Gaza
Statement
Hon Jess Beckerling (6:15 pm): I want to thank and commend Hon Dr Katrina Stratton for that really important contribution.
I rise this evening to make a statement about the situation in Gaza and what we can be doing and what we need the federal government to be doing in the lead-up to the march for Palestine this Sunday. I also want to thank Dr Mo, who came in to speak to us today, and to all the members from across the chamber who came to hear from him. We are at a really terrible junction in the genocide in Gaza, where the Israeli Parliamentary Cabinet has recently approved plans to take control of Gaza City, and the United Nations has said that this risks igniting another horrific chapter in the genocide. People within Gaza are pleading with us to multiply our efforts urgently to prevent this from occurring. They are saying that taking control of Gaza City would be a catastrophic and major step in the eradication of the Gazan population. The atrocities that we have seen over the past 22 months are only going to get worse if the international community does not intervene meaningfully and urgently.
I am sure that this is the case for many members in this chamber; knowing that a million children are being intentionally starved by a regime, which is being led by an alleged war criminal accused of using starvation as a method of warfare and crimes against humanity, weighs heavily on me every day. Like so many others, I am making donations, I am attending and helping to organise protests, and I am keeping informed, but there is so much more that must be done and so much that our federal government particularly can do and must be doing. We need the federal government to end the two-way arms trade with Israel, particularly to stop selling F-35 parts. It has been shameful for government representatives to say that they are only selling nonlethal parts. There are no nonlethal parts of fighter jets. We need to impose sanctions. We need to expel the Israeli ambassador, and rather than just recognising conditional Palestinian statehood, we need to demand the free flow of aid, and we need to help rebuild the Palestinian state. I say to all members: I strongly encourage you to attend the march for Palestine this Sunday at midday at Forrest Place. We, all of us in state Parliament, have an important role to play, and the time is now.
Hon Sophie McNeill (6:18 pm): I want to thank Hon Dr Katrina Stratton for that really powerful contribution. The WA Greens proudly support safe zones around abortion clinics doing such an essential service. Thank you for sharing that very personal story.
I rise to speak this evening about an incredible visitor that we had at state Parliament today and what we all must do to end Israel's horrific genocide in Gaza. It was such an honour to host Perth doctor, Dr Mohammed Mustafa today, as my honourable colleague Hon Jess Beckerling has just mentioned. Dr Mo, as he is known, is an amazing person. I thank all the members of this chamber who came along to that briefing. It was wonderful to have cross-party support on that; it is really appreciated. Dr Mo is an incredible British–Australian doctor who spent a significant amount of time on the ground working in Gaza over the past year. This junior doctor from Perth has made headlines around the world as he captured the horror of what he witnessed on the ground there. A junior doctor from Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital is now working at Rockingham General Hospital. He has been on CNN, and on the BBC. He has been there with Piers Morgan, showing the world the horrors that he witnessed in Gaza, with footage that he took personally in Gaza's emergency rooms, and of the massacres of civilians by Israeli forces.
That was such a critically important job for Dr Mo to do as Israeli forces have deliberately targeted and assassinated so many Palestinian reporters, as I have spoken about in this place before. I know how moved all the members who attended Dr Mo's briefing were today. His stories were of children shot in the head and babies whom he could not save dying in his arms; the deliberate targeting of civilians; and his incredible frustration of not being able to help and not having the drugs or the equipment to help patients in incredible pain—patients he had in front of him with 80% burns to their bodies and no anaesthesia—all because of Israel's blockade on medical supplies and its deliberate targeting of civilians. Dr Mo's evidence of the deliberate starvation of Gaza's children by Israel, which has now gone on for months, was also deeply disturbing for those of us briefed today.
But the thing is we can have an impact. We parliamentarians must be leading voices to end Israel's genocide in Gaza and call for urgent action. As leaders in our community, we must be doing all we can to speak out. We are seeing a shift. At the march over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, we saw seven New South Wales Labor MPs and three federal Labor MPs take part. Yes, although it is infuriating that it has taken this long and it is now nearly two years of this genocide and there are 60,000 dead, I welcome those Labor MPs who joined in and are now on the right side of history. WA Labor, now is your moment. Now is your chance, because this Sunday we are having the biggest march for Palestine that Western Australia has seen. It is at 12 o'clock in Forrest Place before we march to Hyde Park. We want WA Labor there. If New South Wales Labor can do it, so can Western Australian Labor. We want Labor members to bring their federal colleagues Anne Aly and Josh Wilson. Will they show up and join us? We need them to join this movement to end the genocide, and we need leaders in all our Parliaments across Australia to make it clear that they want the federal government to take urgent action against Israel. We need sanctions, and we need them now. We need to end the two-way arms trade with Israel now.
