Posted by Emeritus Professor Shahjahan Khan | 24 Jun, 2023 | Ummah | 1 |
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.
Imagine, if any Arab state was grabbing a small piece of land by evicting Jewish residents, because they were Jewish, would there be any shortage of international condemnation or sanctions? Alas! nothing happens to Israel who functions with impunity not matter the war crimes, under the protection of USA veto in the UN and by extension Australian Governments.
Everyone who cares for the oppressed and stateless people of Palestine living in refugee camps for at least three generations in their ancestral land and beyond would like to rescue the most neglected people on the earth by the world leaders.
Although 138 countries of the world have recognised the state of Palestine, we are yet to see if the Albanese led Labor Government stands on a strong moral ground by doing what is right.
Ironically, ignoring the ongoing violation of international law and increase torture and oppression of Palestinians by Israel, the former conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison formally recognized west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2018 to follow the footsteps of the then US President Donald Trump. This was a direct insult on the aspirations of Palestinians who are denied recognition and statehood.
The lack of action on this urgent and much waited matter by the ALP Government is really pathetic in spite of a number of resolutions in various state and national conferences of the ALP in support of recognition of the state of Palestine.
The days of covering all crimes of the apartheid state of Israel and the unconditional protection of the USA in the UN are coming to an end as China is seriously engaging in the Middle East (ME). With the normalization of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia and realignment of the ME with China and Russia has changed the political and security landscape of the region.
Increasing influence of Turkiye and its good relationship with UAE, KSA and Qatar is likely to have significant impact in the Middle Eastern geopolitics. With the realigned ME, the US may not be able to stop the statehood of Palestinians if China takes the lead in reviving the so called stalled peace process.
Australian Government could no longer turn blind eyes to what had happened in the past, since the forceful expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to free up Palestinian land by settling Jewish migrants for the creation and ongoing expansion of Israel, and what is happening now in the name of `self defense’ of a nuclear state against a stateless under-sieged people.
The horror and indiscriminate murder and wounding of mainly defenseless Palestinians under a system of apartheid, by Israeli forces, is a form of ethnic cleansing.
On a regular basis, every year, thousands of homes have been demolished by Israeli security forces in front of the evicted families of defenseless Palestinians to create new settlements for settlers. In addition, their olive farms destroyed, farming water stolen.
Over the decades the history of Israel is the forceful ‘land grabbing’ and illegal (under international law) expansion of settlements with Jewish settlers by continuingly evicting the Arab population by forcing them to move out of their own land ignoring international laws and a number of UN Resolutions (that Australia agreed to).
The use of modern lethal weapon by the Israeli army and indiscriminate bombing on unarmed civilians in the form of collective punishment and against stone-throwing Arab children has taken heavy tolls including thousands of children and women witnessed by the unconcerned world leaders.
Australians have demanded the recognition of the state of Palestine time and again. On 6 July 2013, in a petition to the Australian Federal Parliament, Federal Member for Moreton, Hon Graham Perrett MP presented a petition calling on the government to recognize Palestine as a non-Member State at the United Nations. The petition was moved by Mr David Forde and was signed by 1,270 citizens.
Petitioners requested the House to recognize the State of Palestine, because if the House is genuinely committed to a lasting two-state solution and advancing peace in the Middle East and beyond, then it must formally recognize the State of Palestine (to ensure two sovereign states), based on the implementation of relevant United Nations resolutions and international law.
The petition stated that Palestinians are a stateless people who have suffered under the shadow of Israeli occupation for far too long. They want freedom, justice, equality and the right to self-determination.
For 25 years, Palestinians have engaged in a rigged “peace process” while Israel has confiscated their lands, colonized their country with Jewish Israeli settlements and imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza that has pauperized its population.
As Israel consolidates its hold over the Occupied Territories and the remaining Palestinian enclaves continue to shrink, the window of opportunity for a two-state solution is closing fast.
The big part of the story of Israel’s expansion of occupation is evident from changing map of Israel from 1947 to 1967 to 2012 and onward as at https://aijac.org.au/fresh-air/disappearing-palestine-the-maps-that-lie/
The failure of the two-state solution will leave Israel as an apartheid state, ruling over an indigenous underclass of permanently disenfranchised Palestinians. Such a situation would destabilize the entire region and serve as an invaluable propaganda resource for extremist and terrorist organizations around the world.
Given Israel’s overwhelming political and military advantages, the Palestinians will never win their freedom and basic human rights without international intervention.
Yet, sadly, the Australian Government has failed to recognize the state of Palestine although it recognised the state of Israel in 1949. How Australia believes in two state solution by recognizing the occupiers and neglecting the oppressed?
If Australia can recognize Israel, why is it so hard to recognize Palestine?
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Emeritus Professor Dr Shahjahan Khan is currently the Vice Chancellor of Asian University of Bangladesh, Dhaka, and an Elected Expatriate Fellow of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences. He served as the Founding President of Islamic Society of Toowoomba, Queensland. He is a former Vice President of Islamic Council of Queensland, Director of MCCA and Queensland Cultural Diversity Ambassador. He is the Founding Chief Editor of Journal of Applied Probability and Statistics (JAPS), and former President of Islamic Countries Society of Statistical Sciences (ISOSS).
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Utter nonsense
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