Palestinian liberation – Evening Report

New Zealand and Gaza: Confronting and not confronting the unspeakable

Asia Pacific Report — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 23:19:13 +0000

ANALYSIS: By Robert Patman

New Zealand’s National-led coalition government’s policy on Gaza seems caught between a desire for a two-state diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and closer alignment with the US, which supports a Netanyahu government strongly opposed to a Palestinian state

In the last 17 months, Gaza has been the scene of what Thomas Merton once called the unspeakable — human wrongdoing on a scale and a depth that seems to go beyond the capacity of words to adequately describe.

The latest Gaza conflict began with a horrific Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that prompted a relentless Israel ground and air offensive in Gaza with full financial, logistical and diplomatic backing from the Biden administration.

During this period, around 50,000 people – 48,903 Palestinians and 1706 Israelis – have been reported killed in the Gaza conflict, according to the official figures of the Gaza Health Ministry, as well as 166 journalists and media workers, 120 academics,and more than 224 humanitarian aid workers.

Moreover, a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, signed in mid-January, seems to be hanging by a thread.

Israel has resumed its blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza and cut off electricity after Hamas rejected an Israeli proposal to extend phase 1 of the ceasefire deal (to release more Israeli hostages) without any commitment to implement phase 2 (that envisaged ending the conflict in Gaza and Israel withdrawing its troops from the territory).

Hamas insists on negotiating phase 2 as signed by both parties in the January ceasefire agreement

Over the weekend, Israel reportedly launched air-strikes in Gaza and the Trump administration unleashed a wave of attacks on Houthi rebel positions in Yemen after the Houthis warned Israel not to restart the war in Gaza.

New Zealand and the Gaza conflict
Although distant in geographic terms, the Gaza crisis represents a major moral and legal challenge to New Zealand’s self-image and its worldview based on the strengthening of an international rules-based order.

New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, emphasised partnership and cooperation between indigenous Māori and European settlers in nation-building.

While the aspirations of the Treaty have yet to be fully realised, the credibility of its vision of reconciliation at home depends on New Zealand’s willingness to uphold respect for human rights and the rule of law in the international arena, particularly in states like Israel where tensions persist between the settler population and Palestinians in occupied territories like the West Bank.

New Zealand’s declaratory stance towards Gaza
In 2023 and 2024, New Zealand consistently backed calls in the UN General Assembly for humanitarian truces or ceasefires in Gaza. It also joined Australia and Canada in February and July last year to demand an end to hostilities.

The New Zealand Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, told the General Assembly in April 2024 that the Security Council had failed in its responsibility “to maintain international peace and security”.

He was right. The Biden administration used its UN Security Council veto four times to perpetuate this brutal onslaught in Gaza for nearly 15 months.

In addition, Peters has repeatedly said there can be no military resolution of a political problem in Gaza that can only be resolved through affirming the Palestinian right to self-determination within the framework of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

The limitations of New Zealand’s Gaza approach
Despite considerable disagreement with Netanyahu’s policy of “mighty vengeance” in Gaza, the National-led coalition government had few qualms about sending a small Defence Force deployment to the Red Sea in January 2024 as part of a US-led coalition effort to counter Houthi rebel attacks on commercial shipping there.

While such attacks are clearly illegal, they are basically part of the fallout from a prolonged international failure to stop the US-enabled carnage in Gaza.

In particular, the NZDF’s Red Sea deployment did not sit comfortably with New Zealand’s acceptance in September 2024 of the ICJ’s ruling that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza) was “unlawful”.

At the same time, the National-led coalition government’s silence on US President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to “own” Gaza, displace two million Palestinian residents and make the territory the “Riviera” of the Middle East was deafening.

Furthermore, while Wellington announced travel bans on violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank in February 2024, it has had little to say publicly about the Netanyahu government’s plans to annex the West Bank in 2025. Such a development would gravely undermine the two-state solution, violate international law, and further fuel regional tensions.

New Zealand’s low-key policy
On balance, the National-led coalition government’s policy towards Gaza appears to be ambivalent and lacking moral and legal clarity in a context in which war crimes have been regularly committed since October 7.

Peters was absolutely correct to condemn the UNSC for failing to deliver the ceasefire that New Zealand and the overwhelming majority of states in the UN General Assembly had wanted from the first month of this crisis.

