Protests in Canberra over West Bank settlements

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has urged Israel to hold the soldiers who killed Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom accountable, including with possible criminal charges, as his government condemned Israel’s move to expand settlement construction in the West Bank.

Albanese raised Frankcom’s death with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Canberra on Wednesday, offering it as another justification for his contentious decision to invite the head-of-state to Australia.

Seven aid workers, including Frankcom, were killed in Gaza in April 2024 when their convoy was struck by Israeli drones.

“That is one of the reasons why you have dialogue in a respectful way, to get outcomes and advance Australia’s national interests. One of the issues that I have raised is Zomi and her six World Central Kitchen colleagues. These deaths were a tragedy and an outrage. We said that at the time,” Albanese told parliament.

Albanese said the government had made clear it expected Israel’s ongoing investigation into the killings be transparent, and would press for full accountability.

“We continue to press for full accountability, including any appropriate criminal charges,” he said.

A few hundred protesters gathered outside Parliament House on Wednesday morning with a banner calling for Herzog’s arrest. There was no repeat of the violent clashes between police and demonstrators that marked Monday evening’s anti-Herzog rally in Sydney.

The Israeli security cabinet agreed over the weekend to make it easier for Jewish settlers to buy land and extend Israeli control in the occupied West Bank. The move has been criticised as undermining the Oslo Accords and hopes of a two-state solution.

“We are deepening our roots in all parts of the land of Israel and burying the idea of a Palestinian state,” Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said when announcing the new policy.

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said: “Australia objects to the Israel Security Cabinet’s decision to expand Israel’s control over the West Bank. This decision will undermine stability and security.”

The spokesperson said: “The Australian government has been clear that settlements are illegal under international law and a significant obstacle to peace. Altering the demographic composition of Palestine is unacceptable.

“A two-state solution remains the only viable path to long-term peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

Albanese said he would raise issues of disagreement as he welcomed Herzog to parliament.

“We want to see Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace and security as we go forward,” he said.

Herzog, who will travel to Melbourne on Thursday, said his visit to Australia had been “very emotional”.

“I think the relations between us do not depend only on the issue of Israel and the Palestinians and the conflict, but has a much broader base, and we should together make sure that it’s uplifted to new directions,” he said.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Israel’s actions “destabilising”, pointing to an International Court of Justice finding that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory was illegal and should be ended as soon as possible.

Guterres warned the changes were “eroding the prospects for the two-state solution”.

A group of human rights groups, including Amnesty International, has called for Australia to impose targeted sanctions on the World Zionist Organisation for its role in promoting settlement building in the West Bank.

The organisation’s chairman, Yaakov Hagoel, is travelling with Herzog’s delegation to Australia.

The Australian Centre for International Justice and Palestinian rights groups wrote to the Australian Federal Police on Tuesday, asking them to investigate whether Hagoel has breached Australia’s Criminal Code through the promotion of settlement building, which is considered illegal under international law.

“If the Australian government is serious about the illegality of settlements and its so-called commitment to peace, then it must not provide diplomatic cover for the enablers of Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise. Hagoel must be investigated,” the centre’s executive director, Rawan Arraf, said.

Referring to the biblical name for the West Bank, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said: “Judea and Samaria is the heart of the country, and strengthening it is a paramount security, national, and Zionist interest.”

At the rally outside Parliament House, Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi led a chant of “arrest Herzog” and called police and protester clashes in Sydney on Monday “disgraceful”, “unnecessary” and “unjustifiable”.

Herzog told this masthead before arriving in Australia that the “two-state solution” is not workable at the moment, meaning fresh ideas are needed to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

“We’re a tiny strip of land, and the people who were attacked on October 7 were the biggest supporters of peace,” Herzog said.

“They were the first ones to be butchered, slaughtered, raped, burnt and abducted. You cannot ignore it. It’s a national trauma.”

He continued: “We have to go through a healing process. To come and tell Israelis, ‘Hey guys, divide your land again for a two-state solution’ doesn’t operate on the, I would say, emotional side of a dialogue with Israelis.”

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