SPECIAL REPORT: By Ben Bohane

We are no more than 5 minutes out of Bethlehem on a crisp December morning when my  Palestinian driver — let’s call him Ahmed — stops and points to a curl of smoke rising in the valley below, near Beit Jala.

“That’s a local restaurant the Israeli’s are burning since last night. They demand permits even when it is on family land. Israel then gives demolition orders, and no one can stop them.”

It’s the day before Christmas. I’m in the West Bank and Israel for a month to see the situation for myself, to try and understand how this comparatively small area continues to hijack history and our news agenda.

Gaza remains off-limits to all foreign media attempting to report on Israel’s genocide there, so I can’t go.

The international Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) states 249 media personnel have been killed so far by Israel in Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Israel and Iran since the Gaza war began.

Israel has killed more journalists in the past three years than any other government in history,

assassinating more than all media personnel killed in all the wars of the 20th century combined.

Israel has also now banned many reputable international NGOs from operating there. In late January, the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces)  finally acknowledged the death toll tally compiled by Palestinian health authorities as accurate, saying it believed 71,000 people had been killed so far — the death toll is now more than 72,000.

I’ve come to the other front, the West Bank, as Israeli settlers and the IDF establish new illegal settlements and make life difficult for Palestinians just trying to eke out a living.

While I’m there, Israel announces 19 new settlements, bringing to 69 the number of new settlements approved in the past few years.

They are slowly circling and strangling Palestinian towns by taking the high ground on hilltops, establishing their own roads to link up with other settlements, and destroying ancient olive groves which locals have long relied on for a meagre income.

Some of these trees are many hundreds of years old, and their desecration seems somehow symbolic of Israel’s attempts to change history and geography.

“We are trapped here”, says Ahmed. “Ever since October 7, Israel has closed off our access to Jerusalem and the rest of Israel. A lot of businesses are struggling to survive after 5 years of shutdowns — first it was covid, and then the Gaza war. No tourists for years.”

Unless they are employed in one of a handful of jobs, such as in hospitals or working for a Christian organisation, Palestinians in the West Bank can’t leave. Denied both Palestinian statehood and Israeli citizenship,

West Bank Palestinians are caught in a limbo where they can’t travel into wider Israel or beyond.

“Israel controls all our movements, all our water, and controls our petrol supply”, says Ahmed. “The only thing they don’t control is the air we breathe, and if they could control that, they would.”

Bulldozer warfare
We visit a home recently bulldozed by settlers and fields uprooted because they were considered too close to the expanding nearby Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit. As locals lose access to their olive orchards, the only trees safe are those within towns or around their homes.

I see a young boy with a wheelbarrow full of seedlings and uprooted olive saplings moving towards a nearby field. Ahmed translates:

“The boy says that part of their resistance is to immediately replant the olive trees when settlers chop them down. The olives aren’t just an income for us, they are part of our identity on this land.”

We have to be quick when visiting the contested edges of these towns and fields, as settlers are always watching from nearby hilltops and the IDF can be on the scene in less than 5 minutes. On two occasions, my driver yells to get us back in the car for a hurried exit when he spots settlers driving down to intercept us.

Returning to Bethlehem, the annual Christmas parade is underway. Hundreds of Palestinian, Arab and Armenian Christians in uniforms march along roads leading to Manger Square in the heart of Bethlehem.

Palestinian Authority police guard the route and churches, including the Orthodox Basilica of the Nativity, first begun by Emperor Constantine’s Christian mother Saint Helena in the 4th century. Under this Byzantine church is a grotto where Jesus was supposedly born.

This is the first time in two years that Christmas celebrations, including a huge Christmas tree, have taken place. With few foreign tourists, shops in Bethlehem are happy to see many Muslim families from across the West Bank visiting with children to see Santa and the holy sites. It’s a peaceful time with Christian and Muslim families celebrating together.

I met Father Issa Thaljieh, a Palestinian (Greek Orthodox) priest overseeing the Basilica.

“Issa” is the Muslim name for Jesus. He says the number of Christians continues to dwindle, from 10 percent of the Palestinian population during the British mandate period 100 years ago, to around 1 percent today. Most live overseas now, with Israel incentivising their departure.

Apartheid
One thing I hadn’t known until I came here is that Israelis are forbidden from entering any West Bank towns. At the entrance to many towns I visited, including Jericho and Bethlehem, are large road signs in red warning Israeli citizens not to enter.

Although usually framed as a security measure to prevent kidnapping, it has the additional impact of preventing ordinary Israelis and Palestinians from mixing together and stops Israelis from really understanding what is going on across the West Bank. It underlined the sense of apartheid, along with the long winding separation wall that snakes between Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank.

Always interested in art and graffiti as forms of resistance, I cruise a length of the wall, near two refugee camps inside Bethlehem and come across artist Banksy’s “Walled Off” hotel, which had only reopened the week before after 5 years of closure.

Upstairs is a gallery supporting local artists, downstairs a museum about the wall and “occupation”, along with a chintzy piano bar styled like a frontier saloon.

