Carr on collision course with ECAJ
AUSTRALIA might have a new Prime Minister but Bob Carr is still the Foreign Minister and has once again upset communal leaders.
AUSTRALIA might have a new Prime Minister but Bob Carr is still the Foreign Minister and has once again upset communal leaders.
In an opinion piece published in Fairfax newspapers on Monday, Carr said the solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict includes “a sharing of Jerusalem” and that “settlement activity is illegal and undermines confidence in Israel’s intentions and good faith at the negotiating table”.
He also said, “The path to Palestinian statehood does not lie through UN resolutions. Nor in pursing membership of international organisations,” but in the same breath defended Australia’s decision to abstain from a vote of Palestinian statehood at the UN last year.
Carr further enraged communal leaders when he said about the settlements: “As a friend of Israel, I can say that there is another fundamental issue at stake: the survival of Israel as a democracy.
“The fact now is that the durability of Israeli democracy requires the existence of a viable Palestinian state. Without it, Israel will be trapped, governing a burgeoning Arab population to whom it cannot grant full and equal civil rights and remain a Jewish state.”
Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) president Danny Lamm didn’t hold back when responding to Carr’s claims.
“It’s farcical that someone can suggest that Israel’s democracy is at stake,” Lamm said.
He noted that Israel has more than 1.6 million Israeli Arab citizens who are represented in the Knesset with 11 seats. He said Arab Israelis serve in the highest Israeli court, they serve in the Israel Defence Forces, they operate in hospitals alongside Jewish doctors and teach in universities alongside Jewish academics.
“In light of the brutal assault on freedoms of assembly and expression that we are witnessing elsewhere in the region, rather than expressing concern for Israeli democracy, the Foreign Minister should be heralding it, and urging Israel’s neighbours to adopt it wholesale.”
Lamm said it’s “nonsense to say that settlements stand in the way of peace” because the vast majority of Israelis living beyond the Green Line live in one of several large settlements blocks which would always be incorporated into Israel under any final status agreement.
“Israel knows this, the Palestinians know this and the Americans know this.
“We’re disappointed that the Foreign Minister seems to have overlooked it.”
Lamm said that Israel has always been willing to give up land for peace. “Rather than focusing on the settlement issue, it would be far more productive for the Foreign Minister to urge the PA to return to direct negotiations without delay and without preconditions,” Lamm said.
JOSHUA LEVI
Foreign Minister Bob Carr.
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