Overkill in Gaza: Penny Wong was right to call out Israel

This week’s joint statement signed by Penny Wong and more than two dozen other foreign affairs ministers calling for an end to the war in Gaza was notable for its directness. It reflects the growing frustration of the Australian and other governments with how Israel is prosecuting the war.

The disconnect between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s irreconcilable twin aims of destroying Hamas, while at the same time rescuing the hostages, is becoming increasingly apparent with the death of every civilian and the lack of hostages being returned.

Palestinians, including children, line up this week in Gaza City to receive food.Credit: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images

Revenge for the 1200 people Hamas slaughtered in October 2023 should by now have been achieved, and Hamas’ military capabilities have been dealt a grievous blow. There is no argument that Hamas had to pay a heavy price for its terrorist attack, and the brutal reality is that the civilians among whom they hide would suffer as a result.

But there are limits to such suffering, and the principles of military necessity and proportionality are supposed to guide and constrain the use of military force. For some time now, there has been a growing international consensus that Israel is exacting far too heavy a toll on all Gazans for the sins of Hamas. And it is also increasingly apparent that the Israeli government lacks any coherent plan for post-conflict Gaza.

Canberra knows that on its own it has little clout with Israel, so it has used a multinational approach to call for an end to the fighting. It was also notable that the letter co-signed by Wong focused first on Israel’s aid delivery model, a privatised version designed to tie the location and provision of humanitarian aid to military goals and to sideline professional international humanitarian organisations.

Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, aged one and a half, facing life-threatening malnutrition at a tent city in Gaza City on Monday this week.Credit: Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini/Anadolu via Getty Images

The Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was controversial from the start – its original executive director, US military veteran Jake Wood, resigned before the first meal was delivered, citing his personal concerns that “it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence”.

Boston Consulting Group issued a public apology once it was revealed that two of its partners were involved in the scoping and planning for what was to become the GHF. The opaque funding sources for the foundation are concerning, as is the fact that the executive chairman is an evangelical preacher with close personal ties to US President Donald Trump.

The security, provided by masked US private security contractors at the distribution points and the Israeli military in the area surrounding those sites, has been equally controversial. Reports of hundreds of aid-seekers being killed during the operation of the centres is alarming. Even if only partially true, nobody should die trying to feed their families.

In the current environment, neither open letters nor votes in the UN will have any direct impact. Israel is in no mood to listen to anyone other than the US, and even then, only occasionally. Understanding this, the federal government has also sanctioned individuals in the Israeli settler movement and Israel’s far-right security and finance ministers. Once again, Australia did this in concert with other countries, bringing criticism from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

It should also be remembered that the Australian government lists Hamas in its entirety as a terrorist organisation, as well as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another armed Palestinian group in Gaza. This is as it should be – Australia is perfectly capable of proscribing Palestinian organisations as terrorist groups, while also imposing sanctions on Israeli politicians whose actions betray liberal democratic values, and settlers who perpetrate violence against Palestinians. In an issue as complex as the Israel-Palestine question, it should come as no surprise that the Australian and other like-minded governments should seek to hold both sides to account.

There is, of course, a counter-argument that if international demonstrations had been held to demand Hamas release the hostages with the same intensity as those critical of Israeli military action, then they could have been returned much earlier. Former US president Joe Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said in a recent interview with Christiane Amanpour that their administration’s lack of public criticism of Netanyahu was rooted in a belief that a united front between Tel Aviv and Washington was the best way to force Hamas to release hostages. He also said that, if protesters around the world had “spent maybe just 10 per cent of their time … demanding Hamas put down its arms, give up the hostages, maybe if the world had done that, we’d be in a different place”. We will never know if this could have been the case.

The federal opposition’s response to the government’s letter critical of Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza was to reiterate that Israel had a right to defend itself and that Hamas needed to release the hostages. Such comments are variously true, tepid and outdated.

The reality is that Hamas has only released hostages as part of a negotiated outcome, and after nearly two years holding them captive, simply destroying more of Gaza is not going to make them any more likely to be released.

The government was right to join the call for the war in Gaza to stop. Even Blinken conceded that Israel’s military objectives in Gaza had been achieved many, many months ago. What is occurring now is simply overkill.

Dr Rodger Shanahan is a Middle East analyst.