With countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom urging a change of course from Netanyahu to spare Palestinian civilians from greater death and destruction, there is an international shift at work.

The United Nations Security Council has opened a debate on whether to admit Palestine as a member of the global body – not just an observer – and that means Australia must be ready for a vote on statehood.

Wong is not acting alone. David Cameron, the British foreign secretary and former conservative prime minister, made the case for earlier recognition of a Palestinian state two months ago. And he leaned further forward than Wong in saying it could happen.

This means the two biggest suppliers of arms to Israel, the US and the UK, want Netanyahu to take a different approach. This may suit Netanyahu, who needs to shore up his support when Israelis could shift to the likely alternative, Benny Gantz. The likely claim from Netanyahu will be that Israelis can rely on him to finish the job against Hamas by defying pressure from US President Joe Biden to end the war.

The key point is that Wong is not out of step with other democracies. Her speech on Tuesday night was an important move to canvass change, rather than announce that change.

So is Australia ready and willing to recognise Palestine as a state?

“We’ve made no such decision,” Wong said on Radio National on Wednesday morning when asked that question. She and others are a long way from talking about a policy decision in cabinet to formalise a new position.

There is no timeframe for a decision on a new government policy. The Labor conference in Brisbane last August confirmed a party platform that says the government should recognise Palestine as a state, but this does not force a decision from federal cabinet. There is no federal party conference before the next election to put this to another test.

Labor caucus members are not agitating for a sudden shift to a new position. One MP, speaking on Wednesday morning, said an energetic backbench push might only provoke Wong into pushing back.

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Liberal foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham says it is “downright dangerous” to fast-track Palestinian statehood. Liberal deputy leader Sussan Ley wants to know whether Wong is placing any hard preconditions on this recognition. The Zionist Federation says the move would only reward the Hamas attackers who slaughtered 1200 people last October.

Wong made the conditions for statehood clear in her speech on Tuesday night. First, she said Hamas was a terrorist organisation and could not be part of a Palestinian state. Second, she said the Palestinian Authority needed to be reformed to make statehood possible. Third, she was crystal clear that the Palestinian state must not pose any security threat to Israel.

Will those conditions ever be met? Hamas gained control of Gaza because it had popular support – and it appears to retain that support to this day. How could Palestinians vote on a state or government in an election that banned Hamas or its proxies?

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The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, is seen as weak and dysfunctional. And the October 7 terrorist attack proved that Hamas or other groups will continue to pose a threat to Israel’s security, even if their attacks unleash untold suffering on their fellow Palestinians.

Wong is making a careful case for a pathway out of a cycle of violence. She is accused of being too soft on Hamas, but she places fundamental conditions on statehood, including the central importance of the security of Israel.

If there is a criticism of this pathway to peace, it is not that an Australian leader dares to talk about it. It is whether it is remotely possible.

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