UN vote: Newspaper raises irrelevant questions about an ICJ decision
Sep 19, 2024
The exclusive ‘US urges Australia over UN’s Israel vote’, published in Tuesday’s The Australian by Ben Packham, demands a response.
The article addresses a draft UN resolution advanced by the Palestinian Authority to be voted on in the General Assembly on Thursday (AEST). In essence the resolution demands immediate Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank in compliance with the 19 July ruling by the International Court of Justice. The US is reported to be urging its allies to reject the draft resolution or abstain from voting on it.
Whilst the article reported that the Albanese Government declined to comment on Australia’s intentions, it was more than prepared to publish the views of Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham. He called upon the government to oppose the draft resolution “without hesitation or ambiguity”. Such reasons as Birmingham gave do him and his shadow government no credit. Let us consider them.
First, it is said to be an extreme and one-sided resolution. But what could be extreme and one-sided about a resolution which simply seeks to implement the decision of the ICJ? That decision is the advisory opinion which the UN General Assembly sought back in 2022 on the issue of the legal consequences of the subject occupation. The opinion was sought with the intention that it would inform the General Assembly as to what appropriate action might need to be taken. The Palestinian authority’s draft resolution simply does just that! How then can it be extreme? How then can it be one-sided? And those questions carry even greater force when it is recalled that the Security Council, by Resolution 2334, dated 23 December 2016, called for pretty well exactly what the ICJ’s opinion, and the Palestinian Authority’s resolution, now calls for: refer Blood: The bitter harvest of breaching Resolution 2334, 29 November 2023.
Next, Birmingham asserts that the resolution is “shamefully silent about Hamas…7 October…and hostages”. Sorry, Simon, those issues have nothing to do with illegal occupation. They can certainly be addressed, as the ICC is attempting to do with the sole Hamas leader still alive, and said to be responsible for the 7 October military operation. As for hostages, there is every reason to believe that were Israel to comply with an adopted UN resolution as now sought, they would be released.
Then Birmingham pouts that the resolution “provides no recognition of Israel’s right to exist”. Why does he seek to raise such an irrelevant consideration? Neither the ICJ, nor the draft resolution, seeks to question Israel’s right to exist in any way. Birmingham clearly takes the Australian public as idiots.
He then asserts that the resolution involves actions “contrary to Australia’s long standing positions” and “would undermine Israel’s right to self-defence” and “would be counterproductive to peace efforts”. Once more he seeks to mislead. Australia’s longstanding position has been to seek a two-state solution. The resolution would establish just that. How would that undermine Israel’s right to self-defence? It would create a situation where the need to defend Israel would dissipate. In any event, nor does the resolution prohibit the UN taking steps to ensure peaceful implementation of the resolution.
That then deals with Birmingham’s follies. The article concludes with a contribution from AIJAC’s executive director Colin Rubenstein who throws in that the resolution would “reward Hamas’ terrorism”. Again, the resolution seeks to give effect to the ICJ advisory opinion. It does not reward Palestinian resistance, anyone, or anything: it seeks only to apply international law.
Rubenstein concludes with the ridiculous assertion that the resolution would repudiate Australia’s 30-year policy of “supporting a two-state negotiated peace settlement between the two parties”. Any thinking person would have to ask why such a policy has produced no result in 30 years. And how can there be a negotiated peace settlement when one of the parties, Israel, has flatly rejected a Palestinian state? What is there then to negotiate?
It must be noted that no-one — Penny Wong, Birmingham, Rubenstein, nor The Australian — questions that the resolution seeks to give effect to the ICJ ruling, or that that ruling is in any way questionable.
Finally, it must be said to the editor of The Australian: why are you publishing such tripe?
Paul Heywood-Smith is an Adelaide SC of some 20 years. He was the initial chairperson of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association, an incorporated association registered in South Australia in 2004. He is the author of The Case for Palestine, The Perspective of an Australian Observer published by Wakefield Press in 2014.
