Shorten also cautioned against assuming every person who lived in Gaza was a member of Hamas.
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“In a war zone, whilst there are combatants and bad people, there’s a lot of innocent people. And when we start saying that everyone’s guilty because of some people, that’s a problem,” he said on ABC’s Radio National.
“It’s a very small number of people who’ve been accepted here temporarily. Their temporary visas are coming to an end. Unfortunately, the war in Gaza isn’t, so I don’t know how humane it is to send people we’ve accepted back.”
Education Minister Jason Clare said no-one was currently leaving Gaza, but those who already arrived had gone through security processing.
“There are people from Gaza here now. They live in my electorate, I’ve met them. [They’re] great people,” he said.
“I’d invite Peter to come to my electorate and meet them. These are people who’ve had their homes blown up. Who’ve had their school blown up, who’ve had their hospital blown up, who’ve had their kids blown up.”
The latest bloodshed in the decades old Israeli-Palestinian conflict began when Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel on October &, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry. It has also displaced nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.
With Reuters
Source Agencies
