Australia abstains from controversial UN Israel vote

Australia’s Jewish community has slammed Australia’s decision to abstain from voting on a controversial UN Israel vote.

Australia has been labelled “morally cowardly” after abstaining from a United Nations vote to formally demand an end to the “Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories”.

The non-binding resolution passed with 124 votes in favour, 14 against, and 43 notable abstentions including Australia.

The United States voted against the resolution as did Hungary, the Czech Republic and several smaller island nations.

Ambassador to the UN James Larsen said Australia was resolute in advancing peace, “that is why we abstained with great disappointment”.

How Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim said the position Australia took was “morally cowardly”.

“Since the end of the 1967 Middle East war, the UN’s position on resolving the conflict has been based on the principle of ‘land for peace’. In essence, Israel would give up territories it captured in the course of defending itself in that war in exchange for legally binding peace treaties that would guarantee that Israel will never again be attacked from those territories. Australia has supported this principle for decades. Now, for the first time, the UN has shifted to a position of ‘land for no peace’. It demands that Israel vacate territory without getting peace in return. This comes at the very moment that Israel is once again under a ferocious multi-front attack,” he said.

People sift through debris after a school used as shelter by displaced Palestinians was hit by an Israeli strike in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City. Picture: AFP

Mr Wertheim continued: “The resolution is an invitation to endless war and bloodshed, an encouragement to Iran and its proxies to step up their aggression and pursue their openly-declared genocidal aims against Israel. It betrays every basic principle on which the UN was founded. The resolution will stand as a monument to the moral abyss into which the UN has sunk. Australia should have had no part of it. It should have voted no instead of taking the morally cowardly way out and abstaining.”

Israel claimed the resolution, based on a “distorted” claim from the International Court of Justice that the 1967 occupation was unlawful, would fuel further violence in the Middle East.

Mr Larsen said Australia wanted to vote for a resolution that offered the Palestinian people a path to self-determination, as well as a path to a two-state solution, in response to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Israeli soldiers carry the coffin of fellow soldier Daniel Mimon Toaff, 23, during a funeral in Jerusalem, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. Picture: AFP

The ICJ opinion said Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories was “unlawful”.

“We are concerned that by making demands of the entire UN membership that go beyond the scope of the Advisory Opinion, the resolution distracts from what the world needs Israel to do,” Mr Larsen wrote.

The resolution - the first introduced by the Palestinian delegation itself under new rights gained this year - demands that Israel” brings to an end without delay its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” It calls for a withdrawal “no later than 12 months” from the resolution’s adoption.

The resolution also “demands” a halt to new settlements, the return of seized land and property, and the possibility of return for displaced Palestinians.

It also calls on states “to take steps toward ceasing” arms provisions to Israel when there are “reasonable grounds to suspect that they may be used in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.

- with AFP

Originally published as Australia abstains from controversial UN Israel vote