Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs has told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) “there is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise”.

However Penny Wong did not elaborate on when Australia would recognise Palestinian statehood, saying only that it was “a matter of when, not if”.

Wong’s comments came after a mass protest in Sydney on Sunday, which she said showed the “distress of Australians, on what we are seeing unfolding in Gaza, the catastrophic humanitarian situation, the deaths of women and children, the withholding of aid”.

But asked if Australia was considering taking any more concrete actions, such as imposing sanctions on Israel, Wong said: “We don’t speculate on sanctions for the obvious reason that they have more effect if they are not flagged.”

She noted that Australia had already imposed sanctions on two far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s government, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, in June this year, as well as “extremist” Israeli settlers.

Read the full story by Al Jazeera here.