“I think overwhelmingly Australians want to see two things.
“One is they want to see a ceasefire. They want to see the killing stop, they want to see hostages released, they want to see peace in the region.
“The second thing they want is they don’t want conflict brought to Australia either.”
He said that “for a long period of time there’s been a bipartisan position in Australia of support for two states”.
“And that of course was the vision that was envisaged when in 1947 the United Nations made the decision that they did,” Albanese said, referring to the creation of Israel.
“It wasn’t the creation of one state, and so we’ll continue to play a role.”
‘Shameful’
Overnight, Netnayahu blasted Australian government protests against the war in Gaza, calling them “shameful” and saying they “buy into” Hamas propaganda.
The Israeli leader held a press conference in English to set the record straight, as he sees it, after Western allies, including Australia, condemned his plan to occupy all of Gaza.
An Australian journalist asked Netanyahu if his Western counterparts, who consistently support the Israel’s right to defend itself, “are now struggling to stomach what they’re seeing you and your military doing in Gaza”.
“First of all, those who say that Israel has a right to defend itself are also saying, ‘but don’t exercise that right’, when we do what any country would do, faced with this genocidal terrorist organisation that has performed the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust,” Netanyahu responded.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel in 2023.
Militants killed more than 1200 in the shock assault, slaughtering entire families.
Much of the violence was celebrated by perpetrators and sympathisers online.
Israel’s furious response has decimated Hamas, but also killed tens of thousands of civilians in the process.
Most of the innocents killed are women, children and the elderly.
Netanyahu insisted his country is “actually applying force judiciously”, adding that critics in Canberra “know it”.
“They know what they would do if right next to Melbourne, or right next to Sydney, you had this horrific attack,” he said.
“I think you would do at least what we’re doing, probably … not as efficiently and as precisely as we’re doing it.
“We’ve lost quite a few soldiers in that effort.”
Netanyahu went on to address the global momentum for recognition of a Palestinian state.
He said the “Jewish public is ... against the Palestinian state for the simple reason that they know it won’t bring peace”, pointing to a recent vote in the country’s parliament that overwhelmingly rejected the idea.
“It’ll bring war,” Netanyahu said, directly countering rhetoric put forward by the Albanese government.
“To have European countries and Australia march into that … rabbit hole just like that, fall right into it and buy, this canard is disappointing, and I think it’s actually shameful.
“But it’s not going to … change our position.
“Again, we will not commit national suicide to get a good op-ed for two minutes. We won’t do that.”
