By Jake Wise in Suva
Fiji will not be “militarily involved” in any of the conflicts currently involving the State of Israel, says the country’s prime minister.
Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka made this reassurance yesterday, saying Fiji’s relationship with Israel would remain focused on development co-operation and strengthening bilateral ties, not military engagement.
Israel’s new embassy in Fiji — the first opened in Oceania — was officially opened yesterday with protesters against the diplomatic mission just across the street in the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC).
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“We don’t want Israel in our country,” declared Shamima Ali, chair of the Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights and an organiser of the Fijians For Palestine protest, reports Mai TV.
Protesters in New Zealand also picketed the Fiji High Commission in Wellington and the Fiji Consulate in Auckland.
Rabuka said Fiji’s interest in the partnership was based on development opportunities and the long-standing relationship between the two countries.
“We are looking at our own development and they are capable of giving us the development we need,” he said.
Training opportunities
He said Fijians had benefited from training opportunities in Israel over the years, including young people currently undergoing training there.
“Right now we have some young people undergoing training in Israel.
“Our own president did some training in his career path with the Native Land Trust Board at the time in Israel.”
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Rabuka said Fiji’s engagement with Israel had also been shaped by its long history of peacekeeping in the Middle East.
He said many Fijians had experienced the hospitality of the people and State of Israel through Fiji’s involvement in peacekeeping operations in the region.
Rabuka said the government would not allow the relationship to “become militarised”, as this would contradict Fiji’s wider regional position, including the “Ocean of Peace” concept for the Pacific.
Israel’s Foreign Affairs Minister Gideon Sa’ar also stated that Israel would not ask Fiji for military support, saying Israel was capable of “fighting its own wars”.
Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.
New Zealand protests against Israel
Pacific Media Watch reports that Rabuka staged two military coups in Fiji in 1987 and became known as the father of Fiji’s “coup culture” — four coups in two decades.
In New Zealand, protest pickets were organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) with about 20 people in a picket at the Fijian Consulate in Auckland’s suburb of Mt Roskill, and a dozen stood in pouring rain at the Fiji High Commission in Wellington’s CBD.
The Auckland protest featured a striking tropical banner warning “PM Rabuka don’t vote for genocide” in reference to Fiji’s persistent record of voting in support of Israel and the US in defiance of the overwhelming global condemnation of the Zionist state’s genocidal actions with impunity.
The Wellington protest featured scores of pairs of children’s shoes in recognition of killing more than 75,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children.
“High Commission staff complained to protesters about a Palestinian flag ‘invading’ high commission airspace over the brick fence at the front of the high commission,” said Don Carson, a PSNA organiser.
“Protesters got their message though with megaphones calling Fiji openly complicity with Israeli genocide in Gaza.
“They also left a collection of old shoes — throwing shoes is a gesture of contempt in the Arab World — in the rain outside the High Commission for the staff to have to clean up.”
Israel is on trial for genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case brought by South Africa and supported by dozens of countries, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted on arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
