Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has criticised the United Nations for a recent resolution condemning Israeli settlements while reiterating Australia’s continuing support for a two state solution to the Middle East conflict, ahead of an historic visit by the Israeli prime minister on Wednesday.
Writing for News Corp, Mr Turnbull welcomed Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu to Australia and appeared to censure both the UN and those who “insisted government take the side of those in the international community who seek to chastise Israel — and it alone — for the continuing failure of the peace process.”
“In a speech to the UN General Assembly in 2015, Prime Minister Netanyahu pointed out that in the preceding 12 months, the General Assembly had adopted 20 resolutions critical of Israel, compared to just one in response to the war in Syria, which has resulted in more than 250,000 killed and millions driven from their homes,” Mr Turnbull wrote.
“My government will not support one-sided resolutions criticising Israel of the kind recently adopted by the UN Security Council and we deplore the boycott campaigns designed to delegitimise the Jewish state.”
In December, in the final weeks of the Obama administration, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The United States did not use its power to veto the motion, which is non-binding and therefore symbolic..
The then President-elect Donald Trump said the motion should have been vetoed and has sought to move the United States even closer to Israel since his inauguration. During a joint press conference with Mr Netanyahu last week, President Trump appeared to upend decades of US foreign policy by saying he could “live with” a one-state solution to the conflict.
Read the full article by Latika Bourke at the Sydney Morning Herald.