Australia voted in favour of the resolution hours after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for a “sustainable ceasefire” with his Canadian and New Zealand counterparts.
The 193-member United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday (AEDT) passed a resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza with 153 members in favour, 10 against – including the United States and Israel – and 23 abstaining.
Australia has historically abstained or voted in lockstep with the US on resolutions relating to Israel, but Wednesday’s vote represents a rare break.
Australia’s UN representative James Larsen told the General Assembly the nation was “gravely concerned” about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“Human suffering is widespread and unacceptable,” he said.
“This must not continue.”
However, he said the resolution should have gone further to unequivocally condemn Hamas as the perpetrator of the attack that precipitated this crisis.
A similar resolution proposed in October called for a humanitarian “truce” with 120 countries voting in favour but Australia was not one of them, choosing to abstain because it did not mention Hamas.
More than 18,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, many more have been pushed to starvation, and most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been driven from their homes as Israel’s bombing campaign on the besieged enclave stretches into its third month.
In response, pro-Palestine rallies across the world calling for a ceasefire have pressured elected officials to do the same.
A joint statement released by Albanese, New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Luxon and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, expressed support for “urgent international efforts towards a sustainable ceasefire”.
“We remain deeply concerned by the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and ongoing risks to all Palestinian civilians,” the statement said on Wednesday.
“The price of defeating Hamas cannot be the continuous suffering of all Palestinian civilians.”
However, they emphasised that any ceasefire “cannot be one-sided”, saying Hamas must release all hostages, stop using Palestinian civilians as human shields and lay down its arms.
“There is no role for Hamas in the future governance of Gaza,” they said.
The three leaders reaffirmed Israel’s right to self defence and prefaced their ceasefire calls with a condemnation of Hamas, whose October 7 invasion killed 1200 Israelis, took more than 200 hostages and sparked the latest upsurge in violence in a long history of conflict.
The Australian and Canadian governments consider Hamas a terrorist organisation while New Zealand has designated the entity’s military wing a terrorist group.
They also affirmed support for a two-state solution and Palestinians’ right to self-determination, specifically opposing “the forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, the re-occupation of Gaza, any reduction in territory, and any use of siege or blockade”.
The three leaders also addressed the impact of the war in their own countries, condemning rising anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong welcomed the UN resolution as a “next step towards a sustainable ceasefire”.
“We think it’s important that very close allies and like-minded countries speak together in support of the position that we’ve articulated,” she told reporters in Adelaide.
The statement comes as an opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham leads a cross-party delegation to Israel.
“There is no point… in a premature situation that would enable Hamas to rearm, to regroup, and ultimately pose the threat of conducting the same type of terrorist atrocities as they did on the seventh of October,” he tsaid.
Oxfam Australia chief executive Lyn Morgan welcomed the resolution and statement, but urged the prime minister to “continue to do all in his power to ensure this ceasefire happens, and that these issues aren’t forgotten once the fighting ends”.
Wong is expected to visit Israel and other Middle East countries in January.
– AAP
