Independent senator Lidia Thorpe has slammed the federal government's apparent pivot on Gaza as "too little too late".

The Gunnai, Gunditjmara, and Djab Wurring senator for Victoria said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's "Weak words of condemnation are meaningless without action".

"His comments on Israel's latest campaign of forced starvation come 597 days into the genocide in Gaza, while this government continues to supply weapon parts to the IOF," she said on Tuesday.

"For almost two years, the world has watched unfathomable horrors as Gaza becomes a mass grave. We've seen families buried under rubble, hospital floors crowded with the dead and wounded, and surgeries performed without anaesthetic.

"We've heard the cries of mothers and fathers as they hold their maimed children, while Israel continues its campaign of unrelenting psychological warfare and terrorism. Yet Albanese still offers nothing but empty words and cowardice - choosing to remain an ally of Israel."

The federal government has been largely silent on the ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza – and the West Bank – apart from the occasional vague expression of concern.

In November last year, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the former Minister of Defense of Israel, alleging responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts during the Gaza war. Among the jurists who advised the ICC to issue the warrants was Theodor Meron, a Holocaust survivor and former Israeli ambassador to Canada.

On Tuesday, Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy was asked whether the Australian government should sanction the Israeli government over the war in Gaza.

Senator McCarthy did not directly answer the question, but told the ABC there have been "appalling atrocities" in Gaza in recent days that have deeply troubled the government.

"Today we come back to cabinet. Today it will be a conversation and I am confident with our Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, we will get a report back to us, in terms of what we are doing," she said.

Senator Thorpe said that "as Palestinians continue to starve between bombings, Labor will remain complicit in genocide until they sanction Israel, end the arms trade, and join global action".