Malcolm Turnbull has strongly condemned the UN, accusing it of a prejudiced attack against Israel over a Security Council resolution that accused the Israeli government of violating international law with its settlement activity.
On the eve of a historic visit by Benjamin Netanyahu, who arrives in Sydney today as the first sitting Israeli leader to visit Australia, the Prime Minister also charged those who promoted or supported a boycott campaign with a deplorable attempt to de-legitimise the Jewish state.
In an exclusive commentary article published in The Australian today, Mr Turnbull denounces the UN for what he claims is bias, citing 20 resolutions between 2014 and 2015 that are critical of Israel when only a single resolution had been issued on the Syrian war.
While Mr Turnbull has been critical in the past of anti-Israeli resolutions, rarely has he been so forceful in his language. “My government will not support one-sided resolutions criticising Israel of the kind recently adopted by the Security Council and we deplore the boycott campaigns designed to delegitimise the Jewish state,” Mr Turnbull writes.
“At the same time, we recognise that Israel and the Palestinians need to come to a settlement and we support a directly negotiated two-state-solution so that Palestinians will have their own state and the people of Israel can be secure within agreed borders.
“We believe that with so many other larger, more destructive and intractable disputes in the Middle East, this is a time when Israeli and Palestinian leaders, supported by the global community, should return to the negotiating table and work towards a solution that upholds the rights of both peoples to live side-by-side in peace and security.”
Read the article in The Australian (subscription required).