Get ready world, Australia is willing to solve the Israel/Palestine conflict and help the fledging Jewish state removes all its illegal settlements in the West Bank (silly me, here I was thinking that Palestine doesn’t even exist and the Palestinians are living in squalor):
Australia could send troops to the Middle East as part of an international buffer force to facilitate an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and prevent a takeover by terrorist-linked organisations, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said last night.
In a speech to Jewish leaders in Sydney, Mr Downer expressed doubts that Palestinians as a whole would support a peace settlement between Israel and West Bank leaders.
He said the concern was that the Hamas organisation would, because of its backing by Iran, never truly accept Israel’s right to exist.
“If the Israeli defence forces withdrew from the West Bank, Hamas will just take over,” Mr Downer said.
“In the end, there has to be some international force to prop up a Palestinian State.
“If the international community was looking for troops tosupport a peace agreement which provided for the security of Israel and a Palestinian state, we would be prepared to send some troops to help,” he said.
Mr Downer also attacked the UN, and more particularly the non-aligned bloc of countries that makes up a large part of its membership, for taking an irrational anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist line.
The anti-Zionist line. It’s a danger, I tell you, denying Israel’s right to colonise the occupied territories and believing in a state where all citizens have equal rights. If Jews dare say such things, they’ll be accused of disloyalty, treachery and worse. Oh well. As the one-state solution becomes more likely by the day, time is indeed on the side of justice.