The Australian foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has acknowledged “there are increasingly few safe places” for civilians in Gaza and has joined the US in warning that Israel risks “strategic defeat”.
Wong conceded on Thursday that her language about the conflict did not go “as far as some might want” but said this “does not diminish our concern for the numbers of civilian casualties that we are seeing”.
On the final parliamentary sitting day of the year, Wong also described the end of the weeklong “pause” in hostilities as a “grave setback”.
The assistant minister for foreign affairs, Tim Watts, said he would “travel to Qatar, Egypt, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories” this week to try to prevent the conflict from spreading and to push for “a just and enduring peace”.
Israel is facing increasing international scrutiny over its military response to Hamas’s 7 October attacks on southern Israel, with the UN’s top aid official warning this week of “apocalyptic” conditions in Gaza and an end to any possibility of meaningful humanitarian operations. Israel argues its actions comply with international law and has told the Australian government it is doing “its utmost to mitigate the civilian casualties”.
The UN humanitarian agency has estimated 1.8 million people – more than three-quarters of Gaza’s population – are now internally displaced, while human rights groups say nowhere in the besieged strip is safe.
Wong said on Thursday that civilians who fled northern Gaza were “now being pushed further south and as the conflict spreads south there are increasingly few safe places to go”.
She highlighted comments by the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, who had said “you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians”.
Wong said Austin was “an expert in urban warfare against terrorists from experience fighting Isis and, like us, is a steadfast friend of Israel”.
“This week he shared this wisdom,” Wong told the Senate. “He said if you drive the civilian population into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”
Wong said Australia supported five principles outlined by the Biden administration, including “no forcible displacement of Palestinians or reduction in territory”. She also said Hamas had “no place in the future of Gaza”.
She said the Australian government unequivocally condemned Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel on 7 October, while urging Israel respect international humanitarian law in its response. The minister renewed calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all remaining hostages.
The Greens senator Janet Rice said it was “estimated that over 70% of the more than 16,000 people killed in Gaza have been women, children and the elderly”, in a reference to figures issued by authorities in the Hamas-run territory.
Rice challenged Wong to explain why Australia had yet to “join the call of the UN and aid organisations for an immediate and permanent humanitarian ceasefire”.
Wong said “the number of civilian deaths including children has been harrowing and it cannot continue” and Australia was seeking a resumption of the “pause”.
The Labor minister said for a ceasefire to be sustainable it “cannot be one-sided”.
Earlier, the Labor MP and co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, Maria Vamvakinou, said it was “to the shame of this parliament that we have not, at the very least, given equal weight to the dead children and women of Gaza”.
“What we are witnessing is Israel’s breach of international humanitarian law, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and the renewed expulsion of the Palestinian people from their ancestral homelands,” Vamvakinou told parliament.
The Israeli government has defended its military operations in Gaza, saying it “will continue to act according to international law” and that its issuing of evacuation orders reflects attempts to protect civilians.
The Israeli ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon, said he could “assure the Australian government that Israel is doing its utmost to mitigate the civilian casualties” but Hamas was using the civilian population as a “human shield”.
He said displacement of civilians from their homes was “temporary”.