The hotel faces a section of the wall emblazoned with graffiti and promises “the worst views in the world”. The wall began construction substantially in 2002, runs for 810 kms and is Israel’s biggest infrastructure project. Banksy’s museum quotes the man put in charge of the build, Danny Tirza:

“The main thing the government told me in giving me the job was,

to include as many Israelis inside the fence and leave as many Palestinians outside as possible.

Down the road, a number of local stores have popped up selling cheap Banksy merch, and apparently, Banksy is fine with all the rip-offs.

Other days are spent visiting Jericho and Hebron with its shrine containing the tomb of Abraham, patriarch of all the monotheistic faiths.

It is a town often at flashpoint between Palestinians and hardcore Israeli settlers who have moved right into pockets of the town, protected by IDF soldiers. A day trip to Ramallah is aborted when my driver says that Israeli forces had entered that morning to destroy dozens of shops and shot two people.

“It’s too dangerous today to visit, and besides, it would take us 5 hours to get through the checkpoints instead of one hour as normal,” he says.

Every day across the West Bank, Palestinians must navigate security challenges, declining business and hungry families. Given the impunity with which Israel operates in Gaza, Palestinians across the West Bank are still standing their ground, but without much hope that the international community will stop Israel’s encroachment.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government wants to extinguish any hope of a two-state solution, but Palestinians will not cede their homes — or their olive trees — easily.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

SPECIAL REPORT: By Ben Bohane

We are no more than 5 minutes out of Bethlehem on a crisp December morning when my  Palestinian driver — let’s call him Ahmed — stops and points to a curl of smoke rising in the valley below, near Beit Jala.

“That’s a local restaurant the Israeli’s are burning since last night. They demand permits even when it is on family land. Israel then gives demolition orders, and no one can stop them.”

It’s the day before Christmas. I’m in the West Bank and Israel for a month to see the situation for myself, to try and understand how this comparatively small area continues to hijack history and our news agenda.

Gaza remains off-limits to all foreign media attempting to report on Israel’s genocide there, so I can’t go.

The international Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) states 249 media personnel have been killed so far by Israel in Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Israel and Iran since the Gaza war began.

Israel has killed more journalists in the past three years than any other government in history,

assassinating more than all media personnel killed in all the wars of the 20th century combined.

Israel has also now banned many reputable international NGOs from operating there. In late January, the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces)  finally acknowledged the death toll tally compiled by Palestinian health authorities as accurate, saying it believed 71,000 people had been killed so far — the death toll is now more than 72,000.

I’ve come to the other front, the West Bank, as Israeli settlers and the IDF establish new illegal settlements and make life difficult for Palestinians just trying to eke out a living.

While I’m there, Israel announces 19 new settlements, bringing to 69 the number of new settlements approved in the past few years.

They are slowly circling and strangling Palestinian towns by taking the high ground on hilltops, establishing their own roads to link up with other settlements, and destroying ancient olive groves which locals have long relied on for a meagre income.

Some of these trees are many hundreds of years old, and their desecration seems somehow symbolic of Israel’s attempts to change history and geography.

“We are trapped here”, says Ahmed. “Ever since October 7, Israel has closed off our access to Jerusalem and the rest of Israel. A lot of businesses are struggling to survive after 5 years of shutdowns — first it was covid, and then the Gaza war. No tourists for years.”

Unless they are employed in one of a handful of jobs, such as in hospitals or working for a Christian organisation, Palestinians in the West Bank can’t leave. Denied both Palestinian statehood and Israeli citizenship,

West Bank Palestinians are caught in a limbo where they can’t travel into wider Israel or beyond.

“Israel controls all our movements, all our water, and controls our petrol supply”, says Ahmed. “The only thing they don’t control is the air we breathe, and if they could control that, they would.”

Bulldozer warfare
We visit a home recently bulldozed by settlers and fields uprooted because they were considered too close to the expanding nearby Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit. As locals lose access to their olive orchards, the only trees safe are those within towns or around their homes.

I see a young boy with a wheelbarrow full of seedlings and uprooted olive saplings moving towards a nearby field. Ahmed translates:

“The boy says that part of their resistance is to immediately replant the olive trees when settlers chop them down. The olives aren’t just an income for us, they are part of our identity on this land.”

We have to be quick when visiting the contested edges of these towns and fields, as settlers are always watching from nearby hilltops and the IDF can be on the scene in less than 5 minutes. On two occasions, my driver yells to get us back in the car for a hurried exit when he spots settlers driving down to intercept us.

Returning to Bethlehem, the annual Christmas parade is underway. Hundreds of Palestinian, Arab and Armenian Christians in uniforms march along roads leading to Manger Square in the heart of Bethlehem.

Palestinian Authority police guard the route and churches, including the Orthodox Basilica of the Nativity, first begun by Emperor Constantine’s Christian mother Saint Helena in the 4th century. Under this Byzantine church is a grotto where Jesus was supposedly born.