But the New Zealand government has had no words of criticism for the US, which used its power of veto in the UNSC for more than a year to thwart the prospect of a ceasefire and provided blanket support for an Israeli military campaign that killed huge numbers of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

By cooperating with the Biden administration against Houthi rebels and adopting a quietly-quietly approach to Trump’s provocative comments on Gaza and his apparent willingness to do whatever it takes to help Israel “to get the job done’, New Zealand has revealed a selective approach to upholding international law and human rights in the desperate conditions facing Gaza

Professor Robert G. Patman is an Inaugural Sesquicentennial Distinguished Chair and his research interests concern international relations, global security, US foreign policy, great powers, and the Horn of Africa. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished here with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fiji solidarity network welcomes Gaza ceasefire but calls for ‘justice, accountability’

Asia Pacific Report — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 10:17:50 +0000

Asia Pacific Report

The Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network (FPSN) and its allies have called for “justice and accountability” over Israel’s 15 months of genocide and war crimes.

The Pacific-based network met in a solidarity gathering last night in the capital Suva hosted by the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre and issued a statement.

“A moment of reflection . .. for us as we welcome the ceasefire but emphasise that true peace requires justice and accountability for the Palestinian people,” it said.

“There can be no just and lasting peace without full accountability for the war crimes and human rights violations committed against the Palestinian people.”

The temporary ceasefire began last Sunday with an exchange of three Israeli women hostages held by the freedom fighter movement Hamas for 90 Palestinian women and children held by the Israeli military — most of them without charge or trial — and a massive increase in humanitarian aid.

The Fiji solidarity network said the path to peace must address the root causes — “Israel’s ongoing colonisation of Palestine, its apartheid system and illegal occupation that began with the Nakba 77 years ago.”

The network appealed for continued pressure for Palestinian statehood.

“We urge all supporters of justice and human rights to continue to stand up for Palestine and maintain pressure on our government and institutions until Palestine is free,” it said.

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Marwan Barghouti – the world’s most important hostage – must be freed

Asia Pacific Report — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 07:18:02 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

A litmus test of Israel’s commitment to abandon genocide and start down the road towards lasting peace is whether they choose to release the most important of all the hostages, Marwan Barghouti.

During the past 22 years in Israeli prisons he has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken.

What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian — a symbol of his people’s “legendary steadfastness” and determination to win freedom from occupation and resist the genocidal forces of the US, Israel and their Western enablers like Australia and New Zealand.

As reported last week, Egypt, Qatar and Hamas are all insisting Barghouti, the most popular leader in Palestine, be among the thousands of Palestinian hostages to be freed as part of the ceasefire agreement.

His release or retention in captivity will say volumes about which path the US and Israel wish to take: either more land thieving, more killings, more lawlessness or steps towards ending the occupation and choosing peace over territorial expansion.

Why is Barghouti potentially so important? Despite long years in Israeli jails, he is a political giant who bestrides the Palestinian cause. He is an intellectual and both a fighter and a peace activist.

He is respected by all factions of the Palestinians. He is by far the most popular figure in Palestine and as such he is almost uniquely positioned to complete the vital task of uniting his people.

Back in July last year the Chinese government pulled off a diplomatic masterstroke by getting 14 factions, including Hamas and Fatah, to successfully come together for reconciliation talks and ink the Beijing Declaration on Ending Division and Strengthening Palestinian National Unity. Now they need a unifying leader to move forward together.

Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas is despised as a US-Israeli tool by most Palestinians, 90 percent of whom, according to polling, want him gone. Hamas has represented the most effective resistance to Israel but the time may have come for them to accept partnership with, even leadership by, someone who can negotiate peace.

How Gaza and the West Bank is governed should be determined by the Palestinian people not by anyone else, especially not by Israeli leaders currently under investigation for genocide or US leaders who should join them in the dock for arming them.

Hypocritical rejection of Hamas
Barghouti, however, could untie the Gordian knot that has formed around the West’s hypocritical rejection of Hamas on one hand and the Palestinian people’s determination not to be dictated to by their oppressors on the other.

Barghouti may also be a saviour for the Israelis. Their society has turned into a psychotic perversion of the great hope Jews around the world placed in the Israeli state.

