Three Israel-related events since just before Christmas have been prominent in Australia’s media. On December 23, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 2334, with the United States abstaining rather than vetoing. It states “… the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace”.
Newspaper columnist Greg Sheridan lambasted President Barack Obama, accusing the US of wrongfully treating the Israel-Palestine conflict as “the central issue in the Middle East”. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop have also strongly criticised the US, with Bishop saying Australia would have opposed the resolution had it been voting.
On January 4, an Israeli military court convicted Israeli soldier Elor Azariah, of manslaughter for the cold-blooded killing of Palestinian Abdul Fatah al-Sharif. The military judge said the killing was needless, the sole motive being that Azariah thought al-Sharif should die. While military leaders accepted the outcome as consistent with military law, Israeli political leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, called for Azariah to be pardoned. Noting that the case resulted from the public release of a video of the killing, Israeli human rights group B’TSelem stated “the fact that one soldier was convicted today does not exonerate the military law enforcement system from its routine whitewashing of cases in which security forces kill or injure Palestinians with no accountability”.
Read the full article by Kevin Bray at the Sydney Morning Herald.