Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to a question without notice I asked today relating to the Israeli government's history of human rights abuse.

On Monday, Israeli soldiers stormed the Jenin refugee camp, killing five Palestinians, including a 15-year-old boy, and wounding at least 91 Palestinians, 22 of whom are in a critical condition. One of these is a 15-year-old girl, shot inside her own house. This raid started with Israeli helicopter air strikes, the first to be conducted in the West Bank in over 20 years, followed by live ammunition, stun grenades and toxic gas. What was the response from the Israeli government? Minister Smotrich, Israel's finance minister, publicly called for a large-scale operation across the West Bank, saying that 'the time has come to replace the tweezer operations with a wideranging campaign to eradicate the nests of terror'. Surging violence in the occupied West Bank has killed 123 Palestinians in this year alone, along with 23 Israelis. In response to this raid, four Israeli civilians were murdered in a counterattack by Hamas; a further four were wounded.

The Greens condemn all acts of violence. The murder of another human being is an inexcusable crime. This data reveals the reality of the asymmetry at the heart of this so-called conflict. The violence is overwhelmingly impacting Palestinians, and this is a reality with which the Australian government must engage. The racism and oppression that Palestinians are subjected to every day, the system of race based separation, dispossession and discrimination, and the system of Israeli apartheid must be recognised for the crime against humanity that it is. It's a crime against humanity which requires an immediate international community led response. It is time for the foreign minister to call this system by its name, to call apartheid by its name and to act accordingly.

Instead, what we see from this Labor government is an inability even to fulfil the terms and requirements of its own national platform to recognise the statehood of Palestinians. This failure is becoming so obvious and indefensible that the parties within the government party are setting deadlines for the government to fulfil this commitment. Instead of taking action, the government is aiding and abetting the IDF in its commission of violence against Palestinians, approving no fewer than 23 permits for the sale of military arms to Israel since March this year. Not only is this government failing to do the bare minimum and recognise the statehood of Palestinians; it is actively selling weapons to the very forces that are oppressing and killing them.

It is time that the Australian government recognise the reality that the Netanyahu government is the most far-right and extreme coalition of parties that has ever been seen within the state of Israel and join with the Greens and progressives across the community, Palestinian and Jewish, in calling for targeted sanctions and boycotts to be applied against these bigoted, racist ministers. No government representative of Australia should meet with them. They should be called out.

Question agreed to.