Greens MP refuses to answer Hamas question

Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi has repeatedly refused to answer whether she believes “Hamas should be dismantled,” saying it’s not up to her to say “who should be gone or not”.

Appearing on ABC’s Insiders for the first time, the NSW senator was asked five times whether the Islamic terrorist group responsible for the October 7 attacks needed to be either removed or disbanded.

However, she deflected her answers multiple times.

Speaking about the Israel and Palestinian conflict, at first Senator Faruqi said the presence of Hamas had “nothing to do with recognising Palestinian statehood”.

“Palestinian statehood is about Palestinians being able to self determine,” she said.

Asked by journalist David Speers whether if it would be “okay,” for Palestinians to choose Hamas,” she accused him of creating a “hypothetical scenario”.

However Speers maintained his grilling asking: “Well it’s not hypothetical to ask: Should Hamas be dismantled?”.

Refusing a yes or no answer, she said: “Hamas is listed as a terrorist organisation and there is absolutely no change that we are demanding in that”.

Asked the same question, she asked who would dismantle the group.

“It is up to the people in Palestine and that region, to make sure that people can live in peace, but I will say this again, at the moment, only some people in that region have the rights that every human deserves,” she said.

Asked one more time whether she would like to see Hamas gone, she said it wasn’t a question for her to answer.

“It’s not up to me to say who should be gone or not,” she said.

Under continued grilling, Senator Faruqi appeared to support a two-state solution, and said the self-determination of Palestinians would still allow for the Israeli state to exist.

Asked if she would “like to see Israel … continue to exist,” Senator Faruqi said: “Of course, there’s no question about that,” before doubling down on the Greens position that Palestinians were being ”denied a state” by Israel, the United States and Australia.

Conflict in the Middle East was bought to political forefront again last week, after senator Fatima Payman quit the Labor Party to sit on the cross bench over the ALP’s position on Palestine, and said she was unable to “remain silent” on the attacks on the Palestinian territory of Gaza.

While Senator Faruqi said she has not encouraged Senator Payman to join the Greens, she said she was “proud” of the junior senator for “standing strong on her convictions,” and accused Labor of vilifying their former colleague.

“It is absolutely disgraceful. That Labor has been kind of (using) unsourced whispers (and have been) kind of vilifying Senator Payman for expressing her faith,” she said.

“I mean that is ridiculous … I was in NSW parliament when the Christian Democratic Party was in the balance of power, and parties were very happy to deal with them.”