Not surprisingly, a great Australian, Hon Gareth Evans, Distinguished Honorary Professor, Australian National University and a former foreign minister of Australia has raised the issue of recognition of the state of Palestine by Australia in an address to Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, Parliament House, Canberra on 13 June 2023.
Would it make any changes in the Australian Government’s policy to stop blindly following the USA in supporting Israel’s increasing occupation and dispossession of the Palestinian Territories? I wish, it would. But if history is any guide, it is unlikely unless Albanese Government is led by moral conscious rather than continue to please the pro-Israel lobby.
We have heard former foreign minister Bob Carr speaking in support of recognition of the state of Palestine, and number of motions passed in several Australian Labor Party (ALP) conferences, when will that make any policy change?
If there is only one failure of the world leaders since the second world war, it the Israeli occupation of Palestine, continuing land siege and murder of innocent people including children and women. The only crime the Palestinians have committed is that they are not of the Jewish faith, rather Arabs – Christians and Muslims.
On 18 June 2023, Aljazeera reported Israel’s hardline coalition government has approved plans for thousands of new housing units in the occupied West Bank and given the far-right finance minister sweeping powers to expedite the construction of illegal settlements, bypassing measures that have been in place for 27 years. However, all Israeli Governments have been complicit in such war crimes.
Read the article by Emeritus Professor Shahjahan Khan in AMUST.