Palestinian Conflict

The Hon. C. BONAROS (16:22): I move:

That this council—

1. Condemns the loss of 242 Palestinian lives, including 66 children, during the recent 11-day bombardment by Israel of heavily populated Gaza;

2. Condemns the loss of 12 lives, including two children, due to Hamas rocket fire in Israel;

3. Welcomes the announcement of a ceasefire on 21 May 2021;

4. Calls for an immediate halt to illegal settler expansion in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem;

5. Recognises the right of the Palestinian people to exercise their inalienable rights, including the right to self-determination without external interference, the right to national independence and sovereignty and the right to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced;

6. Notes the recent Human Rights Watch report, entitled 'A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution';

7. Calls upon the federal government to assist with the immediate delivery of critical humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people, particularly those living in Gaza; and,

8. Calls upon the federal government to advocate for equal rights for Palestinian and Israeli people.

I rise to speak on this very important motion, recognising the right of the Palestinian people to exercise their inalienable rights, including the right to self-determination without external interference, the right to national independence and sovereignty, and the right to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced. In doing so, I note the presence here today of Ms Abbie Hamdan, who is the co-founder of Australian friends of Palestine.

The longstanding oppression and suffering of the Palestinian people intensified earlier this month with the 11-day bombardment of Gaza by Israel, and the numbers speak for themselves. According to the United Nations Human Rights Centre, 12 Israelis, including two innocent children, and 242 Palestinians were killed. Sixty-six innocent Palestinian children—23 girls and 43 boys—were indiscriminately killed; 12 of these children had not even reached their fifth birthday. Eleven have been identified as part of a trauma support program run by the Norwegian Refugee Council.

One can only imagine what they had already endured in their short lives. The latest attacks followed the intensification of Israel's policy of settler expansion, with Israeli courts recently ruling that settlers could move into Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood of East Jerusalem. While Israel has claimed its recent airstrikes were targeted, it is unfathomable that bombarding such a densely populated area could achieve anything but indiscriminate destruction—and that it did.

There are over two million people living in 365 square kilometres. According to the Ministry for Health in Gaza, 1,948 Palestinians were injured, including 610 children and almost 400 women. At least 77,000 civilians have been displaced, forced to seek protection by fleeing their homes. An estimated 258 buildings were destroyed, including media outlets and police stations, while a further 770 homes are now uninhabitable.

The United Nations reports that 53 schools, six hospitals and 11 primary healthcare centres were extensively damaged. The central COVID testing laboratory is all but gone. Gaza's top neurologist and the head of the coronavirus response at Gaza's biggest hospital are among the essential workers killed. Electricity grids were also targeted in the Israeli airstrikes, with five of the 10 powerlines running electricity from Israel damaged. Prior to recent attacks, daily power outages were already commonplace. Five hours of power in a day was a good day.

In her address to the United States Congress on 13 May, Palestinian American representative Rashida Tlaib broke down as she quoted Eman from Gaza, who had written two days earlier, and I quote:

Tonight I put the kids to sleep in our bedroom. So that when we die, we die together and no one would live to mourn the loss of another one.

On 15 May, a now orphaned baby boy was pulled alive from the rubble at a refugee camp where seven of his family members had been killed. Ten-year-old Palestinian boy Aziz Al-Kolk, who was found after six hours under rubble, told his uncle when he reached the hospital, 'I know that I'm the only survivor, because I saw my mum and dad bleeding to death.'

Just the other day, I saw a photo of two little boys. They were brothers. Each thought that the other was dead before they found each other in the hospital. The look of relief but more so the indescribable anguish on both of their debris-covered faces was overwhelming enough to reduce anyone to tears. A video surfaced on social media last week showing members of the Israel Defense Forces blindfolding a boy who could not have been more than 12, perhaps younger, and using him as a human shield as they threw grenades at Palestinian homes—little, innocent lives.

Thank goodness, for now, a ceasefire has been announced, but what does that actually mean? The Sheikh Jarrah expulsion orders are still pending. The Israeli settlement expansion continues. It is concerning that Israeli security forces have launched a wave of arrests since the ceasefire announcement, with the police force calling it Operation Law and Order.

The New York Times reported yesterday that more than 1,550 suspects have been arrested in Israel. Around 30 per cent are Jewish Israelis who joined in recent protests. By Monday afternoon, at least 74 Palestinians had been detained on charges ranging from vandalism to online incitement. There are reports that Israeli security forces used stun grenades and rubber bullets against Palestinians outside the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on Friday, following the ceasefire.

Despite the ceasefire, the Palestinian people continue to live without basic human rights in an open air prison. The sweeping restrictions on movement continue. Even before the latest attacks, the UN estimated that more than 96 per cent of the water supply in Gaza was unfit for human consumption and water pollution was the leading source of child mortality. Even before the latest attacks, Palestinians were only able to access running water every other day.

In 2011, UNICEF published a report detailing the deliberate flushing of toxic chemical industrial waste into Palestinian villages. For years, Palestinians have been living without proper sanitation. On Tuesday, UNICEF released a report warning attacks on water and sanitation facilities were a much greater threat than violence to children in conflict zones. In April, Human Rights Watch summarised the dire situation in its report entitled 'A Threshold Crossed—Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution', and I quote:

About 6.8 million Jewish Israelis and 6.8 million Palestinians live today between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, an area encompassing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the latter made up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Throughout most of this area, Israel is the sole governing power; in the remainder, it exercises primary authority alongside limited Palestinian self-rule. Across these areas and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.

While the world watches, human rights abuses continue to go unchecked. The US funds Israel's military to the tune of some $3.8 billion annually. There are unconfirmed reports that the US State Department approved an export licence for the sale of $735 million of weapons to Israel last Friday. These are weapons that are and will continue to kill innocent children. So where are the sanctions, such as those imposed on Syria, Russia, Iran and North Korea, and where is the international pressure?

It is really important to note that this is not about religion. This is about equal rights for everyone, regardless of their nationality, religion or race. As the outstanding and inspiring South African anti-apartheid revolutionary political leader and philanthropist, Nelson Mandela, once noted:

We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.

I think it is clear when I watch on that it is the faces and videos of innocent kids that I hear the loudest because their bravery in the face of what can only be described as a living hell is absolutely heartbreaking and overwhelming. I want to quote something and it reads:

I started to think: why are we so different from other children in the world? Why are we detained when we're young and made to suffer, while others are happy playing sports, and with many opportunities that we don't have? Why are they like that and we like this? To this day, no-one can answer me.

These are the words of a 17-year-old boy who featured in a film a couple of years ago about imprisoned Palestinian children. Obaida Akram Jawabra had been imprisoned three times by the time he was 14. He talked in that film about what it is like to be arrested by Israeli forces and what it is like to be bound and gagged and tortured on parts of your body that are not obvious to the naked eye. During the interview, the young man said:

I feel freedom, but it is not complete freedom. We first have to be liberated from the occupation before I can feel that I am truly free. You have personal will, you can do whatever you want. This was something that I missed when I was in prison. But we're not liberated, so how can I be fully happy? Only part of my happiness has been truly fulfilled.

It breaks my heart that on 17 May this year, Obaida was killed. He was shot dead by Israeli forces at the Al-Aroub refugee camp, north of the occupied West Bank. Kids like this deserve better. Everybody deserves better and they deserve to live freely to know the opportunities and the freedoms afforded to children everywhere else in the world. This is not about religion. This is not about anti-Semitism. This is about what is fundamentally right.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.