Australia Gov’t Not Listening to Muslim, Arab Concerns about War on Gaza
This is according to Ed Husic, Australia’s Minister for Industry and Science, who said he is speaking out despite his role as a cabinet minister to amplify their views.
Husic told Guardian Australia he had felt driven to make several public interventions against the scale of Israel’s war on Gaza, in part so that people believed “that their concerns have somewhere to go to be vented and aired”.
“I know and have for many years moved among people, particularly from an Islamic and [Arab] background [and] Palestinians … who feel like their voice isn’t heard,” Husic said.
“It’s important that people feel like they’re heard and that their viewpoints are being taken into account.”
Asked directly whether people from such backgrounds had felt their voices had not been heard by the government, Husic said: “It would be inconceivable for me to give you any other answer than yes, they have felt that.
“They felt that politics – modern Australian politics, if I can put it this way – hasn’t heard those different viewpoints. And it is important to address that.”
Husic said the Albanese government had “moved quite a bit”, including by voting at the UN general assembly in December for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
But Husic acknowledged that some people thought the government should have moved more quickly to that ceasefire call “and I understand why they might have those views”.
The comments – made in an interview with Guardian Australia’s Australian Politics podcast, to be released on Saturday – are his most expansive to date on why he has chosen to raise his own voice in alarm.
The minister for industry and science is bound by cabinet solidarity obligations to publicly uphold the Australian government’s collective position.
While he has tended to criticize Israel’s military operations rather than dissenting from explicit Australian government positions, Husic has sometimes used more forthright language than his cabinet colleagues.
That included when Husic said in October that Palestinians were “being collectively punished”, and in December when he said children were bearing the brunt of Israel’s “very disproportionate” response.
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In the new podcast, Husic went even further by saying he was worried some Palestinians could be permanently displaced from parts of Gaza.
“I’m very concerned about the fact that people who’ve been making their way back to see their homes [have been] completely destroyed, to see everything that sustains community life gone – schools, hospitals, infrastructure, roads, market places,” Husic said.
“I’m genuinely concerned, too, that we’re at a point where people would be understandably thinking: are we seeing permanent displacement before our eyes. And that’s a very serious issue under international humanitarian law.”
Husic said any move to re-establish Israeli settlements in Gaza – an idea backed by at least two Israeli ministers – “would be a terrible outcome and an unacceptable one at that”. The Israeli regime unilaterally withdrew its settlements from Gaza in 2005.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, parties to an armed conflict must not forcibly displace civilians “unless the security of the civilians involved or imperative military reasons so demand”.
It says international humanitarian law also gives internally displaced persons “a right to voluntary return in safety”.
Source: The Guardian
