Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In January I visited Palestine and Israel and 10 June this year marked the day when, 40 years ago, Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights began. I spent most of my time in the West Bank and Galilee in the north of Israel. It was inspirational to meet Palestinians and Israelis who were working so hard to achieve peace and justice in their country in really difficult circumstances.

I visited one of the three refugee camps in Bethlehem. There are 4,500 people living in the refugee camp and more than 2,000 of them are children. I met the father of a two-year-old girl who was not able to talk but she could mimic the sounds of a machine-gun. Peace and justice must be achieved in Israel and Palestine, and even then it may take generations for the everyday experiences of war to no longer fill the lives of Palestinians and Israelis. The father of the two-year-old that I met lives in the refugee camp. He runs a youth centre there that Australians have contributed to and bought computers for, computers that were being used by women when I went in to visit the centre that day. The youth centre takes children from the refugee camp on excursions and gives them an opportunity to have positive interactions with Israelis. They have visited the 27 different villages around the country from which their families come. They have had interactions with Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel who are police officers and they have come back to the refugee camp saying, ‘We could live together, we could share this land.’ That has been a really positive experience for them. Some of them have been confused by it because the only Israelis they have interacted with prior to that experience have been the Israeli soldiers who have been shooting into the refugee camp where they live.

Some children took me to visit the top levels of a building in the refugee camp. Nobody lives up there because families are too scared to be there because they are the first areas that get shot at when there are Israeli troops firing into the refugee camp. The United Nations school in the refugee camp cemented its windows because its staff got sick of bullets entering the classrooms when they were trying to continue with classes.

I visited another school in Israel. It is in a village of Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens. They set up the school in 1979 and developed their own curriculum because they wanted to bring about a more just and egalitarian relationship between Arabs and Jews and did not find that either of the curriculums taught in their two countries was able to achieve that. The Palestinian mayor of the village told me how he explained to his son a news item they had seen on the television news about the violent actions of settlers in Hebron. He told me how it took a long time to explain to his son what was going on on the television because his son was really confused. He said: ‘I have lots of Jewish friends at my school. Why am I seeing these people acting in this way?’ It took the father a long time to explain. He was really careful in all of his explanations to put forward a just and accurate representation of the relationship between Arabs and Jews in a way that did not seek to form hatred in the mind of his son.

When I visited the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, I met an Arab member of parliament. He talked with me about conversations he had had with a visiting delegation from South Africa that had been visiting the Knesset. He told me how they had been offended by suggestions that the occupation of Palestine was similar to the apartheid era in South Africa. But the reason they were offended was, as they said, that apartheid was never that bad. That was a story I heard from other Palestinians as well in their descriptions and comparisons. It is one that Jimmy Carter, the former US President, has made also.

On the weekend I spoke at a demonstration in Sydney marking 40 years since the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began. It was similar to many other rallies that were held around the world to mark 40 years of occupation, and all of them called for an end to the occupation. In fact, it was also similar to a demonstration that I attended on my first day in Israel which was organised by the Women in Black. It called for an end to the occupation. These Israeli women have stood on a street corner in Jerusalem every Friday for 19 years. The day I was there with them on my first day in Israel was one week after the anniversary of 19 years of standing there calling for an end to the occupation. The Palestinians in front of us on the street corner who had been brought into Israel to do the paving were so thrilled and pleased. They had never seen Israelis standing up for their rights in the way that these women do every Friday in Jerusalem. It was fantastic to have the opportunity to spend that occasion with them.

The situation in Israel and Palestine is a failing of the international community to enforce all of the United Nations Security Council resolutions which are relevant to this area. There have been 131 of them since 1967—the last 40 years. The Australian Greens call on the Australian government to take a lead in diplomatic efforts to find a lasting peace and justice for Palestinians and Israelis.

Last year Australia’s defence exports to Israel amounted to over $15 million. The last thing that needs to be injected into the situation in the Middle East is more arming of the occupiers. Instead of that, the Greens are calling on the government to work to achieve peace and justice for all the people involved. This is what other Australians are doing. I visited an Australian permanent resident on land that his grandfather had lived on since 1916. It was on the top of a hill in the West Bank near Bethlehem. It was the only hill you could see that did not have an Israeli settlement on top of it. He told me about the three days when Israeli settlers had brought bulldozers onto his land. It was during a curfew, so he was too scared to go outside to try to stop them in case he was shot. But three days later the court ordered that they stop the destruction they were causing on his property. He told me that his message for the Australian people was that the only way towards peace is to build bridges. He runs programs over summer on his land for children from refugee camps in Bethlehem. They have painted murals and they have learnt photography skills on his land as part of a plan to allow them to experience life outside of the refugee camps in Bethlehem. He said that the idea of the programs that he runs is to offer activities for young people in order for them to be positive and to think about a better way for a better future. He asked me what the Australian government could do to help.

I met others who wanted help from the Australian government as well. I met with the Palestinian IT Association, which is based in Ramallah. They told me about the 1,500 Palestinians who are employed in over 120 IT companies. They told me of statistics about the ownership of computers and the internet access that exists in Palestine, which I was surprised to hear were so high. They want to build a relationship with Australia through AusAID, the Australian Venture Capital Association and the Australian Information Industry Association. They want to develop relationships with Australian businesses around software development, and I have written to industry groups to ask for their assistance in developing these relationships, which is work that I think the Australian government should also be doing.

I visited a refugee camp in Tulkarm in the West Bank. I saw a pile of rubble that used to be the Palestinian Authority service centre, which provided health and education services before it was destroyed by a missile from a plane. That building is no longer there, obviously, and the limited services that the centre was able to provide are now difficult to provide when countries such as Australia refuse to allow aid to get to the people who need it, such as those in refugee camps where there are horrific health and education problems. There is a lot that the Australian government could and should be doing to improve justice and achieve peace in Israel and Palestine. That would have a tremendous impact on the whole peace and security of the Middle East region and on all of our international community. The Greens are calling on the government to make that commitment. It has been 40 years since the military occupation of the West Bank in Gaza began and the Australian government should be contributing to achieving peace and justice— (Time expired)