Tuesday, 13 May 2025

Motions

Middle East conflict

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (13:47): I move, by leave:

That this house:

(1) notes that:

(a) last week on 7 May 2025 United Nations experts issued a statement saying that escalating atrocities in Gaza present an urgent moral crossroads and states must act now to end the violence or bear witness to the annihilation of the Palestinian population in Gaza, an outcome with irreversible consequences for our shared humanity;

(b) the statement continues that no-one is spared, not children, persons with disabilities, nursing mothers, journalists, health professionals, aid workers or hostages;

(c) since the breaking of the ceasefire, the UN experts say that while states debate terminology on whether it is or is not genocide, the State of Israel continues its relentless destruction of life in Gaza through attacks by land, air and sea, displacing and massacring the surviving population with impunity;

(d) the statement is clear in its call for action for countries such as Australia that are member states of the UN, stating, ‘The world is watching. Will member states live up to their obligations and intervene to stop the slaughter, hunger and disease and other war crimes and crimes against humanity that are perpetrated daily in complete impunity?’; and

(e) UN experts have called on states to transcend rhetoric and take enforceable action to immediately end the carnage and ensure accountability for perpetrators and have demanded ‘immediate international intervention’.

(2) does not support the State of Israel’s continued invasion of Gaza; and

(3) supports calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.

Leave refused.