This article first appeared in The Australian on 26 May 2024.

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I was at lunch with Israel’s former prime minister, Naftali Bennett, when news broke that the International Criminal Court was seeking an arrest warrant for his successor as Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Bennett turned ashen. He understood immediately that the global campaign to delegitimise Israel had turned up a notch. He is a strong critic of Netanyahu’s leadership failings, but on this issue he had only criticism for the ICC. Bennett, who is building a new political party in advance of the next election, went immediately from lunch to his office, recording a clip eviscerating the ICC. It was the same with Yair Lapid, whom I met later in the week. The Israeli Opposition Leader, like Bennett, also has served as prime minister. He is full of criticism for Netanyahu. But when it comes to this issue he is on a unity ticket. I’ve spent the past week in Israel, visiting the sites of the Hamas massacres of October 7, hearing stories from the family members of hostages still held by Hamas and meeting politicians, and several observations have stood out.

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First, the nation remains in deep trauma: 124 hostages are still being held by Hamas; civilian populations from the north and south of the country remain displaced; and Hamas continues to fire rockets at Israel and kill Israeli soldiers daily. The whole nation, from top to bottom, is gripped in a state of anxiety. Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, told me of his sleepless nights while his son, called up to duty, spent four months deployed in Gaza.

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Family members of the hostages described an increasingly desperate vigil for their release and despondency that the world had forgotten their plight. In many respects, it is still October 8 in Israel. Second, there is incomprehension and alarm at how quickly sympathy for Israel, which sustained one of the worst and most barbaric terrorist attacks of the modern era, has disappeared, turning instead to vilification. The journey from victim to villain has induced a national whiplash. Israelis are convinced that deep-rooted anti-Semitism is the only explanation for the world losing its moral compass when it comes to their predicament.

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Finally, there is a grim resolve shared across the political spectrum that, no matter the state of world opinion or the various red lines declared, Israel must continue its military campaign until Hamas is comprehensively defeated. Without this, there can be no protection against future pogroms. Into this climate landed the ICC prosecutor’s decision to seek an arrest warrant against Israel’s Prime Minister and Defence Minister.

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The prosecutor’s decision lacks a sound basis in law, ignoring the foundational principle that the court can step in only when national judicial systems are unwilling or incapable of acting. The evidence cited lacks probative value, relying largely on untested assertions and Hamas allegations. It ignores important jurisdictional questions. But, most offensively, the decision obliterates the moral distinction between aggressor and victim, and empties the right to self-defence of any meaning.

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Hamas, a terrorist organisation, planned and executed one of the most horrific war crimes of this century, intentionally targeting civilians, taking hostages and deliberately engaging in the most barbaric acts of cruelty. Israel’s democratically elected leaders have exercised their right to self-defence, a right that any nation in similar circumstances would enjoy, and has sought to minimise civilian casualties as it seeks to defeat Hamas and recover its hostages. The prosecutor’s decision completely undermines the seriousness and credibility of the ICC, while the moral equivalence asserted is both grotesque and preposterous. Australia, as one of the original signatories to the Rome Statute that established the ICC, has a national interest in safeguarding its mission and preventing its politicisation.

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Anthony Albanese has a duty to call out this abuse by the ICC of its authority, as other world leaders have done, and an obligation to reassess Australia’s relations with the court if it proceeds down this wrongful path. Instead the Prime Minister has conjured up a diplomatic fiction to avoid commenting, pretending there is some convention that Australia does not comment on matters before international tribunals. In fact, we do so all the time: it is part and parcel of regular diplomacy. Rather than articulate Australia’s positions and take a stand, Albanese makes up supposed conventions to justify not doing so. It is an abdication of leadership. Spain, Norway and Ireland decided this week unilaterally to recognise a state of Palestine. Doubtless Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, under pressure from Labor’s base and the Greens, are considering doing the same. The reaction in Israel was much the same as that towards the ICC decision: a mixture of bewilderment and resolve.

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Despite protestations otherwise, both moves effectively reward Hamas and the path of terrorism. They lessen the pressure on Hamas to release the hostages and bring this conflict to an end. They weaken moderate Palestinian political leadership committed to coexistence and negotiation. And they strengthen the political position of Netanyahu as besieged Israelis rally around the flag. Before Australia proceeds down a similar path, the Albanese government should carefully think through these consequences.

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The formula of “land for peace” remains alive in Israel, but it has taken a serious beating. No Israeli politician from the traditional left will even utter the phrase “two state solution” in public. In Gaza, Israel did all the international community asked of it. In 2005 it withdrew to the pre-1967 armistice lines, uprooted settlements, entirely withdrew Israel’s defence forces and left Gaza to govern itself. A mere two years later, Gaza was taken over by an Islamist terrorist group, Hamas. Two decades later, a terrorist attack from Gaza cost Israel its worst loss of civilian life since the state was founded. Asking Israel now to repeat this formula in the West Bank, a territory much larger and more strategically potent than Gaza, without a fundamental change in the regional order, is seen as a call for national suicide.

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US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan arrived in Israel this week carrying a message from Riyadh. Saudi Arabia is keen to build on the Abraham Accords, normalise relations with Israel and solidify a regional coalition to contain and deter Iran. A broader peace with the Arab world, facilitated by Saudi Arabia and underwritten by security guarantees, could transform the regional picture and eventually build the trust and confidence necessary to open the way to Palestinian statehood. But a ceasefire that leaves Hamas in place – what much of the world, the Albanese government included, has been misguidedly calling for – would frustrate this opportunity.

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Such a scenario would lock in a regional strategic dynamic that is unstable and volatile, leave Israel in a precarious position and condemn any prospect of Palestinian self-determination.

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This is why the only way forward to a more hopeful future for both Israelis and Palestinians begins with the comprehensive defeat of Hamas. The sooner that happens, the better for the entire region. And that is why moves in the international arena that are seen to reward Hamas and its tactics – from ICC prosecution to unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood – are undermining the foundations of peace. My last day in Israel was spent at the new national library. There is a hall there dedicated to Labor’s foreign minister, Doc Evatt, and his important role in bringing about the birth of the modern state of Israel in 1948.

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Before the Labor government proceeds further down a pathway of isolating Israel, which ultimately will be to the detriment of regional peace, it should reflect on Evatt’s legacy.

Dave Sharma was ambassador to Israel from 2013-17 and the former Liberal member for Wentworth. He is a NSW senator.