Mar 4, 2025
The Australian government’s decision to award $4 million in funding to health organisation Project Rozana is a cynical attempt to whitewash Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its decades-long system of illegal occupation and apartheid.
Rather than supporting Palestinian self-determination, this funding entrenches Israeli control over Palestinian healthcare, bypassing Palestinian institutions, sidelining Palestinian medical sovereignty, and legitimising the very regime responsible for systematically dismantling Palestinian healthcare, its economy and society.
By design, Project Rozana does not challenge the root causes of Palestinian suffering: the lack of self-determination, ongoing dispossession of Palestinians and destruction of Palestinian society; Israel’s genocide in Gaza; its prevention of lifesaving medical aid and services to the besieged territory; and its systematic destruction of Palestinian health facilities.
Instead Project Rozana seeks to exploit health crises, manufactured by Israel’s brutal violence and destruction, by facilitating Palestinian patient transfers into Israeli hospitals, rather than advocating for an end to the blockade, occupation and apartheid that produces the need for health intervention.
This organisation is not a neutral humanitarian initiative – it is a political project designed to normalise Israeli apartheid, founded by a former leader of the Zionist Federation of Australia who actively campaigned against independent humanitarian organisations such as UNRWA, Save the Children and Oxfam – bodies that provide vital Palestinian-led aid and advocacy.
By funding Project Rozana, the Australian government is complicit in sustaining the illusion of “coexistence” while Israel commits genocide in Gaza and deepens its apartheid rule.
Australia must direct funding towards Palestinian-led initiatives, hospitals and civil society organisations – bodies that strengthen Palestinian self-determination, rather than reinforcing Israeli domination.
The only path to Palestinian health, safety and dignity is through an end to Israel’s genocide, occupation and apartheid, not through cosmetic projects that obscure the reality of Israeli settler-colonial violence.
Comments attributed to APAN President Nasser Mashni:
“Funding Project Rozana does not genuinely support Palestinian healthcare – it entrenches Israeli domination over Palestinians lives and rights, while Israel bombs hospitals, blocks aid, kills, imprisons and tortures Palestinian doctors.
“If the Australian government truly cared about Palestinian lives, it would fund Palestinian health services, not Israeli control over Palestinian patients.”
