[ad_1] The Australian government wants to see steps taken towards an Israeli ceasefire, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has declared. In what ma
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The Australian government wants to see steps taken towards an Israeli ceasefire, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has declared.
In what marks a major shift in language, Senator Wong called on Israel to stop the “attacking of hospitals” and voiced her concern about the neglect the Jewish state appeared to be showing towards international humanitarian law.
“What I would say is we all want to take the next steps towards a ceasefire, but it cannot be one-sided. Hamas still holds hostages. Hamas is still attacking Israel,” she told ABC’s Insiders.
More than 11,000 people in the Gaza Strip have been killed since October 7, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel, killing thousands and taking hundreds of people hostage.
Senator Wong said while Hamas was a terrorist organisation with no respect for international law, Israel, as a democracy, needed to uphold certain standards.
“How Israel defends itself matters, and when we affirm Israel’s right to defend itself, what we are also saying is Israel must comply and observe international humanitarian law,” she said.
“We know Hamas is a terrorist organisation. It has demonstrated it has no respect for international law, but Australia is a democracy and so too is Israel, and the standards that we seek and accept are higher.”
In recent weeks, the government has been calling for Israel to show restraint in its response to the Hamas attacks and allow for humanitarian pauses, but Senator Wong’s comments on Sunday signify those calls have strengthened.
Senator Wong’s comments came as Doctors Without Borders warned that patients and medical staff in Gaza are “trapped in hospitals under fire”, and urgently called on the Israeli government to cease the “unrelenting assault on Gaza’s health system”.
Senator Wong said a ceasefire could not be one-sided, but that Israel should do “everything it can to observe international humanitarian law”.
“We have seen a harrowing number of civilians, including children, killed. This has to end, and we are particularly concerned with what is happening with medical facilities,” she said.
“We do call on Israel to cease the attacking of hospitals.”
She said Australia understood Israel’s argument that Hamas had burrowed itself into civilian infrastructure, but the international community could no longer stand idly by and was now saying to Israel: “These are facilities protected under international law and we want you to do so.”
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