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.
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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 Such comments are variously true, tepid and outdated.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.
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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.
