Fatima Payman (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People is on 29 November, and I want to express my solidarity with them and acknowledge their inviolable rights. Demonstrating my solidarity matters to me and it matters to many people from my community in Western Australia who hope for peace, justice and an enduring two-state solution. It is easy to despair at the lack of progress towards these goals and at the steep cost to human life, which are felt not only in Palestine but here in Australia as well.

In the West Bank, Palestinian families live under military occupation and all aspects of their lives are controlled. People living in the West Bank should have the right to live in their own homes without the ever-present threat of being forcibly removed, that a bomb will level their home or that they will be subject to a blockade. The arrest and imprisonment of Shadi Khoury is one example that I'd like to draw to the Senate's attention. The 16-year-old boy was arrested on 18 October, taken from his parents without an explanation for his arrest or information about where he was being taken. This is too common for Palestinian families.

Israel is the only country in the world that systemically prosecutes children in military courts that lack fundamental fair-trial rights and protections. Between 500 and 700 Palestinian children face military courts each year. These courts have a 99 per cent conviction rate for Palestinians.

Shadi remains in prison inside Israel, where his parents can't visit him. A 16-year-old child should not be taken and held like this, away from his family. Labor has long supported an enduring, just, two-state solution to the conflict, and I am proud that this government recognises the rights of both Palestine and Israel to exist peacefully as two states with secure and recognised borders.