At the UN committee meeting on Thursday, Australia, as well as 158 other countries, including the UK and New Zealand, voted to recognize “permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources.”
The resolution was first drafted 20 years ago.
The US, Israel, Canada, and four other countries voted against it, and 11 abstained. The resolution will now proceed to the UN General Assembly.
Penny Wong, the spokeswoman for Australia’s foreign minister, said the vote reflected concern for Israel’s actions, including “ongoing settlement activity, land dispossession, demolitions and settler violence against Palestinians.”
Australia also voted in favor of a separate resolution draft, which states that Israel must take responsibility and compensate Lebanon for its role in a 2006 oil spill.
160 other countries voted in favor of the second draft.
Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said the voting reflected the “widening gulf” between the US and Australian positions on Israel and Palestine.
“This shift in voting won’t change much in Israel where the nation is concerned with Hamas and Hezbollah and hostages rather than the judgments passed by our government,” he added. “But it will be noticed in Washington and certainly by Australians with a connection to the conflict, which may well be the point.”
Jewish, Zionist groups alarmed by Australia’s shift
The Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) said it was alarmed by the shift in the country’s long-standing positions.
“This is nothing less than an abandonment of Australia’s ally, the only democracy in the Middle East, at the very time it is fighting an existential, multi-front war against Iran and its proxies.”
The ZFA added that the resolution opposes the construction of the security fence separating Gaza from Israel, which has saved thousands of lives.
“Without the fence that was opposed by this resolution, the death toll in Israel could have reached unimaginable levels.”
Political representative of the US mission to the UN, Nicholas Koval, said the US is “disappointed that this body has again taken up this unbalanced resolution that is unfairly critical of Israel, demonstrating a clear and persistent institutional bias directed against one member state.”
The Australian Jewish Association called it a “betrayal” and said the Albanese government was the most “hostile to Jewish life and the Jewish State in Australia’s history.”
This article was originally published at www.jpost.com
