Earlier this week, I read the Australian Government’s statement on Palestinian recognition, signed by ministers who speak the bureaucratic language of “solutions".

The statement, signed by Australia and 14 other countries, claims to call for peace, but actually reinforces the status quo of Israeli apartheid and occupation. It condemns Israel’s blockade of aid, but does not speak of the 22 months of Israeli bombings of homes, hospitals, refugee camps, schools and civilian infrastructure, nor does it condemn the violent erasure of entire Palestinian families, or the arbitrary arrest and torture of Palestinians. While it calls for a ceasefire, it fails to demand justice or accountability for these war crimes, and its encourages normalisation with a state committing genocide.

With every word I read, I saw my late father’s kind face, and the expression he wore on the eve of the so-called Oslo “peace” summit – less a pathway to liberation for Palestinians and more a colonial compromise that fragmented our land and empowered our oppressor. My father’s face had carried the pain of a million words, but chose to stay silent. I respected his wounds then, the same way my children now quietly honour mine.

Today, I am devastated.

My family in Gaza is living through a genocide. My father lies buried in Jordan, a land not his own, far from the land he carried in his heart all his life. And here I am, reading words so cold, so disconnected from our lived reality, our pain, our rights, and our aspirations. Words written by strangers to our suffering. Worse. Words written by people who hold the tools that could prevent and punish these violations of law, yet refuse to use them.

My father spent most of his life in exile. He dreamed of returning home, of walking in the streets of Yafa again, of resting at last in the soil of his beloved Palestine. That dream was stolen from him, just as our homeland was. The same occupation that forced him out in life has kept him out in death.

And yet, the governments’ joint statement does not even name that occupation.

It speaks of 7 October 2023 as if our history began there. As if we have not endured 77 years of dispossession, siege, and apartheid. As if we haven’t been calling for justice across generations.

We can see it so clearly:

Instead of calling for justice, this statement rewards our oppressor. It encourages other nations to legitimise a state committing mass atrocities against my people. It is not a roadmap to peace. It is a reward for genocide.

It centres Israeli security over Palestinian survival, demanding hostage releases but remaining silent about the millions of Palestinians imprisoned by siege, illegal occupation and arbitrary arrest.

It clings to the failed “two-state solution”, a fantasy long made impossible by Israel’s illegal settlement expansion and systematic land theft.

And still, it dares to tell us we must be “demilitarised and reformed”, while saying nothing of Israel’s Occupation Forces that have flattened our cities and villages, murdered entire families, and starved our people until they are skin and bone. It mentions humanitarian access as if aid can replace freedom. As if bandages can heal wounds that are being ripped open daily. As if feeding the people whose starvation you might have prevented somehow makes you righteous.

While my family in Gaza endures bombing, starvation, and displacement, the Australian Government talks about “work[ing] on an architecture for the ‘day after’ in Gaza". This statement makes clear that this future will be designed for the comfort and benefit of those who are actively destroying us. It imposes a future designed without us, proposing a role for a deeply unpopular and oppressive Palestinian Authority without asking us what we want.

There is no talk of the sanctions needed to compel Israel to comply with international law. No consequences for its atrocities. No accountability for our oppressor. No justice for Palestine. It erases our demand for liberation. It ignores our right of return.

My father’s grave is far from the land he loved, from the earth he longed for. He rests in foreign soil because the world has chosen to protect his oppressor instead of his people.

This statement will not bring him home. It will not protect my family in Gaza. It will not help my mother return to her home in Jerusalem. It will not stop the genocide.

Palestinians demand self-determination, not this process of incremental surrender and erasure, managed by Western governments. What we need from the Australian Government is for it to use its foreign policy tools — sanctions, an arms embargo, the existing mechanisms of the international courts — to compel Israel to dismantle its illegal structures of occupation and apartheid, to end the forced displacement of Palestinian people and its siege. We need the Australian Government to listen to Palestinian voices and apply pressure to Israel to uphold our inalienable right to return.

We need the Australian Government to stop participating in the imposition of these failed, foreign frameworks, and to allow us to determine our own political destiny on our own terms, in all of our historic homeland.

This statement was not written for us. It is a shield for those in power to hide behind while history watches. A brittle, useless bandage covering a 77-year-old wound that continues to bleed.

Justice will not come from normalisation. Justice will not come from empty promises or false equivalences. Justice will come when we are free to live in our own homeland, to determine our own fate, to return to the place we have never stopped calling home, to bury our dead in our own earth.

The Australian Government has a choice: stand with justice, or stand in the way. Supporting justice means a genuine commitment to Palestinian self-determination, not dictating terms. It means ending complicity in Israeli crimes, imposing real sanctions, and amplifying Palestinian voices instead of silencing them. Anything less is cowardice dressed up as diplomacy.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.