This is the first time in two years that Christmas celebrations, including a huge Christmas tree, have taken place. With few foreign tourists, shops in Bethlehem are happy to see many Muslim families from across the West Bank visiting with children to see Santa and the holy sites. It’s a peaceful time with Christian and Muslim families celebrating together.

I met Father Issa Thaljieh, a Palestinian (Greek Orthodox) priest overseeing the Basilica.

“Issa” is the Muslim name for Jesus. He says the number of Christians continues to dwindle, from 10 percent of the Palestinian population during the British mandate period 100 years ago, to around 1 percent today. Most live overseas now, with Israel incentivising their departure.

Apartheid
One thing I hadn’t known until I came here is that Israelis are forbidden from entering any West Bank towns. At the entrance to many towns I visited, including Jericho and Bethlehem, are large road signs in red warning Israeli citizens not to enter.

Although usually framed as a security measure to prevent kidnapping, it has the additional impact of preventing ordinary Israelis and Palestinians from mixing together and stops Israelis from really understanding what is going on across the West Bank. It underlined the sense of apartheid, along with the long winding separation wall that snakes between Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank.

Always interested in art and graffiti as forms of resistance, I cruise a length of the wall, near two refugee camps inside Bethlehem and come across artist Banksy’s “Walled Off” hotel, which had only reopened the week before after 5 years of closure.

Upstairs is a gallery supporting local artists, downstairs a museum about the wall and “occupation”, along with a chintzy piano bar styled like a frontier saloon.

The hotel faces a section of the wall emblazoned with graffiti and promises “the worst views in the world”. The wall began construction substantially in 2002, runs for 810 kms and is Israel’s biggest infrastructure project. Banksy’s museum quotes the man put in charge of the build, Danny Tirza:

“The main thing the government told me in giving me the job was,

to include as many Israelis inside the fence and leave as many Palestinians outside as possible.

Down the road, a number of local stores have popped up selling cheap Banksy merch, and apparently, Banksy is fine with all the rip-offs.

Other days are spent visiting Jericho and Hebron with its shrine containing the tomb of Abraham, patriarch of all the monotheistic faiths.

It is a town often at flashpoint between Palestinians and hardcore Israeli settlers who have moved right into pockets of the town, protected by IDF soldiers. A day trip to Ramallah is aborted when my driver says that Israeli forces had entered that morning to destroy dozens of shops and shot two people.

“It’s too dangerous today to visit, and besides, it would take us 5 hours to get through the checkpoints instead of one hour as normal,” he says.

Every day across the West Bank, Palestinians must navigate security challenges, declining business and hungry families. Given the impunity with which Israel operates in Gaza, Palestinians across the West Bank are still standing their ground, but without much hope that the international community will stop Israel’s encroachment.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government wants to extinguish any hope of a two-state solution, but Palestinians will not cede their homes — or their olive trees — easily.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The word “Gaza” is taking on similar connotations to what the word “Auschwitz” meant to a previous generation. It signifies a deliberate and systematic attempt to erase an entire people from history on the basis of their ethnic identity.

As a result, Israel is isolating itself as a pariah state on the world stage. This week alone has seen Israel target and kill four Al Jazeera journalists, just as it had executed eight Red Crescent medical staff and seven other first responders back in March, and then dumped their bodies in a mass grave.

Overall 186 journalists have died at the hands of the IDF since October 7, 2023, and at least 1400 medical staff as of May 2025.

On Monday night a five-year-old disabled child starved to death. Reportedly, he weighed only three kilograms when he died. Muhammad Zakaria Khudr was the 101st child among the 227 Palestinians now reported to have died from starvation.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters keep on saying that with regard to New Zealand recognising a Palestinian state, it is a matter of “Not if, but when.” Yet why is “ but not now” still their default position?

At this rate, a country that used to pride itself on its human rights record — New Zealand has never stopped bragging that this is where women won the right to vote, before they did anywhere else — will be among the last countries on earth to recognise Palestine’s right to exist.

What can we do? Some options:

