ECAJ statement on Australia’s abstention on United Nations General Assembly resolution demanding Israel give up land without peace.

ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim said:

Since the end of the 1967 Middle East war, the UN’s position on resolving the conflict has been based on the principle of “land for peace”.

In essence, Israel would give up ter­rit­or­ies it captured in the course of defending itself in that war in exchange for legally binding peace treaties that would guarantee that Israel will never again be attacked from those ter­rit­or­ies.

Australia has supported this principle for decades.

Now, for the first time, the UN has shifted to a position of “land for no peace”. It demands that Israel vacate territory without getting peace in return.

This comes at the very moment that Israel is once again under a ferocious multi-front attack.

The res­ol­u­tion is an invit­a­tion to endless war and bloodshed, an encour­age­ment to Iran and its proxies to step up their aggres­sion and pursue their openly-declared genocidal aims against Israel.

It betrays every basic principle on which the UN was founded. The res­ol­u­tion will stand as a monument to the moral abyss into which the UN has sunk.

Australia should have had no part of it. It should have voted no instead of taking the morally cowardly way out and abstain­ing.