Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 11 July 1995 and in the days that followed, 8,372 defenceless Bosnian men, women and children were brutally and mercilessly killed by Serbian forces in and around the town of Srebrenica whilst the rest of the world, including UN peacekeeping forces, looked away. When such atrocities occur, it takes generations for the hurt and anger to subside, if ever.

In the years that followed, it was often vowed that what happened at Srebrenica should never happen again. Yet since October 7 last year, when Hamas insurgents brutally killed innocent and defenceless Israeli men, women and children and took over 200 as hostages, our daily television news services have broadcast graphic film footage of defenceless men, women and children having been horrifically killed, with other family members distraught and hysterically grieving. So upsetting are the news clips that news presenters warn viewers of the distressing nature of the film content.

So in plain sight, with the world watching, the carnage of Palestinian people in Gaza continues. To date it has been reported that over 40,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed in Gaza from targeted Israeli attacks and around 92,000 have been wounded. In a growing number of cases, those killed were refugees sheltering in a refugee facility, a school, a hospital or a mosque. The Netanyahu government's response that they were targeting Hamas operatives does not justify the loss of innocent Palestinian lives. The estimated 17,000 children who have been violently killed, of whom 2,000 were under the age of two, have had no say whatsoever in the Israeli-Palestine conflict. In the latest major incident, over 100 Palestinians seeking shelter in a school were killed by a targeted Israeli strike. Some 70 per cent of all Palestinian schools have now been bombed. Again, as in 1995 in Srebrenica, the world looks away while the atrocities continued.

With the widespread destruction of lives and property, the Gaza Strip has become a humanitarian catastrophe. Food, water and medical supplies are scarce, there is no safe place to shelter, and fleeing Palestinians have nowhere else to go. These are people who, in most cases, have never known anything but oppression and war in their lives. It is reported that 1.9 million of Gaza's prewar population of 2.3 million have been displaced, whilst Israeli settlements continue to spread. Yet the Netanyahu government ignores international law, blocks humanitarian aid to fleeing Palestinians and hinders efforts to contain the spread of polio virus, whilst 40,000 cases of hepatitis have also been recorded since October 7. There are now credible allegations of rape, sadistic torture and killings of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.

Even those who report what is happening are at risk. Some 113 journalists and media workers—with some reports putting the number as high as 160—have now perished in Gaza, with claims that many of them were deliberately targeted. That is the largest number of journalists killed in any war to date.

Understandably, global condemnation of the Netanyahu government grows louder, just as Hamas was rightfully and widely condemned for the October 7 massacre of Israelis. Of course, the Israeli hostages held by Hamas should be immediately and unconditionally released. Reports over recent days of a possible peace deal are encouraging, and I very much hope that a lasting peace agreement is reached where the hostages are released, where a ceasefire is permanent, where hostilities cease and where all Palestinian and Israeli people can live together in peace. However, it should not take a peace deal for the Netanyahu government to stop the carnage and destruction in Palestine. It should be a matter of human decency. Every life matters, and that includes the lives of the Palestinian people.

House adjourned at 20:00