Laura Tingle on who can stop Israel

Australia Broadcast Center

5 days ago

Sam Hawley: Israel says there's no starvation in Gaza. The pictures tell a very different story and there's now growing condemnation from some of Israel's closest supporters, including Australia. Anthony Albanese says the images of suffering are completely indefensible. Today, Global Affairs Editor Laura Tingle on the mounting pressure and what will really get Benjamin Netanyahu to change course. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.
Sam Hawley: Laura, the world is increasingly horrified by what is unfolding in Gaza. Hunger is taking hold, children are dying of starvation. The images are horrifying.
Laura Tingle: They're completely horrifying, Sam. I mean, they've been horrifying for a long time and, you know, you just don't think it can get worse and it keeps getting worse. It's just beyond belief. Apart from the fact there's no food or water or sanitation, so much of the Gaza Strip has been bombed to oblivion and to the point where the Israeli government is now just unilaterally clearing out large areas that weren't even bombed, particularly in the south. You just wonder how people are surviving.
Sam Hawley: Yeah, and no one's outside the scope of this, you know, doctors, nurses, journalists, aid workers. There's actually not enough food for anyone.
Laura Tingle: The reports of doctors feeling dizzy and fainting and aid workers feeling dizzy and fainting because of lack of food. I mean, it just really brings it home just that there is just not enough to eat for, you know, a couple of million people.
Sam Hawley: Yeah, there's a story from one of our ABC Middle East correspondents that a member of the team that they're relying on in Gaza, he no longer had enough strength to actually hold up the camera. He's lost 34 kilos.
Matthew Doran, ABC Middle East Correspondent: And it's important to point out his story is not isolated. Other members of our team in Gaza have also spoken of their hunger. These are Gazans reporting on Gazans and experiencing what Gazans are being subjected to as the war in the Strip drags on.
Sam Hawley: Well, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu denies that there is starvation in Gaza.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel Prime Minister: Israel is presented as though we are applying a campaign of starvation in Gaza. What a bold face lie. There is no policy of starvation in Gaza and there is no starvation in Gaza.
Sam Hawley: But Israel has begun airdrops of aid and it has paused military operations between 8am and 10pm in three parts of Gaza to allow aid in. But is that enough, Laura? What are people saying?
Laura Tingle: Well, I think that the aid agencies in particular who are the best people to judge this because they're on the ground are saying, no, it's not enough. Because people are desperate, it becomes even harder because, you know, you do these airdrops and often you just, we saw the last time this happened that sort of ended up just being more chaotic than normal aid. And the agencies say it's not sufficient. And of course, a lot of this problem has been exacerbated by the arrangements that have been in place since March with this US-Israeli operation, which has ended up seeing people being killed while they've been lined up for food and water. It's just beyond belief.
Sam Hawley: So, Laura, given what the world is now bearing witness to in Gaza, it's not surprising that many people are asking the question, why isn't more being done to end this suffering? So let's unpack what nations, including Australia, are doing and saying. Initially, of course, when the humanitarian crisis began to grow in Gaza, Australia and others were in lockstep with Israel, weren't they?
Laura Tingle: Well, I don't know that they were in lockstep with Israel about the humanitarian crisis. I think because the start of this obviously was the Hamas atrocities on October 7, for some period of time there was this view that what's happening is terrible, but of course what happened on October 7 was terrible. And they were very reluctant to sort of take a moral position, if you like, because the original events had been so horrendous.
Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister: Israel has a right to defend itself and it will be doing so. This is an attack on Israel by Hamas that has no precedent for what is occurring here.
Laura Tingle: Now, you know, they were horrendous, but you've now had over 50,000 people killed in Gaza. Most of them are not Hamas activists. Certainly the children aren't, the women and children aren't. And the pressure and the position of Israel and its support from the United States as a Western ally, I think has really made it very hard for Western governments to actually say, wait a minute, the way Israel is now performing, it's a different place to the one that has been a traditional ally. But I think also there's this general view that you can't go full steam against Israel because, you know, there's this sort of sneaking suspicion that it won't actually make any difference so that all you can do is gradually ramp up the pressure because the Israelis keep ramping up the pressure. We've seen some concessions to the international pressure in the last few days, but it's only, it has that feeling of doing something to just look like it's got an excuse for continuing its actions. And I think this is the crucial and difficult dilemma for other countries that clearly Israel doesn't care what other people say about it now. It believes or its government believes, let's be clear about that, the Netanyahu government does not care what other states say about it.
Sam Hawley: All right, well, the Israelis might not be listening, but the international condemnation is growing. We've seen that with our own Prime Minister. His language really started to change in May.
Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister: Well, Israel's actions are completely unacceptable. It is outrageous that there'd be a blockade of food and supplies to people who are in need in Gaza.
Sam Hawley: You then interviewed him, of course, after his visit to China recently. He went further then. And then again on the weekend on the Insiders program, really strong language from Anthony Albanese. So just tell me about that progression and why you think it's happened.