1. Boycott all Israeli goods and services;
2. Engage with the local Palestinian community, and support their businesses, and cultural events;
3. Donate financial support to Gaza. Here’s a reliable link to directy support pregnant Gaza women and their babies;
4. Lobby your local MP, and Immigration Minister Erika Stanford — to prioritise the inclusion of hundreds of Gazans in our refugee programme, just as we did in the wake of the civil war in Syria, and earlier, in Sudan;
5. Write and phone your local MP, and urge them to support economic sanctions against Israel. These sanctions should include a sporting and cultural boycott along the lines we pursued so successfully against apartheid South Africa
6. Contact your KiwiSaver provider and let it be known that you will change providers if they invest in Israeli firms, or in the US, German and UK firms that supply the IDF with weapons and targeting systems. Contact the NZ Super Fund and urge them to divest along similar lines;
7. Identify and picket any NZ firms that supply the US/Israeli war machines directly, or indirectly;
8. Contact your local MP and urge him or her to support Chloe Swarbrick’s private member’s bill that would impose economic sanctions on the state of Israel for its unlawful occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Swarbrick’s Bill is modelled on the existing Russian sanctions framework.If 61 MPs pledged support for Swarbrick’s Bill, it would not have to win a private members ballot before being debated in Parliament. Currently 21 MPs (the Greens and TPM) formally support it. If and when Labour’s 34 MPs come on board, this will still require another six MPs (from across the three coalition parties) to do the right thing. Goading MPs into doing the right thing got Swarbrick into a world of  trouble this week. (Those wacky Greens. They’re such idealists.);
9. We should all be lobbying our local MPs for a firm commitment that they will back the Swarbrick Bill. Portray it to them as being in the spirit of bi-partisanship, and as them supporting the several UN resolutions on the status of the occupied territories. And if they still baulk ask them flatly: if not, why not?
10. Email/phone/write to the PM’s office, and ask him to call in the Israeli ambassador and personally express New Zealand’s repugnance at Israel’s inhumane actions in Gaza and on the West Bank. The PM should also be communicating in person New Zealand’s opposition to the recently announced Israeli plans for the annexation of Gaza City, and expansion of the war in Gaza.
11. Write to your MP, to the PM, and to Foreign Minister Winston Peters urging them to recognise Palestinian statehood right now. Inquire as to what further information they may need before making that decision, and offer to supply it. We need to learn how to share our outrage; and
12. Learn about the history of this issue, so that you convince friends and family to take similar actions.

Here’s a bare bones timeline of the main historical events.

This map showing (in white) the countries that are yet to recognise Palestinian statehood speaks volumes:

Those holdout nations in white tend to have been the chief enablers of Israel’s founding in 1948, a gesture of atonement driven by European guilt over the Holocaust.

This “homeland” for the Jews already had residents known to have had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Yet since 1948 the people of Palestine have been made to bear all of the bad consequences of the West’s purging of its collective guilt.

Conditional justice
The same indifference to the lives of Palestinians is evident in the belated steps towards supporting the right of Palestinians to self-determination. Even the recognition promised by the UK, Canada, France and Australia next month is decked out with further conditions that the Palestinians are being told they need to meet. No equivalent demands are being made of Israel, despite the atrocities it is committing in Gaza.

There’s nothing new about this. Historically, all of the concessions have been made by the Palestinians, starting with their original displacement. Some 30 years ago, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) formally recognised Israel’s right to exist. In response, Israel immediately expanded its settlements on Palestinian land, a flagrant breach of the commitments it made in the Oslo Accords, and in the Gaza-Jericho Agreement.

The West did nothing, said little.  As the New York Times recently pointed out:

In a 1993 exchange of letters, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s chairman, Yasir Arafat, recognized the “right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security” and committed the PLO to peaceful negotiations, renouncing terrorism and amending the Palestinian charter to reflect these commitments. In return, Israel would merely recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people — and only “in light of” Mr Arafat’s commitments. Palestinian sovereignty remained remote; Israeli occupation continued apace.

This double standard persists:

This fundamental unfairness has informed every diplomatic effort since. The rump Palestinian government built the limited institutions it was permitted under the Oslo Accords, co-operated with Israeli security forces and voiced support for a peace process that had long been undermined by Israel. Led by then-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority’s statehood campaign in the 2000s was entirely based on playing the game according to rules set by Israel and the Western-dominated international community. Yet recognition remained stalled, the United States blocked Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations — and still, no conditions were placed on the occupying power.

That’s where we’re still at. Luxon, Peters and David Seymour are demanding more concessions from the Palestinians. They keep strongly denouncing the Hamas October 7 atrocities — which is valid — while weakly urging Israel to abide by the international laws and conventions that Israel repeatedly breaches.

When a state deploys famine as a strategic weapon, doesn’t it deserve to be condemned, up front and personal?

Instead, the language that New Zealand uses to address Israel’s crimes  is almost invariably, and selectively, passive. Terrible things are “happening” in Gaza and they must “stop.” Children, mysteriously, are “starving.” This is “intolerable.”

It is as if there is no human agent, and no state power responsible for these outcomes. Things are just somehow “happening” and they must somehow “cease.” Enough is enough, cries Peters, while carefully choosing not to name names, beyond Hamas.

Meanwhile, Israel has announced its plans to expand the war, even though 600 Israeli ex-officials (some of them from Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent to the SIS) have publicly said that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel.

As mentioned, Israel is publicly discussing its plans for Gaza’s “voluntary emigration” and for the permanent annexation of the West Bank. Even when urged to do so by Christopher Luxon, it seems that Israel is not actually complying with international law, and is not fulfilling its legal obligations as an occupying power. Has anyone told Luxon about this yet?

Two state fantasy, one state reality
At one level, continuing to call for a “two state” solution is absurd, given that the Knesset formally rejected the proposal a year ago. More than once, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly denounced it while also laying Israel’s claim to all of the land west of Jordan, which would include the West Bank and Gaza.