As Israeli soldiers have shown us in countless Tik-tok videos the IDF has become an army of rapists and child killers — these very deeds celebrated by the highest political and religious leaders in the country.

Israel is now the greatest killer of journalists in the history of war, the remorseless destroyer of hospitals and their patients and staff, the desecrator of countless churches and mosques. Tens of thousands of women have been killed for the sake of killing.

Israel is guilty of the crime of crimes — genocide — and needs a way out of the mess it has created.

For all these reasons Marwan Barghouti is a very dangerous man to Netanyahu and the most fanatical Zionists. He believes in peace.

In my profile of him a year ago I quoted his wife, lawyer and activist Fadwa Barghouti: “Marwan’s goal has always been ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. Marwan Barghouti believes in politics. He’s a political and national leader loved by his people.

‘Fought for peace’
“He fought for peace with bravery and spent time on the Palestinian street advocating for peace. But he also believes in international law, which gives the occupied people the right to fight for their independence and freedom.”

Alon Liel, formerly Israel’s most senior diplomat, proposed freeing Barghouti because he is “the ultimate leader of the Palestinian people,” and “he is the only one who can extricate us from the quagmire we are in.”

Marwan Barghouti has the moral, political and popular stature to reach out to the Israelis, to see past their crimes and to sit down with them. If only. If only. If only.

The horrible reality is Israel and the US have been led by war criminals who fail to grasp the fact that peace is only possible if they abandon the vilification of the Palestinian people and their leaders; that a better world is only possible if the Palestinians are finally given freedom and dignity.

It will be a relief to everyone to see the remaining few dozen Israelis held by Hamas and other groups released. They deserve to be home with their families.

It will be a relief that thousands of Palestinian hostages be freed, many of them, according to Israel’s leading human rights organisation B’tselem, victims of torture, sexual violence and medieval conditions. Hundreds of Palestinian child hostages — all of them traumatised — will be returned to their families.

All these are welcome developments. Strategically, however, Marwan Barghouti stands apart.

Palestinian Marwan Barghouti . . . a symbol of his people’s “legendary steadfastness” and determination to win freedom from occupation and resist the genocidal forces of the US, Israel and their Western enablers like Australia and New Zealand. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz/

Uniquely suited to lead Palestine
Long considered the “Palestinian Mandela” — not least because of his 22-years continuous imprisonment — the former Fatah leader, the former military leader, has attributes that make him almost uniquely suited to lead Palestine to freedom — if Israel and the US are prepared to abandon the Greater Israel project and accept peace can only come with justice for all.

That’s a big “If”.

Barghouti, returned to jail in 2002, after being convicted in what is considered by many scholars an illegal and deeply flawed Israeli show trial on five counts of murder. He denies the charges and does not recognise the court.

He has lived for more than 22 years in conditions far more barbaric than the great South African leader had to endure on Robben Island. According to Israeli human rights groups, family and international lawyers, Barghouti has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken.

What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian – a symbol of his people’s “legendary steadfastness” and determination to win freedom from occupation and resistance to the genocidal forces of the US, Israel and their Western enablers like Australia and New Zealand.

Marwan Barghouti is the same age as me — 65 — and it fills me with horror that a man who has spent decades fighting for freedom, and, if possible, peace, has been subjected to the horrors of an Israeli gulag for so long.

I am not sure I would have had the physical or mental strength to endure what he has but — like Mandela — he kept his humanity and has remained an advocate for peace.

We should never forget that seven million Palestinians remain as hostages held in brutal conditions by the US and Israel. Most are hostages without human rights, political rights, territorial rights.

As Palestinians have pointed out: imprisonment is now part of Palestinian consciousness. But — as Marwan Barghouti has shown with his iron will, his human decency, his determination to continue to be an advocate for peace with Israel — you can imprison the Palestinians but not their struggle.

I’ll give the last word to his son, Arab Barghouti who told Mehdi Hasan on Zeteo this week, “My father used to always tell me that hope is sometimes a privilege, but being ‘hope-less’ is a privilege that we can’t have as Palestinians.”

In the same interview he also said:

“If any Israeli leader really wants an end to this and to have peace for the region, they would see that my father is someone that would bring that and is someone who still believes in the tiny chance left for the two-state solution.”

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

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