When the news story of the Abbott government’s pro-Israel switch in the UN appeared in the Fairfax media yesterday, it was already a fortnight behind the times.
The voting in the UN on the traditional November “Question of Palestine” resolutions had occurred a fortnight earlier. This voting is a yearly event that re-affirms the historic responsibility of the UN for Palestine. In February 1947, Britain relinquished its mandate power in Palestine given to it after World War I and handed the “problem of Palestine” (fighting between the Jewish Agency and Palestinians) to the UN.
Recently, Australia voted in favour of four of eight of these resolutions, as it has always done; assisting Palestinian refugees, supporting its agency UNWRA in it work in Palestine, supporting foreign aid to Palestine and encouraging the Middle East peace process.
But in the other four resolutions Australia reversed its prior stance.
It voted against (along with seven others) a resolution expressing grave concern at illegal Israeli practices and measures in occupied Palestine.
It abstained on a resolution (along with four others) asserting that the Geneva Conventions applied to Israel’s behaviour in the territory it has occupied since 1967.
It abstained on a resolution (along with seven others) demanding the immediate cessation of all Israeli settlement activities in occupied Palestine.
Finally, it voted against a resolution demanding that Israel cease the construction of the wall — condemned by the International Court of Justice — between the two countries and make reparation for the damage to the human rights of Palestinians. Seven others abstained on that, too.
During the period of the Rudd-Gillard governments, Labor voted in favour of the two key resolutions addressing recent concerns: Israeli settlement activity and the violation this entails to the Geneva Conventions signed after World War II. Labor voted in favour of the resolutions condemning the settlements as “an obstacle to peace” and the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to the Israeli actions.
By abstaining on these two resolutions, Australia put itself in a small minority: the vote condemning settlements was favoured by 158 to 6 against, the support for the Geneva Conventions was 160 to 8.
Abbott also ditched the Howard government’s record between 1996 and 2002 condemning settlements and supporting the Geneva Conventions.
Australians are yet to learn why and how it is in Australia’s interests to vote the way it has. The government has kept very quiet on this issue. There have been no press releases from Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop’s office, nor Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s, nor from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Abbott had the opportunity to inform Australians of his decision to switch sides on the Israel/Palestine dispute at his press conference at Parliament House on November 12, but failed to mention it. Neither he nor Bishop consulted the Labor opposition, nor did Abbott bring it up in the myriad of media appearances on radio and television since.
Bishop yesterday justified her decision with one line: this action “reflected the government’s concern that Middle East resolutions should be balanced”.
She is yet to explain how ditching the applicability of the Geneva Conventions — a key part of the architecture of internal law and practice — achieves balance in regional or global relations.
Labor, of course, has a long history with the role of the UN in Palestine. It was Chifley’s external affairs minister H.V. Evatt who headed the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) in 1947 which came up with the Partition Plan in November 1947. In May, 1948, after a civil war and 750,000 Palestinians becoming refugees, the two-state solution was born.
Politicians — and the people of Palestine — are still living with the consequences.
* Peter Manning is a former executive producer of ABC’s Four Corners, and former head of News and Current Affairs at the ABC and the Seven Network
Government secrecy and lack of accountability to voters.
Of course the voters don’t know because the MSM don’t tell them.
Can you imagine this fuss if this had been the previous government? But anything, including law breaking, is no cause for reporting this government!
Where is the Labor Party on this question? Why didn’t Tanya Plibersek ask a question of ‘Mutton dressed up as Lamb’, in the parliament?
Not good enough, Tanya!
Having been an advocate for Plibersek I became sick to the stomach when I realised how she sold out the Palestinians by back-tracking on her critical but highly pertinent remarks of a decade ago about Israel. She has sold-out from day one and is now captured by the Jewish lobby.
As for the Government, can there be any more damning evidence of their corruption and cowardice – tawdry apologists for international Zionist crimes, including crimes against children. Utter pigs.
And not only that, they even lack the wit to do this at a time when they are not embroiled in a serious diplomatic imbroglio with the world’s largest Muslim nation! Although it is sure to be just another sign of their monumental incompetence, there are bound to be plenty of Indonesians who see this as a deliberate provocation.
One of the hallmarks of the far-right wing governments that have come into power in the western world over the past couple of decades has been an incredibly strong pro-isreal stance in the face of all legal and ethical concerns, so this news comes as no real surprise.
Who abstained? I will search it, thanks.