint against the Australian Labor Party's draft national platform ahead of the party's national conference in Adelaide this week (July 20, 2026). The embassy argues that the draft places disproportionate responsibility for the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict on Israel, while not adequately addressing the roles of Palestinian leaders or Hamas.

The draft platform expands Labor's stance on Israel and Palestine beyond the 2023 platform, which primarily called for recognition of a Palestinian state—a move the Albanese government enacted in September 2025 alongside countries including Canada and the United Kingdom. The new draft explicitly opposes Israeli "illegal settlement activity" and settler violence, condemns recent Israeli laws permitting the death penalty for Palestinians who murder Israelis, and supports the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court (ICC), the latter having issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The draft also includes a statement "unreservedly condemn[ing] terrorism and violent extremism, including as perpetrated by Hamas."

In response, Israel's embassy contends that Israeli settlements do not violate international law, citing the unresolved borders between Israel and a prospective Palestinian state. The embassy distinguishes settler violence, which it says mostly targets possessions, from Palestinian violence, which it claims aims to murder or injure Israelis. It also asserts that Israel condemns and prosecutes vigilante attacks, contrasting this with Palestinian attacks on Israelis that it says are frequent and not condemned by the Palestinian Authority.

APAN executive officer Katie Shammas commented, "This conference is the moment Labor can choose to draw a clear red line on Australian complicity."

Minister for International Development and Multicultural Affairs Anne Aly, when asked about Israel's complaints, said she had not yet seen them in full and remarked, "The Israeli embassy can put out what they want to say. But the conference is about the Labor Party coming together and settling on our platform and having those robust discussions during the conference in a very democratic way."

Sources