Labor MP Michael Danby has ridiculed former foreign minister Bob Carr for saying that Donald Trump’s election could result in Israel expanding its settlements or annexing the West Bank and destroying the prospect of a two-state solution.
Mr Danby’s attack on the influential member of NSW Labor’s dominant Right faction came as conservative Liberal backbencher Eric Abetz backed Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s indication that Australia would have broken with the US and New Zealand and supported Israel over the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements.
Sharp divisions between the outgoing Obama administration and president-elect Trump have emerged after the US abstained from the UN vote demanding an end to Israeli settlements “in the occupied Palestinian territory”.
Mr Danby, Jewish and a member of the Victorian Labor Right sub-faction associated with Bill Shorten and former senator Stephen Conroy, proposed paying for an economy airline ticket to fly Mr Carr to the Gaza Strip so he could “join volunteers supervising a seven-year delayed election by the Islamists of Hamas”.
“One condition — he must object to gays being thrown off roofs and (Hamas’s) support for honour killings,” he said.
Read the full article by Rachel Baxendale and Joe Kelly at The Australian.