Government support for Palestinian state unlikely
WHILE the major parties remain divided over the issue, the Gillard Government has given a strong indication it will vote against Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly.
Members of both the Labor and Liberal parties have called for Australia to support a new Palestinian state, but Prime Minister Julia Gillard looks unlikely to instruct Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd to do so.
“Direct negotiations are the only true path to peace,” a spokesperson for Gillard said. “We believe that the only durable basis for a peace in the Middle East is through direct negotiations between the two parties. Only direct negotiations can deal with complex final status issues, such as borders, security and Jerusalem. A UN resolution will not change this reality.”
According to Gillard’s office, the Prime Minister will make a final decision on the way Australia will vote once it has seen the draft resolution, expected to be released on Friday.
This week though, MPs from both sides of the House of Representatives called on Australia to help make a Palestinian state a reality.
Liberal MP Sussan Ley said on Monday she supported the Palestinian bid for statehood, especially after a 10-day visit this year to the “occupied West Bank” – a visit that included time spent in Jerusalem.
“The presentation of the Palestinian case to the UN is their Arab Spring,” she said. “It comes with no threat of violence.”
During her visit she noticed the stark contrasts between Israeli areas and Palestinian areas. “One tries to make sense of foreign aid providing a couple of beehives for a cottage industry in honey when a few kilometres away hydrologists from across the earth travel to witness Israel’s capital-intensive achievements in hydroponics.”
Labor MP Melissa Parke, who lived in Gaza for two years, also called on the Australian Government to support the Palestinians’ UN quest for statehood.
In a speech to Parliament earlier this year, Parke said: “I am not pro-Israel or pro-Palestine but pro-reconciliation, pro-peace and pro-justice.”
She noted that the unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah was a “positive step” toward peace and noted there “is no parity of power” between Israel, which she called “one of the largest military powers in the world and the only nuclear power in the Middle East” and the Palestinians, whose lives and economy is controlled by checkpoints, “the wall, house demolitions” and an “opaque administrative system of permits” that restricts access to health and education services.
Ley and Parke’s voices are in the minority though, with many others on both the Government and Opposition sides having spoken in favour of a “no” vote on the question of Palestinian statehood.
The Greens have previously called on the Government to uphold its commitment to a two-state solution and vote “yes”.
REPORT by Naomi Levin
PHOTO of Julia Gillard from AJN file
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