The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network warmly welcomes yesterday’s UN General Assembly resolution condemning Israel’s use of excessive force against Palestinian demonstrators and calling for an "international protection mechanism" for Palestinians.
"It’s important to note that there is a broad consensus among human rights organisations that Israeli soldiers systematically and repeatedly killed and maimed unarmed Palestinian protestors who were of no threat to them," stated APAN President George Browning. "According to Human Rights Watch ‘Israeli forces also shot medics, journalists, children, and others who were hundreds of meters away from the fences’.
"We also need to remember that there is no internationally-recognised Israel-Gaza border and that the refugees in Gaza have every right to protest against the fence that Israel has erected around their ghetto to prevent them from returning to their lands."
The resolution was passed with 120 votes in favour, 45 abstentions and only Israel, the United States, Australia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Togo and the Solomon Islands voting against it.
"Regrettably the Turnbull government has an established and disgraceful record of opposing all forms of Palestinian non-violent resistance to Israel’s Occupation. Last year it cancelled the visa of Bassem Tamimi, a school teacher from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, who has led the non-violent campaign against the expropriation of his village’s lands and water by Israeli settlers since 2009," Browning said.
"In siding with the frankly anti-Palestinian Trump and Netanyahu governments against the overwhelming majority of the United Nations, the Turnbull government is not only setting its face against the international consensus but also enabling the perpetuation of an apartheid regime throughout the whole of Israel and the Occupied Territories."
Browning believes that the Turnbull government is out of touch with Australian public opinion on the issue.
"In opposing the international consensus and siding with Israel in its bloody crackdown on unarmed protestors, the Turnbull government is empowering the most hardline and rejectionist elements on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It is now up to the Australian people to save our country’s honour by supporting moderate Israelis and Palestinians who support a peaceful solution." ---
F