Laura Tingle: Well, of course, there are domestic pressures as well, sort of from local communities about this, not just communities with ties into Gaza, but more broadly, people, as you say, are horrified about what they're seeing. In the government's mind, I think, and in government's minds, they are responding to individual step ups in what the Israelis have been doing. Now, the sort of cutting off of aid started in March and the government has been responding to particular steps along the way. And what really struck me when I interviewed the PM in China at the end of his trip was that you'd say to him, look, the Israel we thought we knew has changed, hasn't it? And he'd say, oh, well, no, it's still this country that blah, blah, blah. And you'd say, but people are now starving. And he'd said, well, we've taken these actions and we've got these sanctions against ministers, but they are all linked to former escalations of Israeli activity. And I had to press him a bit to say, look, we now have people starving. What is your response to that? And it was in response to that that he said that what was happening was completely indefensible.
Laura Tingle: With respect, things have escalated. We're now seeing Palestinians regularly killed while waiting for food and water. Do we need to start changing our view of what's happening in Israel?
Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister: Well, that is completely indefensible. And we've called that out each and every time that that has occurred.
Laura Tingle: Now, as you say, on insiders, he's now stepped that up even further.
Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister: Well, quite clearly, it is a breach of international law to stop food being delivered, which was the decision that Israel made in March.
David Speers, Insiders host: So it's breached international law?
Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister: Well, I'm not a lawyer. Those things will play out their course. But I tell you what it's a breach of. It's a breach of decent humanity and of morality. And everyone can see that.
Laura Tingle: But clearly, Australia wants to have this position of being part of an international condemnation. It doesn't want to be standing out at the front of that. I think the prime minister has been quite clear about that. He's always said, look, we act in lockstep with other countries. And I think that's partly because they think that that's going to be more influential. But I think things have got so desperate in Gaza now and the images are so desperate. It's taken a very long time for the government to just go, wait a minute, the way Israel is behaving now is something above and beyond anything we've experienced. They still do, I think, want to keep some options open to them so that they can escalate the language and the actions further.
Sam Hawley: And there has been, of course, more debate over the use of the term genocide and what that actually means. But Australia and others are certainly not labelling it genocide at this point, are they?
Laura Tingle: No. And I think this has become one of those things where it's very tied up in the legal definition of genocide because there is now this action as well in the International Court of Justice about genocide. And there are these very legalistic terms. You've basically got to, genocide has got to be about wiping out an entire race. And so there's this sort of semantic argument going on about genocidal intent and all these sorts of things. And of course, there's also the whole overlay of the history of the creation of the state of Israel and the connections with the genocide of the Second World War against the Jews, which has made people very reluctant to use the term. And I think some people have argued that it's Israel sort of regards it in what happened in the Second World War as something above and beyond anything else that could happen. So they react really furiously if anybody dares to use the term genocide against them, no matter what they might be doing.
Sam Hawley: Laura, France and its President Emmanuel Macron has announced it will recognise Palestinian statehood. Anthony Albanese and the Foreign Minister Penny Wong say they won't do that yet. How significant is that debate, do you think, going on internationally?
Laura Tingle: Well, the Prime Minister and Penny Wong argue that there's a whole range of reasons why you don't do it at the moment, which is because essentially, you know, what is the state of Palestine? You don't want Hamas being the governing authority. There are deep flaws in the Palestinian Authority, which means that the question of who actually would be running a state of Palestine are very complex and difficult and cause problems all of their own. So that's their argument. But it's been an incredibly powerful symbol for Emmanuel Macron as the first leader of a major Western country to do it because it shows the sorts of arguments that are going to become the next step along the way, if you like, about what's going to happen. It also, it's a warning shot to Israel, I suppose, at a time when they are actually levelling large parts of Gaza, that you know, you can't just keep taking the rest of the world for granted in the way you've annexed the West Bank, or you're effectively annexing Gaza. I mean, all the language around these things has become so complex. I mean, when is annexing something, annexing it or not officially annexing it when you're forcibly moving people regularly from one place to another? There's sort of something a little bit sick about the sort of semantic arguments, if you like, as opposed to what's actually happening on the ground.
Sam Hawley: All right, well, Laura, international condemnation of Israel's actions in Gaza is clearly increasing, but ultimately, more aid is still needed and a ceasefire is crucial. So what can nations like Australia actually do to make that happen? Or really, does it all just rest again with Donald Trump?
Laura Tingle: I fear that it largely does because he has got that capacity to pressure Israel. Now, as with everything else, he's been incredibly erratic about this. He's talked about, you know, starvation in Gaza at various times, but he's also talked in recent days about how they've got to basically get rid of Hamas.
Donald Trump, US President: Hamas didn't really want to make a deal. I think they want to die. And it's very, very bad. And it got to be to a point where you're going to have to finish the job.
Laura Tingle: And, you know, he swings from day to day, but certainly doesn't seem to have any clear resolve to get that involved in this dispute. If there's any pattern we can see out of the way he behaves in terms of his interventions in the Israel-Iran conflict, he likes to have a short, sharp impact and get out again. And how you have a short, sharp impact in something as intractable as Israel and the Palestinians, it's not clear that there is one. So, you know, you can't be at all optimistic that this can be a viable option.
Sam Hawley: Laura Tingle to the ABC's Global Affairs Editor. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.