Evidently, the slogan “ from the river to sea” is only a terrorist slogan when Hamas uses it. Yet the phrase originated as a Likud slogan.Moreover, the West evidently thinks it is quite OK for Netanyahu to publicly call for Israeli hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Basic rule of diplomacy: bad is what they do, good is what we do, and we have always been on Team Israel.

Over the course of the three decades since the Oslo Accords were signed, the West has kept on advocating for a two state solution, while acting as if only one of those states has a right to exist. On what land do Luxon and Peters think that a viable Palestinian state can be built?

One pre-condition for Palestinian statehood that Luxon cited to RNZ last week required Israel to be “not undermining the territorial integrity that would then undermine the two state solution.” Really? Does Luxon not realise that this is exactly what Israel has been doing for the past 30 years?

Talking of which . . .  are Luxon and Peters genuinely expecting Israel to retreat to the 1967 borders? That land was agreed at Oslo and mandated by the UN as the territory needed for a viable Palestinian state. Yet on the relatively small area of the West Bank alone, 3.4 million Palestinians currently subsist on disconnected patches of land under occupation amid extreme settler violence, while contending with 614 Israeli checkpoints and other administrative obstacles impeding their free movement.

Here’s what the land left to the Palestinians looks like today:

A brief backgrounder on Areas A, B and C and how they operate can be found here.  Obviously, this situation cannot be the template for a viable Palestinian state.

What is the point?
You might well ask . . . in the light of the above, what is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? Given the realities on the ground, it can only be a symbolic gesture. The reversion to the 1967 borders (a necessary step towards a Palestinian state) can happen only if the US agreed to push Israel in that direction by withholding funds and weaponry.

That’s very hard to imagine. The hypocrisy of the Western nations on this issue is breath-taking. The US and Germany continue to be Israel’s main foreign suppliers of weapons and targeting systems. Under Keir Starmer’s leadership as well, the UK sales of military equipment to Israel have sharply increased.

New export licensing figures show that the UK approved licenses for £127.6 million worth of military equipment to Israel in single issue licenses between October to December 2024. This is a massive increase, with the figure in this three-month period totaling more than 2020-2023 combined.

Thanks to an explicitly enacted legal exemption, the UK also continues to supply parts for Israel’s F-35 jets.

UK industry makes 15% of every F-35 in contracts [estimated] to be worth at least £500 million since 2016, and [this] is the most significant part of the UK arms industry [relationship]with Israel . . . at least 79 companies [are] involved in manufacturing components.

These are the same F-35 war planes that the IDF has used to drop 2000 pound bombs on densely populated residential neighbourhoods in Gaza. Starmer cannot credibly pose as a man of peace.

So again . . . what exactly is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? No doubt, it would boost Palestinian morale if some major Western powers finally conceded that Palestine has a right to exist. In that narrow sense, recognition would correct a historical injustice.

There is also optimistic talk that formal Palestinian statehood would isolate the US on the Security Council (Trump would probably wear that as a badge of honour) and would make Israel more accountable under humanitarian law. As if.

Theoretically, a recognition of statehood would also enable people in New Zealand and elsewhere to apply pressure to their governments to forthrightly condemn and sanction Israel for its crimes against a fellow UN member state. None of this, however, is likely to change the reality on the ground, or prevent the calls for Israel’s “accountability” and for its “compliance with international law” from ringing hollow.

As the NYT also says:

After almost two years of severe access restrictions and the dismantling of the UN-led aid system in favour of a militarised food distribution that has left more than 1300 Palestinians dead, [now 1838 dead at these “aid centres”  since late May, as of yesterday] . . . The 15 nations [at a UN meeting in late July that signed a declaration on Gaza] still would not collectively say “Israel is responsible for starvation in Gaza”. If they cannot name the problem, they can hardly hope to resolve it.

In sum . . . the world may talk the talk of Palestinian statehood being a matter of “not if, but when” and witter on about the “irreversible steps” being taken toward statehood, and finally — somewhere over the rainbow — towards a two state solution.  Faint chance:

“For those who are starving today, the only irreversible step is death. Until statehood recognition brings action — arms embargoes, sanctions, enforcement of international law — it will remain a largely empty promise that serves primarily to distract from Western complicity in Gaza’s destruction.

Exactly. Behind the words of concern are the actions of complicity. The people of Gaza do not have time to wait for symbolic actions, or for sanctions to weaken Israel’s appetite for genocide. Consider this option: would New Zealand support an intervention in Gaza by a UN-led international force to save Gaza’s dwindling population, and to ensure that international humanitarian law is respected, however belatedly?

Would we be willing to commit troops to such a force if asked to do so by the UN Secretary-General? That is what is now needed.

Footnote One: On Gaza, the Luxon government has a high tolerance for double standards and Catch 22 conditions. We are insisting that the Palestinians must release the remaining hostages unconditionally, lay down their arms and de-militarise the occupied territories. Yet we are applying no similar pre-conditions on Israel to withdraw, de-militarise the same space, release all their Palestinian prisoners, allow the unrestricted distribution of food and medical supplies, and negotiate a sustainable peace.

