Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week marks the Nakba, the catastrophe of 1948 when more than 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly removed from their land. As an Aboriginal woman, I do not see this as a distant history; it's a pattern that is still unfolding—dispossession, fragmentation of land, the destruction of villages, homes and livelihoods, and settlements built atop the rubble, the steady expansion of control disguised as law, planning and security. Right now, that pattern is unfolding in real time in the West Bank and through the devastation of Gaza, where entire communities have been destroyed and Palestinians are being pushed from their land under the shadow of war, siege and occupation. The proposed expansion of settlements in the E1 corridor would effectively divide the West Bank in two, severing East Jerusalem from the rest of a future Palestinian state. This is what annexation looks like—not always through one dramatic declaration but piece by piece, road by road, settlement by settlement more land taken and more Palestinian communities surrounded and cut off.

First Nations people in this country know this story. We know what it means when sovereignty is denied and dispossession is made permanent through systems and institutions. When we acknowledge the Nakba, we must also confront this country's role in what is happening now. Public money from here is invested in companies linked to weapons manufacturing, military infrastructure and settlement expansion connected to the occupation. Recognition means nothing if we finance dispossession and annexation. Divest now!