Press Release
Australian Government’s Rhetoric on ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories’ Masks its Criminality in Facilitating the Occupation of the Whole of Palestine

The Federal Labor government yesterday heightened its rhetoric on Palestine by affirming the West Bank and Gaza Strip as ‘occupied territories’, and any settlements on these lands as having ‘no legal validity’ and constituting ‘a violation of international law’. It went further and followed the US Administration’s characterisation of recent settlement efforts as ‘terror attacks’.

Hizb ut Tahrir / Australia would like to re-affirm the following regarding occupied Palestine:

• It is the West, including Australia, that facilitated the occupation of Palestine, in all its parts, through violence, dispossession and the forced displacement of its peoples.

• It is the West that has always sought to legitimise this great crime through multiple multilateral efforts under the banner of international law, efforts Muslims firmly reject and to which they have zero regard.

• The current struggle between the US administration and those currently at the head of the occupation is another chapter of the master disciplining its slave, instituted to ensure the occupation continues to follow American dictates and primarily serve American interests.

• No amount of hubris will mask the most glaring fact - that the whole of Palestine is occupied land, not just its parts; that Muslims will not relinquish a single inch of this land; and that the Ummah will continue its noble efforts to ensure the entirety of the occupation is reversed.

• Muslims are not waiting for condemnations from Western states or hollow claims of solidarity, for they understand Western states are the enablers of this aggression against Islam and Muslims. On the contrary, such overtures add insult to injury, taking the issue of Palestine as a mere political football, thereby aggrieving the Muslims twice over – the first being the occupation, the second using the ensuing injustices of this occupation to wash their hands of culpability.

• We remind Muslims the only acceptable Islamic response to occupation of Islamic lands is the complete reversal of this occupation. We also remind Muslims that relying upon Western states, or expecting good from them, is a betrayal of the Islamic cause and the peak of political defeatism that is unbecoming of the Ummah of Muhammad (saw).

Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Australia