The Israel Defense Forces are just a few kilometres away from the heart of Gaza city. We cannot let this ethnic cleansing of the north of Gaza occur. We have to stop this new offensive. It will stop only if governments provide deterrents to Israel. The Israeli soldiers are just three kilometres from the door of where my dear friend in Gaza lives. He and his family are so tired, shattered and exhausted that they cannot move. They cannot flee again, and they have nowhere to go. My friend Raed tells me, "We will just die here, Sophie." But not on our watch. Enough! We have to stop this genocide, and it has to end now. Please join us on Sunday. The forecast is wet, but come rain or shine, we need Perth to show up for Gaza.
Just before I conclude, I want to give a special shout-out to the Students for Palestine, whose advocacy and campaigning has been critical to our movement to try to end Israel's genocide in Gaza. Next week on campuses across Australia, Students for Palestine and the National Union of Students will be organising mass meetings of students to vote on the following motions:
1. Students censure the Australian government for its complicity in the genocide in Gaza. We demand an end to all weapons sales to Israel by Australia and Australian companies, and call for sanctions on Israel.
2. Students call on all Australian universities to end their complicity with Israel's genocide by ceasing all partnerships with weapons companies.
I encourage all Western Australian university students to register to vote on their campus next week and please go to the Students for Palestine account on Instagram for details on how to do this.
Hon Tim Clifford (6:23 pm): I also rise to speak on the plight of the people of Gaza. The thing that stands out to me about the crisis in the Middle East is the parallel with another great historical struggle for social justice, which is the fight against apartheid in South Africa. In some ways, the current situation in Gaza is worse. The apartheid government never packed people into a 365-square kilometre strip of land before bombing that land into dust. The historical connection between apartheid South Africa and the State of Israel is well documented. They shared intelligence and technology for decades, including at one stage nuclear technology. But an obvious difference between the two cases is the lack of sanctions and boycotts from the western world this time around. We have made it clear that this needs to change. The moral challenge overrides the petty geopolitical concerns that have perverted foreign policy on this issue for far too long. It is not like politicians have been blind to the injustice up to this point—silent perhaps, but not blind. The former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans wrote in 2023:
In the Six-Day War of 1967, initiated by Israel as a "pre-emptive strike" against its Arab neighbours, East Jerusalem was illegally annexed. The remaining 22% of the former Palestine was militarily occupied, and the foundations were laid for what it is hard now to describe as anything other than an apartheid state …
That is certainly so in the occupied West Bank and only marginally less so now in Israel itself. To quote Evans again:
I have … believed … that as a simple matter of natural justice and natural human decency that the Palestinians' desire for independent statehood must be recognised.
Western governments have finally started inching in that direction, but we need words to be backed up by action. We cannot pretend that Western Australia is isolated from the rest of the world. This really matters to everyone. I call on everyone, if they can, to attend this Sunday 24 August at 12 midday at Forrest Place to march. It is imperative that we stand up now to this genocide, because we must make sure that the people of Gaza are heard.
Hon Dr Brad Pettitt (6:16 pm): I also had the honour of meeting Dr Mohammed Mustafa at Parliament today. What an inspiration Dr Mo is. Such courage, conviction and humanity. I think anyone who was there would have had tears in their eyes today as he spoke, hearing of the families and children reaching out for help. The unnecessary suffering is nothing less than heartbreaking. Although we might want to turn away from this horror unfolding before us today, we must not. How we respond reflects upon us all and the kind of world I live in. There is no them; there is only us. The Gaza strip, interestingly, has almost the same population as Perth, with around 2.2 million people. Imagine our city with 92% of all homes badly damaged or destroyed. That is what the United Nations estimates in Gaza. Imagine 19,000 children in our city being killed. Imagine 11,000 people who had been killed by bombings remaining under the rubble. Imagine 98% of our farmland decimated by bombs or occupied by the military. Imagine one in five children under five in our city tonight being acutely malnourished. Imagine 40% of pregnant and breastfeeding women in our city being severely malnourished. There is no them; there is only us. The World Health Organization has said that the famine remains entirely preventable. It states:
Deliberate blocking and delay of large-scale food, health, and humanitarian aid has cost many lives.
It is unspeakably tragic and entirely preventable. I hope that we can call on leaders all around the world, including the UN Secretary-General, for a permanent ceasefire, for unimpeded humanitarian access across Gaza, for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, and for an end to the unlawful occupation and the achievement of a viable two-state solution. This is why I, too, will be at the march for Palestine this Sunday at noon starting at Forrest Place. I hope to see members there.
House adjourned at 6:29:30 pm
Questions on notice answered today are available on the Parliament of Western Australia's website
