The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) condemns the Israeli Government’s announcement of its intention to fully occupy Gaza, and demands that the Australian Government take immediate action to prevent this flagrant breach of international law.
Israel’s announcement is a brazen declaration of colonisation, ethnic cleansing and the intention to annex Palestinian land.
The announcement by Israeli Prime MInister Benjamin Netanyahu, already wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza, confirms what Palestinians, the world’s highest courts and legal and human rights experts have been saying: this is genocide and apartheid.
This brazen violation of international law by the Israeli Government demands urgent, decisive action from the Australian Government in support of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, to stay on their land, and to return.
During the past 22 months, Israel has annihilated Gaza, massacred at least 61,000 Palestinians – this number likely a gross underestimate – decimated homes, hospitals, farmland, and water systems, blocked aid and deliberately manufactured famine.
This genocidal destruction has laid the groundwork for what Netanyahu calls a “security perimeter,” which is, in fact, the next step to permanent military rule, mass expulsion and the further erasure of Palestinian life on Palestinian land.
This is a continuation of Israel’s policies of ethnic cleansing of erasure. Gaza has been under Israeli occupation, blockade and siege, for decades, with Palestinians’ daily life, access to food, fuel, electricity, as well as mobility, tightly controlled and routinely weaponised as tools of collective punishment and domination.
We demand that the Australian Government take concrete action:
- Impose country-level sanctions on Israel, and sanction all Israeli individuals and entities responsible for and complicit in its war crimes in Gaza.
- Impose a two-way arms embargo, ending the direct and indirect import and export of weapons and components.
- Reject any framework that conditions Palestinian self-determination on Israeli security.
- Suspend all trade agreements with Israel and withdraw support for Israeli normalisation while it continues to commit genocide and apartheid in historic Palestine.
- Support full legal accountability for Israeli officials responsible for war crimes, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Australia’s failure to impose consequences, while continuing to export arms and components, offering diplomatic protection to Israel, and meeting every new violation of international law with hollow rhetoric, makes Australia complicit.
Comments attributed to APAN President Nasser Mashni:
“There can surely be no remaining pretence that Israel is doing anything other than permanently erasing Gaza in order to occupy and annex it.
“Meanwhile, Australia stands by as Israel commits these mass atrocities, offering words without consequences and flimsy acts of diplomacy without any courage.
“Gaza has already been occupied, besieged and bombed by Israel for decades. What is happening now is the final stage of ethnic cleansing, and the world is enabling it.
“Palestinians have the right to live on their land, to return to it, and to determine their own future – no government has the right to bomb, starve or exile them. And third states, in fact, have a duty to prevent these crimes, not arm, fund or shield the perpetrators.
“Australia has an international legal obligation to take tangible action to prevent and punish Israel’s genocide, and to ensure it isn’t aiding and abetting Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
“It must end all military cooperation, imports and exports with Israel, impose country-level sanctions on Israel – as has been done with Russia – and ensure there are consequences if Israel does not immediately lift its siege, allow aid to flow freely, and end this genocide.”