We are calling upon this chamber to condemn an invasion which will turn a humanitarian disaster into a humanitarian catastrophe. The reality is, right now, the state of Israel is engaged in the commission of war crimes against the Palestinian population of Gaza. Over a million children are trapped in the Gaza Strip. Forty per cent of the population of the Gaza Strip are below the age of 15. And yet we are seeing the Israeli military engage in a campaign of indiscriminate bombing of civilians, and we have seen devastating loss of civilian life.
Senator STEELE-JOHN (Western Australia) (16:45): At the request of Senator McKim, I move:
That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:
That the Senate opposes Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
This motion is very simple. It calls upon the Senate to oppose the state of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. That is it. We are calling upon this chamber to condemn an invasion which will turn a humanitarian disaster into a humanitarian catastrophe. The reality is, right now, the state of Israel is engaged in the commission of war crimes against the Palestinian population of Gaza. Over a million children are trapped in the Gaza Strip. Forty per cent of the population of the Gaza Strip are below the age of 15. And yet we are seeing the Israeli military engage in a campaign of indiscriminate bombing of civilians, and we have seen devastating loss of civilian life. The very same compassion and commitment to honesty and to justice and to peace which has rightly moved so many to condemn the war crimes of Hamas upon innocent Israeli civilians on 7 October must now move this Senate to condemn the war crimes of the state of Israel against the people of Gaza and to oppose its impending invasion.
We are seeing hospitals bombed. We are seeing ambulances bombed. Journalists are being murdered. Health workers are being murdered. An entire section of the world, a section of the world half the size of the ACT, home to over two million people, is subject to a military siege denying them food, water, electricity and medicine, in a textbook violation of the Geneva Convention. These are war crimes, and an invasion by the state of Israel of Gaza must be opposed. International human rights organisations are uniting in their call for engagement and action by the global community. The Secretary General of Amnesty International has said, ‘The cost of unreserved support for the government of Israel in this invasion, particularly the unreserved support of the United States and of the European Union, is more war crimes against civilians.’ The more that we allow this to occur without calling it for what it is, the more we become complicit in the commission of these crimes.
This is an opportunity for the Senate to place itself on the right side of history. It’s an opportunity, in this moment of challenge for our community, to state clearly that this chamber at least is able to find it in itself to oppose an invasion which will see children and innocent civilians subjected to even more destruction and to do so in the full knowledge that the evidence on the ground speaks clearly to what the state of Israel and its military have already committed against the communities of Gaza. We must take this moment to state clearly that we oppose this invasion. We must take this moment to state clearly that we oppose the destruction of civilian life. The Greens will continue in solidarity with the Australian Palestinian community— (Time expired)