Understandably, Hamas has tied the release of the remaining hostages to the Israeli cessation of their onslaught, to unfettered aid distribution, and to a long-term commitment to Palestinian self-rule.  Otherwise, once the Israeli hostages are home, there would be nothing to stop Israel from renewing the genocide.

We are also demanding that Hamas be excluded from any future governing arrangement in Gaza, but – simultaneously – Peters told the House recently that this governing arrangement must also be “representative.” Catch 22. “Representative” democracy it seems, means voting for the people pre-selected by the West. Again, no matching demands have been made of Israel with respect to its role in the future governance of Gaza, or about its obligation to rebuild what it has criminally destroyed.

Footnote Two: There is only one rational explanation for why New Zealand is currently holding back from joining the UK, Canada, France and Australia in voting next month to recognise Palestine as a full UN member state. It seems we are cravenly hoping that Australia’s stance will be viewed with such disfavour by Donald Trump that he will punish Canberra by lifting its tariff rate from 10%, thereby erasing the 5% advantage that Australia currently enjoys oven us in the US market.

At least this tells us what the selling price is for our “independent” foreign policy. We’re prepared to sell it out to the Americans – and sell out the Palestinians in the process – if, by sitting on the fence for now, we can engineer parity for our exports with Australia in US markets. ANZAC mates, forever.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Ilan Pappé

Responses in the Western world to the genocide in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank raise a troubling question: why is the official West, and official Western Europe in particular, so indifferent to Palestinian suffering?

Why is the Democratic Party in the US complicit, directly and indirectly, in sustaining the daily inhumanity in Palestine — a complicity so visible that it probably was one reason they lost the election, as the Arab American and progressive vote in key states could, and justifiably so, not forgive the Biden administration for its part in the genocide in the Gaza Strip?

This is a pertinent question, given that we are dealing with a televised genocide that has now been renewed on the ground. It is different from previous periods in which Western indifference and complicity were displayed, either during the Nakba or the long years of occupation since 1967.

During the Nakba and up to 1967, it was not easy to get hold of information, and the oppression after 1967 was mostly incremental, and, as such, was ignored by the Western media and politics, which refused to acknowledge its cumulative effect on the Palestinians.

But these last 18 months are very different. Ignoring the genocide in the Gaza Strip and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank can only be described as intentional and not due to ignorance.

Both the Israelis’ actions and the discourse that accompanies them are too visible to be ignored, unless politicians, academics, and journalists choose to do so.

This kind of ignorance is, first and foremost, the result of successful Israeli lobbying that thrived on the fertile ground of an European guilt complex, racism and Islamophobia. In the case of the US, it is also the outcome of many years of an effective and ruthless lobbying machine that very few in academia, media, and, in particular, politics, dare to disobey.

The moral panic phenomenon
This phenomenon is known in recent scholarship as moral panic, very characteristic of the more conscientious sections of Western societies: intellectuals, journalists, and artists.

Moral panic is a situation in which a person is afraid of adhering to his or her own moral convictions because this would demand some courage that might have consequences. We are not always tested in situations that require courage, or at least integrity. When it does happen, it is in situations where morality is not an abstract idea, but a call for action.

This is why so many Germans were silent when Jews were sent to extermination camps, and this is why white Americans stood by when African Americans were lynched or, earlier on, enslaved and abused.

What is the price that leading Western journalists, veteran politicians, tenured professors, or chief executives of well-known companies would have to pay if they were to blame Israel for committing a genocide in the Gaza Strip?

It seems they are worried about two possible outcomes. The first is being condemned as antisemites or Holocaust deniers. Secondly, they fear an honest response would trigger a discussion that would include the complicity of their country, or Europe, or the West in general, in enabling the genocide and all the criminal policies against the Palestinians that preceded it.

This moral panic leads to some astonishing phenomena. In general, it transforms educated, highly articulate and knowledgeable people into total imbeciles when they talk about Palestine.

It disallows the more perceptive and thoughtful members of the security services from examining Israeli demands to include all Palestinian resistance on a terrorist list, and it dehumanises Palestinian victims in the mainstream media.

On ‘Moral Panic’ and the Courage to Speak – Professor Ilan Pappé examines how fear of professional consequences silences Western voices in the face of genocide in Gaza — and what this reveals about power, complicity, and moral responsibility.

Don’t miss this exclusive article.… pic.twitter.com/bnYHYVNckM

— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) April 18, 2025

Lack of compassion
The lack of compassion and basic solidarity with the victims of genocide was exposed by the double standards shown by mainstream media in the West, and, in particular, by the more established newspapers in the US, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

When the editor of The Palestine Chronicle, Dr Ramzy Baroud, lost 56 members of his family — killed by the Israeli genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip — not one of his colleagues in American journalism bothered to talk to him or show any interest in hearing about this atrocity.

On the other hand, a fabricated Israeli allegation of a connection between the Chronicle and a family, in whose block of flats hostages were held, triggered huge interest by these outlets.

