Today in Parliament, Abigail gave notice of a motion about the relentless genocide being inflicted by the Israeli government on the people of Palestine. 

Abigail said:

(1) That this House notes that: 

• after relentlessly bombarding Rafah for months with no global intervention, Israel is carrying out the same unrelenting strategy of ethnic cleansing, collective punishment and forced displacement across Gaza City in a campaign to make it uninhabitable and prevent Palestinians from ever returning to their homes, 
• the State of Israel has forced nearly all of Gaza’s population from their homes, having now erased entire neighbourhoods in Gaza City while systematically targeting hospitals, schools, vital infrastructure and encampments sheltering displaced civilians within so-called ‘safe zones’, and continuing to issue forced displacement orders, 
• Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but actively targeting them as they desperately seek food for their families at US-backed aid sites. Human Rights Watch have described the ‘US-backed death trap scheme’ as a flawed, militarised aid distribution system that has turned into regular bloodbaths of deliberate, targeted killings of Palestinian civilians. Since May of this year, over 2,000 civilians have been killed waiting for aid and more than 17,000 have been wounded, 
• the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has pronounced that Israel is engaging in the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that the organisation has ever documented, with Reporters Without Borders (RSF) saying “at the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, there will soon be no one left to keep you informed”. Last week, five Palestinian journalists were killed in a double air strike on Nasser hospital by Israeli forces, bringing the total number of Palestinian journalists massacred in Gaza since 7 October 2023 to at least 274, and 
• though billions across the world, including multiple political leaders in several countries, have finally woken up to the reality of the Israeli government’s deliberate human rights violations and undeniable campaign to exterminate the Palestinian people, nations including Australia continue to equivocate in their responses to Israel’s actions.

(2) That this House recognises that: 

• Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced on 8 September 2025 that Spain will enforce a total arms embargo on Israel, saying “there is a difference between defending your country and bombing hospitals or starving innocent children. This is an unjustifiable attack on the civilian population. This is not self-defence… it is the extermination of a defenceless people”, 
• in addition to an arms embargo, Spain will prohibit ships carrying fuel for Israeli military personnel from docking in Spanish ports, deny airspace access to aircraft transporting defence material, ban the importation of products from illegal settlements in the West Bank, and bar entry to individuals “directly involved in genocide, human rights violations and war crimes” in Gaza, 
• in August 2025, Slovenia became the first country in the European Union to ban the import, export and transit of weapons to and from Israel, 
• since 2023, several countries have imposed sanctions and arms embargoes against Israel, including Italy, Japan, Canada, Colombia, the Netherlands and Belgium, 
• more than 500 staff at the Geneva-based Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) have written to High Commissioner Volker Turk to describe the situation in Gaza as a genocide, arguing that the office’s failure to do so undermines the global rights protection system, 
• the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), the world’s leading genocide scholars’ association, has passed a resolution stating that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of the crime of genocide, calling on Israel to immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza. Melanie O’Brien, IAGS president and a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia, said the resolution was “a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide”, and 
• South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention, since December 2023 when the South African government filed a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which multiple nations including Brazil, Spain, Turkiye and the Republic of Ireland have backed.

(3) That this House calls on the Australian government to immediately enforce a total arms embargo on Israel and impose sanctions on Israeli officials and entities responsible for Israel’s war crimes, illegal settlements and atrocities amounting to crimes against humanity of extermination and genocide.

9 September 2025