Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese has said the federal government must explain a decision to vote against an investigation into the killing of Palestinians in Gaza at the UN.
On Friday the UN Human Rights Council, which Australia is now a member of, voted to set up an investigation into the deaths at the hands of Israeli forces after violent protests in Gaza.
Twenty-nine states voted in favour and only Australia and the US opposed the vote which also included a condemnation of “the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by the Israeli occupying forces against Palestinian civilians”.
About 60 people were killed and over 1000 injured — including eight-month-old Leila al-Ghandour — following Monday’s “March of Return” protests by the Palestinians.
The protests coincided with the opening of the new US embassy in Jerusalem.
Mr Albanese, who is a member of the party’s left faction, suggested the response by Israeli forces may not have been proportionate.
“International law requires a proportionate response and those people who have guns on one side and on the other side has rocks, the people with guns have a responsibility to act in a way that is proportionate,” he told the ABC.
He said he was a “stronger supporter of Israel’s right to exist within secure borders”, but the response was doing damage to Israel’s reputation.
“When you have all of the fatalities on one side of a dispute then there needs to be an explanation as to how those circumstances have been done.”
Mr Albanese said an independent investigation was in the “interests of all” and it would “no doubt” find fault was not just on one side.
“The government needs to explain why it is isolated as only one of two nations to vote against an independent inquiry,” he said.
Read the full article written by Primose Riordan at The Australian.