This imbalance in humanity and solidarity is just one example of the distortions that accompanies moral panic. I have little doubt that the actions against Palestinian or pro-Palestinian students in the US, or against known activists in Britain and France, as well as the arrest of the editor of the Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah, in Switzerland, are all manifestations of this distorted moral behaviour.

A similar case unfolded just recently in Australia. Mary Kostakidis, a famous Australian journalist and former prime-time weeknight SBS World News Australia presenter, has been taken to the federal court over her — one should say quite tame — reporting on the situation in the Gaza Strip.

The very fact that the court has not dismissed this allegation upon its arrival shows you how deeply rooted moral panic is in the Global North.

But there is another side to it. Thankfully, there is a much larger group of people who are not afraid of taking the risks involved in clearly stating their support for the Palestinians, and who do show this solidarity while knowing it may lead to suspension, deportation, or even jail time. They are not easily found among the mainstream academia, media, or politics, but they are the authentic voice of their societies in many parts of the Western world.

The Palestinians do not have the luxury of allowing Western moral panic to have its say or impact. Not caving in to this panic is one small but important step in building a global Palestine network that is urgently needed — firstly, to stop the destruction of Palestine and its people, and second, to create the conditions for a decolonised and liberated Palestine in the future.

Dr Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian, political scientist, and former politician. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. This article is republished from The Palestine Chronicle, 19 April 2025.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

We end today’s show in The Hague, where the International Court of Justice ruled last Friday that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal, should come to an end — “as rapidly as possible”.

Israel’s illegal military occupation of the Palestinian Territories began in 1967, has since forcefully expanded, killing and displacing thousands of Palestinians. ICJ Presiding Judge Nawaf Salam read the nonbinding legal opinion, deeming Israel’s presence in the territories illegal.

JUDGE NAWAF SALAM: [translated] “Israel must immediately cease all new settlement activity. Israel also has an obligation to repeal all legislation and measures creating or maintaining the unlawful situation, including those which discriminate against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as well as all measures aimed at modifying the demographic composition of any parts of the territory.

“Israel is also under an obligation to provide full reparations for the damage caused by its internationally wrongful acts to all natural or legal persons concerned.”

AMY GOODMAN: The court also said other nations are obligated not to legally recognise Israel’s decades-long occupation of the territories and, “not to render aid or assistance,” to the occupation.

The 15-judge panel said Israel had no right to sovereignty of the territories and pointed to a number of Israeli actions, such as the construction and violent expansion of illegal Israeli settlements across West Bank and East Jerusalem, the forced permanent control over Palestinian lands, and discriminatory policies against Palestinians — all violations of international law.

The Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riyad al-Maliki, praised Friday’s ruling.

RIYAD AL-MALIKI: “All states and the UN are now under obligation not to recognise the legality of Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and to do nothing to assist Israel in maintaining this illegal situation.
“They are directed by the court to bring Israel’s illegal occupation to an end.

“This means all states and the UN must immediately review their bilateral relations with Israel to ensure their policies do not aid in Israel’s continued aggression against the Palestinian people, whether directly or indirectly. … “[translated] All states must now fulfill their clear obligations: no aid, no collusion, no money, no weapons, no trade, nothing with Israel.”

Democracy Now! on the ICJ Palestine ruling.           Video: Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: In 2022, the UN General Assembly issued a resolution tasking the International Court of Justice with determining whether the Israeli occupation amounted to annexation. This all comes as the ICJ is also overseeing a [separate and] ongoing genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and as the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Despite mounting outcry over Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed some 39,000 Palestinians — more than 16,000 of them children — Netanyahu is set to travel to Washington, DC, to address a joint session of Congress this Wednesday.

For more, we go to Brussels, Belgium, where we’re joined by Diana Buttu, Palestinian human rights attorney and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

Thank you so much for being with us. Diana, first respond to this court ruling. Since it is non-binding, what is the significance of it?

DIANA BUTTU: Even though it’s nonbinding, Amy, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have any weight. It simply means that Israel is going to ignore it. But what it does, is it sets out the legal precedent for other countries, and those other countries [that] do have to respect the opinion of the highest court, the highest international court.

And so, what we see with this decision is that it’s a very important and a very necessary one, because we see the court makes it clear not only that Israel’s occupation is illegal, but it also says that all countries around the world have an obligation to make sure that Israel doesn’t get away with it, that they have an obligation to make sure that this occupation comes to an end.

This is very important, because over the years, and in particular over the past 30 years, we’ve seen a shift in international diplomacy to try to push Palestinians to somehow give up their rights. And here we have the highest international court saying that that isn’t the case and that, in fact, it’s up to Israel to end its military occupation, and it’s up to the international community to make sure that Israel does that.

AMY GOODMAN: And exactly what is the extended decision when it comes to how other countries should deal with Israel at this point?

DIANA BUTTU: Well, there are some very interesting elements to this case. The first is that the court comes out very clearly and not just says that the occupation is illegal, but they also say that the settlements have to go and the settlers have to go.

