The following letter was sent to the Foreign Minister, Senator Penny Wong.
The concerns of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW) for the people of Palestine, particularly those in Gaza, continue to escalate as Israeli crimes against these people are conducted with shocking inhumanity and utter impunity. MAPW wishes to raise with you courses of action for the Australian Government to help fulfil its legal obligations in response to these crimes.
On June 10, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel issued its latest report. It states that Israeli forces have committed war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination. Gaza’s education system has been obliterated along with over half of all religious and cultural sites in the Gaza Strip, as part of a “widespread and relentless assault against the Palestinian people”.
Chair of the Commission, Navi Pillay, said “We are seeing more and more indications that Israel is carrying out a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza”.
In response to grave human rights abuses by Russian forces in Ukraine (none of which have reached the level of attempts to exterminate a whole people), you have taken the following actions:
- Called for Russian diplomats to be expelled because of “sickening abuses” in Ukraine;
- Welcomed investigations at the UN Human Rights Council into violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and violations of the right to life in Ukraine;
- Applied and repeatedly strengthened sanctions against Russian entities and individuals, most recently announcing a total of 1400 such sanctions;
- Called the war illegal and immoral;
- Welcomed calls for accountability for Russian war crimes, and joined a joint call for such accountability;
- Condemned Russia’s grave human rights violations and egregious war crimes, in particular its deliberate shelling of civilians and forced deportations.
Please outline the actions Australia will now take in response to Israel’s attempted extermination of the Palestinian people, in line with those that were rapidly implemented in response to Russia’s crimes against Ukrainians.
MAPW urges you in particular to take the actions set out by The Hague Group, a coalition of nations formed in January this year to promote and strengthen legal and diplomatic measures for the protection of the Palestinian people. The Group are working for:
The implementation of arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against Israeli officials;- The prevention of transfer of all military devices that sustain Israel’s attacks on Palestinians, attacks that are widely regarded as genocidal;
- The prevention of the docking of ships carrying military cargo and fuel for Israel in member ports.
These actions are not politically partisan. They are obligatory – for example, under the Arms Trade Treaty, the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention – in response to Israel’s crimes. Failure to fulil our legal obligations may render Australia complicit in the most grievous crimes.
These matters take on additional urgency and importance in the context of Israel’s illegal, destabilsing and extraordinarily dangerous attacks on Iran on 13 June, for which we await condemnation from you.