The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has launched an open letter calling on the Aotearoa New Zealand government to take action on the future of the besieged enclave of Gaza.

The network is asking Foreign Minister Winston Peters to speak up for the people of New Zealand to at least condemn Israel’s use of humanitarian aid as a weapon of war.

It also wants the government to call for international humanitarian and human rights law to be applied.

The PSNA says New Zealand has an internationally respected voice, and “we are asking the government to use this voice” for a lasting peace.

The letter says:

Kia ora Mr Peters,

The situation in Occupied Gaza has reached another crisis point.

Last Sunday [March 2], Israel announced it was ending its January ceasefire agreement with Palestinian groups resisting the occupation and was once more imposing a total ban on humanitarian aid entering Gaza.

Israel says this is because it wants to extend the first phase of the ceasefire agreement rather than negotiate phase two which would see the agreed withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. The renewed blockade on food, water, fuel and medical supplies has been widely condemned as a breach of the ceasefire agreement and the use of “starvation as a weapon of war” by Palestinian groups, international aid organisations and many governments.

The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has called for “humanitarian aid to flow back into Gaza immediately”. Israel has refused this request.

Compounding the crisis is US President Donald Trump’s recently declared intention to permanently remove all the Palestinian people of Gaza and send them to other countries such as Egypt and Jordan so Gaza can be rebuilt as a US territory in the Middle East — in his words “the riviera of the Middle East”.

Israel has accepted this US proposal but Palestinians and the vast majority of governments and civil society groups around the world are appalled at the scheme.

To this point our government has not commented on either Israel’s new blockade of humanitarian supplies into Gaza or the US President’s plan for ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territory.

Back in December 2023, when the government was commenting, the Prime Minister stated “…Israel must respect international humanitarian law. Civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected…Safe and unimpeded humanitarian access must be increased and sustained.”

None of this has happened in the more than 14 months since.

We are asking our government to speak out once more on behalf of the people of New Zealand to, at the very least, condemn Israel’s use of humanitarian aid as a weapon of war and to call for international humanitarian and human rights law to be applied.

We believe the way forward for peace and security for everyone who calls the Middle East home is for all parties to follow international law and United Nations resolutions so that a lasting peace can be established based on justice and equal rights for everyone in the region.

New Zealand has an internationally respected voice which can make a strong contribution to this end. We are asking the government to use this voice.

Labour supports sanctions against Israel
Meanwhile, the opposition Labour Party said it would support Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick’s member’s bill calling for sanctions against Israel for its illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

“The International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared the decades-long occupation illegal and called for Israel’s withdrawal, and for countries like New Zealand to take action,” Labour associate foreign affairs spokesperson Phil Twyford said in a statement.

“The New Zealand government recently voted at the UN General Assembly for a resolution calling for sanctions against Israel on this issue.

“Labour has been calling for stronger action from the government on Israel’s invasion of Gaza, including intervening in South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, creation of a special visa for family members of New Zealanders fleeing Gaza, and ending government procurement from companies operating illegally in the Occupied Territories.”

Twyford said New Zealand had long recognised Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as illegal.

In 2016, the then National government co-sponsored a successful Security Council resolution that Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Territories were illegal.

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Hamas has accused Israel of “cheap and unacceptable blackmail” over its decision to halt the electricity supply to war-ravaged Palestinian enclave of Gaza to pressure the group into releasing the captives.

“We strongly condemn the occupation’s decision to cut off electricity to Gaza, after depriving it of food, medicine, and water,” Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a statement.

He said it was “a desperate attempt to pressure our people and their resistance through cheap and unacceptable blackmail tactics”.

“Cutting off electricity, closing the crossings, stopping aid, relief and fuel, and starving our people, constitutes collective punishment and a full-fledged war crime,” al-Risheq said.

He accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of attempting “to impose a new roadmap” that prioritised his personal interests.

Israel has been widely condemned for violating the terms of the three-phased ceasefire agreement signed on January 19. It has been trying force “renegotiation” of the terms on Hamas by cutting off food supplies and now electricity.

Albanese slams ‘clean water’ cut off
Francesa Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, said Israel’s decision to cut off electricity to Gaza meant “no functioning desalination stations, ergo: no clean water”.

She added that countries that were yet to impose sanctions or an arms embargo on Israel were “AIDING AND ASSISTING Israel in the commission of one of the most preventable genocides of our history”.

According to Human Rights Watch, Israel had already intentionally cut off most ways that Palestinians in Gaza could access water, including by blocking pipelines to Gaza and destroying solar panels used to try to keep some water pumps and desalination and waste management plants running during power outages.

❌GENOCIDE ALERT!❌Israel cutting off electricity supplies to Gaza means, among others, no functioning desalination stations, ergo: no clean water.
STILL NO SANCTION/NO ARMS EMBARGO against Israel means, among others, AIDING AND ASSISTING Israel in the commission of one of the… https://t.co/x2cX4MuP0K

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) March 9, 2025

In a December report, the organisation noted that Palestinians in many areas of Gaza had access to 2 to 9 litres (0.5 to 2 gallons) of water for drinking and washing per day, per person, far below the 15-litre (3.3 gallons) per person threshold for survival.

“At this point in the war, I do not believe that Israel, Hamas and America are far apart. I want to see our people home. All of them, not just the Americans,” he added.

Boehler praises Qatar’s role
US President Donald Trump’s envoy on captives, Adam Boehler, said face-to-face talks with Hamas representatives — the first such discussions between the US and the organisation in 28 years — had been “very useful”.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 13, the envoy dismissed a question by the channel’s reporter, who asked if the US had been “tricked” by Qatar into holding talks with Hamas.

“I don’t think it was a trick by the Qataris at all. It was something we asked for,” he said, reports Al Jazeera.

“They facilitated it. I think the Qataris have been great in this, quite frankly, in a number of different regards. They’ve done a very good job.

“Sometimes, it’s very very hard when you’re talking through intermediaries to understand what people actually want.”

Boehler added that his first question to Hamas was what the movement wanted.

“To me, they said they wanted it [the war] to end. They wanted to give all the prisoners back. They wanted prisoners on the other side. Eventually, we will rebuild Gaza,” he said.

Hamas also knew they would not be in charge of Gaza when the war ended, the US envoy said.

“At this point in the war, I do not believe that Israel, Hamas and America are far apart. I want to see our people home. All of them, not just the Americans,” he added.

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