They also say that Palestinians have a right to return. Now, we’re talking about over 300,000 Palestinians who were expelled in 1967, and now there are probably about 200,000 Palestinians who have never been able to return back — we’re just talking about the West Bank and Gaza Strip — because of Israel’s discriminatory measures.

The other thing that the court says is that it’s not just the West Bank and East Jerusalem that are occupied, but also Gaza, as well. And this is a very important ruling, because for so many years Israel has tried to blur the lines and make it seem as though they’re not in occupation of Gaza, which they are.

And so, what this requires is that the international community not only not recognise the occupation, but that they take into account measures or they take measures to make sure that Israel stops its occupation.

That means everything from arms embargo to sanctions on Israel — anything that is necessary that can be done to make sure that Israel’s occupation finally comes to an end. And this is where we now see that instead of the world telling Palestinians that they just have to negotiate a resolution with their occupier, with their abuser, that the ball is now in their court.

It’s up to the international community now to put sanctions on Israel to end this military occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about what’s happening right now in Gaza. You’ve got the deaths at — it’s expected to be well over 39,000. But you also have this new report by Oxfam that finds Israel has used water as a weapon of war, with Gaza’s water supplies plummeting 94 percent since October 7 and the nonstop Israeli bombardment.

Even before, their access was extremely limited. And then you have this catastrophic situation where you have, because of the destruction of Gaza’s water treatment plants, forcing people to resort to sewage-contaminated water containing pathogens that lead to diarrhoea, especially deadly for kids, diseases like cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army has started to vaccinate the Israeli soldiers after Palestinian health authorities said a high concentration of the poliovirus has been found in sewage samples from Gaza. It’s taking place, the vaccination programme of soldiers, across Israel in the coming weeks. The significance of this, Diana?

DIANA BUTTU: This is precisely what we’ve been talking about, which is that Israel is carrying out genocide, they know that they’re carrying out genocide, and we don’t see that anybody is stopping Israel in carrying out this genocide.

So, here now we have yet another International Court of Justice ruling. This one — the previous ones are actually binding, saying that Israel has to take all measures to stop this genocide. And yet we just simply don’t see that the world has put into place measures to sanction Israel, to isolate Israel, to punish Israel.

Instead, it gets to do whatever it wants.

But there is something very important, as well, which is that Israel somehow believes that it’s going to be immune, that somehow this polio or all of these diseases aren’t going to boomerang back into Israeli society. They will.

And the issue here now is whether we are going to see some very robust action on the part of the international community, now that we have a number of decisions from the ICJ saying to Israel that it’s got to stop and that this genocide must come to end. Israel must pay a price for continuing this genocide.

🚨Before @netanyahu lands in DC, we demand @TheJusticeDept investigate him for genocide, war crimes & torture in Gaza. Nearly 40k killed, including more than 14k children, 90k injured, 2 million displaced, & an entire population subject to starvation. This cannot go unanswered. pic.twitter.com/2id5cpOa58

— The CCR (@theCCR) July 19, 2024

AMY GOODMAN: Diana Buttu, I wanted to end by asking you about Benjamin Netanyahu coming here to the US. The Center for Constitutional Rights tweeted, “Before @netanyahu lands in DC, we demand @TheJusticeDept investigate him for genocide, war crimes & torture in Gaza. Nearly 40k killed, including more than 14k children, 90k injured, 2 million displaced, & an entire population subject to starvation. This cannot go unanswered.”

If you can talk about the significance of Netanyahu addressing a joint session of Congress?

Also, it’s expected that the person who President Joe Biden has said he is supporting, as he steps aside, to run for president, Vice-President Kamala Harris, is expected to be meeting with Netanyahu. And what you would like to see happen here?

DIANA BUTTU: You know, it’s repugnant to me to be hearing that a war criminal, a person who has flattened Gaza, who said that he was going to flatten Gaza, who has issued orders to kill more than 40,000, upwards of 190,000 Palestinians — we still don’t know the numbers — who has made life in Gaza unlivable, who’s using Palestinians as human pinballs, telling them to move from one area to the next, who’s presiding over a genocide, and unabashedly so — it’s going to be shocking to see the number of applause and rounds of applause and the standing ovations that this man is going to be receiving.

It very much signals exactly where the United States is, which is complicit in this genocide.

And Palestinians know this. If anything, he should have not had received an invitation. He should simply be getting a warrant for his arrest, not be receiving applause and accolades in Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: Diana Buttu, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Palestinian human rights attorney, joining us from Brussels, Belgium.

Democracy Now! is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence. Republished under this licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Today is Nakba Day — this is the day marking the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and off their land by Israeli militias in 1948.

For 74 years Israel has refused to allow them to return to their homes and land in Palestine despite dozens of United Nations resolutions requiring them to do so.

The Nakba has continued every day since 1948 as Israel seizes more Palestinian land and creates more Palestinian refugees every day.

A random selection of photograph’s from today’s action in Auckland’s Aotea Square that also mourned the assassination of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli troops last Wednesday.

Photographs by David Robie

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz