While Gaza and the West Bank remain under siege, settlement and violence, Australia’s repeated support for a two-state solution sounds increasingly hollow without action.

It’s not being original to say that we are living in a dystopian universe. First, we have the appalling, continuing relentless devastation of and in Gaza and the West Bank. There has not been the much-touted peace in Gaza that was reported, in particular by Donald Trump, last October. The news cycle may have passed on from reporting on Gaza or the West Bank but these two pieces following give the lie to peace having broken out in Gaza – and that ignores the plight of the people of Gaza, such as reported on 27 July.

IDF lockdown of Nablus is blocking access to emergency healthcare, medical groups say. Checkpoints are preventing patients from reaching hospitals in Nablus, while Physicians for Human Rights says the ambulance network has been nearly paralysed.

Then there is this from Haaretz: A child a day: The Israeli Air Force continues to routinely kill Gaza’s kids.

There’s nothing new under the sun in the Gaza Strip. Homes remain in ruins. Some 1.7 million people are still living in tents. There is no electricity, no running water and no functioning sewage system. Rats and mosquitoes are everywhere. Infectious diseases are spreading and tens of thousands of people are covered in painful, itchy skin lesions. The scorching sun is relentless; the heat inside the tents is unbearable.

Above all, the Israel Air Force continues to kill children in the Gaza Strip. Since the ceasefire went into effect there last October, 282 children and teens under the age of 18 have been killed – an average of one child every day. Since October 7, 2023, more than 21,000 children have been killed in the fighting, 38 of them Israeli.

Also this: Settlers torch Palestinian homes in West Bank, residents flee village.

Days after settlers built an illegal outpost, dozens stormed the southern West Bank village, setting fire to buildings and threatening residents; the army detained suspects but failed to stop violence or prevent displacement.

And what is Israel doing to engender peace and foster inter-communal harmony with the 21 per cent of Arabs who make up the population in Israel itself? The Guardian reports on Israeli security minister joins Jewish extremists as they storm al-Aqsa mosque compound.

Israel’s far-right minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, joined thousands of Jewish extremists who stormed Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site on Thursday.

Escorted by armed police, they prayed, waved the Israeli flag and sang the national anthem in a provocative display of political power.

Under a fragile, decades-old agreement known as the status quo, non-Muslim prayer is banned at the site, known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif compound and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Meanwhile in Australia the royal commission grinds on with the Israel lobby having seemingly hijacked the whole commission’s process.

What has become evident is that the entire perspective of the commission has been focused on hearing from members of the Jewish community on the subject of Bondi and the life of Jews in Australia. It doesn’t appear that most witnesses have been subjected to any cross-examination or even gentle questioning – odd in itself for a royal commission. As for the commission calling non-Jewish witnesses or addressing the subject of social cohesion – which the commission is charged with looking into and considering – that has seemingly been totally AWOL.

It is also not without significance that the Israel lobby and Jewish organisations have sought to turn the discussion away from criticisms of Israel, claims that Israel has been engaged in genocide and that the news from Gaza continues to be devastating, to constantly claiming that antisemitism is rampant in Australia. Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal has also asserted the claim. It is simply not the fact!

Which brings us back to the federal government and Penny Wong, the foreign minister. The government – as late as the just-concluded federal ALP conference in Adelaide – keeps on pronouncing that it wants to see a two-state solution in place.

If, as the government touts, it recognises a Palestine state, where does the government suggest that that state is going to be? Gaza? The West Bank – as the settlers with the active support of the IDF plunder more and more Palestinian land or the Israeli government sanctions/approves more and more so-called settlements and developments being established in the West Bank?

As was widely reported, the PM and his cohorts at the Adelaide ALP conference were not going to even allow debate on any resolution put forward by Ed Husic that Israel was engaged in genocide. What does that tell one about the moral position of the Australian Government and its ever-increasing hollow claim to stand for decency and justice? – and ignoring the following from Al Jazeera: Israel building earthen barrier in Gaza to entrench division of the enclave.

The Israeli army is building a giant earthen barrier to separate the more than 50 per cent of Gaza under its control from the rest of the enclave, satellite images show, fuelling Palestinian fears that most of the territory will never be relinquished by Israel.

The barrier consists of an earth berm and a trench and extends well beyond the so-called “yellow line” that is supposed to demarcate the border between Israeli-controlled and Palestinian territory under a US-backed ceasefire agreement signed in October 2025, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Haaretz said that in Khan Younis the barrier is about 400 metres (quarter of a mile) past the yellow line, and at one point in the Rafah area it reaches approximately 1,300 metres (4,260 feet) beyond the line.

Built over the past few months, the barrier is already longer than 23km (14 miles), according to the AP news agency. The entire Gaza Strip is around 40km (25 miles) long.

The barrier cuts through Palestinian communities whose homes, infrastructure, and agricultural land have already been destroyed during Israel’s genocidal war that began in 2023.

Israel has also created new roads and established bases on the ruins of Palestinian towns. Palestinians fear that they will never be able to return to their land, and some Israeli officials have openly said they intend to appropriate some of it.

And finally there is the foreign minister, Penny Wong. It is hard not to conclude that she is on some sort of sound-loop, for every time she is asked about the situation in Israel, Gaza, the taking of land by settlers in the West Bank, settler violence in the West Bank or inflammatory pronouncements by Israeli ministers, her stock response (by rote?) is that she is “very concerned”.

That’s it! Period!

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