The air and ground operation has killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry. After Palestinian terrorist group Hamas carried out the deadliest attack in Israeli history on October 7, 2023, Israel responded with a devastating military campaign in Gaza.

As a result, the number of Palestinians fleeing to other nations seeking refuge-including Australia-has increased. But there’s a sharp difference in Australia when it comes to visa approval statistics; most Palestinian applications are turned down, but a disproportionately high number of Israeli visas are approved.

According to News Corp Australia, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has confirmed that out of the 10,033 applications launched in the past 10 months, 7111 were rejected, while 2922 Palestinians were granted entry into Australia. Out of the 2922 figure, about 1300 refugees have resettled into Australia, who are understood to largely be on short-term visas.

Meanwhile, 8746 Israeli citizens have been granted visas since the October 7 attacks, with 235 applications rejected.

The report was released concurrently with calls by main opposition leader Peter Dutton to stop the entry of Palestinians from Gaza on the grounds that they were a threat to national security.

“I don’t think people should be coming in from that war zone at all at the moment,” Dutton said on Wednesday. “It’s not prudent to do so, and I think it puts our national security at risk.”

His remarks were a reaction to what happened on Tuesday, when Coalition Members of Parliament wrote to Tony Burke, urging him to tighten the process of evaluating visa applications from Gaza to make sure they had no support for Hamas. As it stands, applicants are only rejected if they are found to have given financial or material support to Hamas.

Patna:

Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Friday slammed the Central government over national security, claiming that it did not take any action on the border issues involving China.

“The BJP contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections making national security an issue, but what happened after that? China came to the borders and destroyed the understanding that the two countries developed over the years. They (China) knew that the Narendra Modi government only talks, but doesn’t take any action,” Mr Tharoor said while interacting with mediapersons here.

“If the BJP is contesting the ongoing elections on national security, I would like to say that we had 65 patrolling points on the India-China border where the armies of both countries had the authority to do patrolling for 45 years. Now, the Chinese army has occupied 26 of them and they are not allowing the Indian Army to go there.

“The Modi government has not done anything in this matter. Twenty of our soldiers were martyred in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh,” Mr Tharoor said.

Mr Tharoor’s remarks came after senior BJP leaders pointed out that PoK belongs to India, and it will be taken back from Pakistan at any cost.

Mr Tharoor added: “The national security narrative of the BJP failed during this election and hence its leaders raised issues of Ram Temple and Hindutva. Now, we have set the narrative for the ongoing Lok Sabha polls.

“We asked people if there was any change in their lifestyle in the 10 years of Narendra Modi’s rule. Do common people get jobs? Has their purchasing power increased? But people are saying that nothing like this happened in their lives. We also asked people why we should give the BJP a third chance,” Mr Tharoor said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)