Australia, Canada and New Zealand have warned Israel against a carrying out a “devastating” and “catastrophic” ground offensive on Rafah in southern Gaza, saying “there is simply nowhere else for civilians to go”.
The prime ministers of the three countries said in a joint statement on Thursday that Israel “must listen to its friends”. Anthony Albanese, Justin Trudeau and Christopher Luxon also said an immediate humanitarian ceasefire was “urgently needed”.
The statement by three members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance appears aimed at ratcheting up pressure on Israel to rethink plans for a ground assault on Rafah, where about 1.5 million Palestinians are taking refuge.
The other Five Eyes members – the US and the UK – are not a party to the statement, although they have raised grave concerns about the feasibility of the planned operation.
“A military operation into Rafah would be catastrophic,” Albanese, Trudeau and Luxon said in the statement.
“With the humanitarian situation in Gaza already dire, the impacts on Palestinian civilians from an expanded military operation would be devastating.
“We urge the Israeli government not to go down this path. There is simply nowhere else for civilians to go.”
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has vowed to press ahead with an offensive on Rafah to pursue his goal of destroying Hamas and rescuing hostages. But he has said this will only occur after civilians are allowed to leave the “battle zones”.
Netanyahu has not yet clarified where the trapped civilians would be permitted to go, and what safeguards, if any, would be put in place to protect them.
In their second joint statement on the conflict, the prime ministers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand said protecting civilians was a requirement under international humanitarian law, and added: “Palestinian civilians cannot be made to pay the price of defeating Hamas.”
The same statement also called on Hamas to immediately release hostages and said the militant group must lay down its arms as part of any sustainable ceasefire.
The UN coordinator for relief operations, Martin Griffiths, warned a ground offensive “could lead to a slaughter in Gaza”.
In a phone call with Netanyahu, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said the Gaza death toll was “intolerable” and insisted the Israeli offensive “must cease”.
The Australian foreign minister, Penny Wong, also strengthened her language on Thursday, saying a major offensive “would bring further devastation to more than a million civilians seeking shelter in Rafah – many there by Israel’s direction”.
“Australia believes this would be unjustifiable,” Wong told the Senate’s foreign affairs, defence and trade committee. “Our message to Israel is: listen to the world; do not go down this path.”
The opposition’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Simon Birmingham, asked Wong to clarify what caveats applied to her warning, including whether Israel could proceed with an operation if it presented plans to protect civilians.
Wong said the international community had not yet seen “a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the million people sheltering in Rafah”.
The foreign minister of New Zealand, Winston Peters, said he spoke with Wong on Thursday morning and separately with the UN secretary general, António Guterres, about the situation in Rafah.
Peters said the conflict had escalated beyond the right for Israel to defend itself, and the international request was for the offensive to not go a step further, RNZ reported.
“The level of inhumanity is out of all proportion now,” Peters said. “The reality is you can’t justify this. That’s the view of the mass majority of the countries in the world now, including the people we’ve been talking to.”
Earlier on Thursday, Ed Husic, a cabinet minister in the Albanese government, said it was “hard to see” how Israel could formulate a credible plan for an assault on Rafah while protecting civilians.
“The whole notion that you would conduct military action in there with vulnerable people, particularly women and children, is unfathomable,” Husic told ABC Radio National.
Husic also said he was “very keen” to see $6m in Australia’s top-up funding to the aid agency UNRWA restored as quickly as possible, after the payment was paused late last month.
Wong said UNRWA did “lifesaving work” and was “the linchpin” of humanitarian support in Gaza.
But she said it was impossible to ignore the recent allegations that as many as 12 UNRWA staff might have been involved in the 7 October Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.
Wong said there was “a lot of action being taken to try and resolve this matter as quickly as possible”.
The Australian Greens’ deputy leader, Mehreen Faruqi, told the hearing it had been widely reported that a “so-called dossier” prepared by Israel contained no evidence to back up the claims. She asked Wong: “Do you have the dossier – have you seen it?”
Wong replied: “No, I do not and I have asked Israel through my officials for the information on which they were relying when that story appeared in the international media.
“I would hope that the Israeli government would ensure that its friends and partners were provided with that information.”
Faruqi contended it was “irresponsible” to suspend funding “without a single piece of evidence of the claims that Israel has made”.
Wong pointed to the fact that the head of UNRWA had sacked a number of staff members and had acknowledged the allegations were serious, saying it would be unreasonable to continue to fund the organisation “without gaining insurance”.
Comment has been sought from the Israeli ambassador to Australia.
Additional reporting by Eva Corlett
