Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has conveyed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Labor’s concern about Israel’s construction of settlements in occupied territories, in a meeting he described as “warm and productive”.
Mr Shorten – flanked by foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong, shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus and Melbourne Ports MP Michael Danby on Friday – also raised Labor’s support for a two-state solution, an outcome that Mr Netanyahu’s government has backed away from in recent years.
“It was good to see the Prime Minister again,” Mr Shorten said in a statement. The pair met previously in Israel when the Opposition Leader attended the Australia-Israel-Britain Leadership Dialogue in December.
“We want to see Israel safe and secure of its borders, we support the rights of the Palestinians people to have their own state,” Mr Shorten said as he emerged from the hour-long discussion in Sydney.
“We expressed the view very clearly and unambiguously that where settlements and their expansion are a roadblock to peace, that’s damaging to the peace process.”
Leading up to the occasion and following the Netanyahu delegation’s events with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a group of Labor MPs called for Australia to recognise Palestine as a state. This goes further than current party policy, which is backed by Mr Shorten’s Victorian Right faction but coming under pressure ahead of the party’s national conference in 2018.
Read the full article by Fergus Hunter with AAP at the Sydney Morning Herald.