David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Today the Greens ask this Senate to adopt a simple motion: that the Senate opposes Israel's invasion of Gaza. We have heard from the foreign affairs minister statements that she and the Labor government want to see an end to civilian deaths. We've heard statements from Labor senators that every civilian death is a tragedy. How could you not, then, support a motion that calls for an end to the war that is causing those deaths? How could you not support a motion that calls for an end to the siege and the war on Gaza? How could you not support that just hours after a bomb fell from the sky and killed hundreds and hundreds of innocent Palestinian civilians, including medics, women and children? How could you not support this motion? How could you step from this chamber and pretend you have any solidarity with the Palestinian diaspora in this country or around the world? You could not.

I want to put on the record, at the request of the Palestinian community here, some of the voices of Palestinians in Australia, around the world and in Gaza. It's just some of the cries for peace and for balance in this place. Baha Hilu, a Palestinian cultural and political events organiser in Beit Sahour says:

We are survivors of Israeli apartheid. It is applied to the best of us and to the worst of us …We are forced into despair to the point where death is more merciful than life.

Abu Aish, a 58-year-old Gazan rescue worker, said:

I'm terrified all the time, of course I am. I'm human … I see the worst things you can imagine.'

In this country, Samah Sabawi has said this: 'I was born in that hospital. It's now a massacre site—500 patients, medics, families, babies, people, humans killed. Tell me this is not a war crime.' Lana Tatour, a Palestinian-Australian academic, said this: 'Israel killed medical teams, patients and civilians seeking shelter in the hospital. Does the West have a red line when it comes to Israel?'

Well, the red line is here. The red line is this motion. The red line is a clear statement that Palestinian lives matter and, if you believe that Palestinian lives matter, you must support an end to the bombing. You must support an end to the collective punishment of Palestinians—the removal of water, food and basic medicine. You must oppose an aggressive military that says to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that they must flee their homes or they will be killed, when they have nowhere to flee. You must support the statements from the World Health Organization, which says the Israeli military's direction to hospitals to evacuate is a death sentence for the patients. Then we see, within hours of that statement from the WHO, the appalling, brutal bombing of a crowded Gazan hospital, with hundreds of lives lost.

Those who oppose this motion oppose peace. Those who oppose this motion don't believe that Palestinian lives matter. Let's for once step outside the prism that this place has put itself in when it comes to Gaza and Palestine and support the motion and clearly state that Palestinian lives matter, that the occupation is deeply offensive and that we must have peace with justice.