Expressions of delight at the ceasefire – which was preceded by an 11th hour Israeli onslaught in Gaza, killing at least 80 – are premature. Netanyahu has repeatedly said attacks against Hamas will resume after Israel gets some hostages back.
The Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, went to Tel Aviv at the weekend to placate the government about anti-Israel protests in Australia. Former Defence chief, Mark Binskin, was sent last year to investigate the death of aid worker Zomi Frankcom at the hands of the IDF. Nothing resulted from the General’s visit, nor will Dreyfus change anything.
All Israel’s concentration for the next six weeks will be on stage 1 of the ceasefire, the exchange of hostages for prisoners. To hold his government together, and stay in power, Prime Minister Netanyahu will seek to dilute implementation of stage 2, the withdrawal of IDF from Gaza. The details of stage 3, the reconstruction of Gaza, haven’t been negotiated. And as for stage 4, the cessation and removal of illegal settlements in the West Bank, there is no stage 4.
Israel’s intentions for Gaza were clear well before 7 October 2023. For years, the territory was shrunk, supplies were restricted, and attacks on Hamas and civilians intensified. Some thought this was intended to provoke Hamas to attack, and that Netanyahu with advance knowledge let it happen on 7 October, even if it meant the lives of 1200 young Israelis and IDF personnel were lost, and 230 were taken hostage.
Letting it happen would deliver Israel’s final solution for Gaza. Netanyahu’s ministers had first urged Palestinians to move there; then to move south, and then north, attacking them wherever they went, bombing mosques, hospitals, and schools where they sheltered, and cutting off fuel, power, and water. The Hamas outbreak was exploited to allow ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, which then became genocidal.
Netanyahu, in his ‘Amalek’ statement on 30 October 2023, said Israel’s war was a ‘holy mission’, recalling Esau’s instruction to Israelites to ’go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass’ (I Samuel 15:3).
Israel’s then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, ‘released all the restraints’ on troops preparing to enter Gaza. Knesset member Ariel Kallner explicitly called for ‘a Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48’. And Ezra Yahin, a 95 year-old Army veteran, urged IDF troops to ‘Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live’. He added: ‘Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbour, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him’.
-Letting that happen was what Australia did. For Australia to now claim any role in supporting the 19 January ceasefire is hypocrisy, for three reasons.
First, Prime Minister Albanese and his ministers backed Israel from the start, calling the 7 October 2023 Hamas outbreak an ‘unprovoked attack on the Jewish people’. Foreign Minister Wong wanted it to be referred to the UN Security Council, where she knew it would be vetoed by the US. Home Minister O’Neill complained that Israelis had been ‘attacked for their religion’. NSW Premier Minns, who lit up the Opera House for Israel, continues to express outrage at anti-Semitic but not anti-Islamist provocations.
Second, Australian ministers, who repeatedly assert Israel’s right to self-defence (but not the equal right of Palestinians) have ignored calls to UN member states from the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and several UN bodies to honour their obligations and act against Israel. Defence Minister Marles says Israel is operating ‘within the rules of war’, and we can expect the same from Dreyfus after his return. Wong believed the IDF was not responsible for bombing the Al-Ahli Hospital. She accepted Israel’s claim about Hamas personnel in UNWRA, and cancelled Australian aid, but after this was shown to be false she reinstated it. She then had Australia creep by slow steps to vote with the international pro-Palestinian majority in the UN General Assembly. She knew they would be ignored both by Israel and the United States.
Third, as Wong must know, the two-state solution Australia always advocates was rendered unachievable by Israel’s successive, deliberate moves against the Palestinians, well before 7 October 2023. ‘A new generation of Gazans will grow up to hate the Israelis’, Rodger Shanahan wrote (SMH 17 January 2025: 26). No doubt they will, just as their parents and grandparents already do. So Palestinian resistance will continue, with or without a ceasefire, Hamas will persist, and so will IDF attacks, and Israel’s genocidal intentions against any Palestinian state. No two-state outcome is possible.
Letting it happen is not what Australia did when Prime Minister Bob Hawke, with nationwide support, abandoned the restraint of his US and UK counterparts and imposed sanctions on the De Clerk apartheid government in South Africa. Yet Australia under Albanese has not supported South Africa’s case against Israel for its practice of apartheid against the Palestinians. The Australian public are not told what ADF personnel are doing in Israel, which weapons and components Australian firms sell to the IDF, what the operations of Elbit in Australia are, and why the government fails to prevent them. Australia approved 350 permits for defence exports to Israel in the five years to 2023, 50 of them in that year. Australia promptly supported the indictment of President Putin for war crimes in Ukraine, but the government sends emissaries to Israel as if such ICC warrants don’t apply to Netanyahu and Gallant.
Australia lets it happen because, like Netanyahu, Albanese fears losing the 2025 election. They both have blood on their hands. Peter Dutton and his Murdoch media backers are even more pro-apartheid, pro-genocide, and anti-Palestine. Given the chance, they will let even more of it happen. And the war will resume within weeks.
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