Fiji has reaffirmed its commitment to establishing an embassy in Israel, with plans to open the embassy in Jerusalem, despite global condemnation of Tel Aviv over the war in Gaza.

This announcement came as the Coalition Cabinet prepared to discuss the matter in Suva next week, reports Fiji One News.

Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka made these remarks during a bilateral meeting with Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Sa’ar Gideon Moshe on the sidelines of the 61st session of the Munich Security Conference, which opened yesterday in Germany.

• READ MORE: Hamas, PIJ free three Israeli captives in Gaza’s Khan Younis – 369 Palestinians to be freed
• Fiji human rights group condemns ‘troubling’ support for Israel at ICJ
• Fiji’s position over Israeli war on Gaza – international blunder or a domestic strategy? — Richard Naidu
• Other Fiji and Israel reports

The discussions between the two leaders focused on deepening the partnership in various areas of mutual interest, including agriculture, security and peacekeeping, and climate action initiatives.

Prime Minister Rabuka expressed gratitude to the Israeli government for their continued support over the years.

Fiji and Israel have maintained diplomatic relations since 1970, and their cooperation has spanned areas such as security, peacekeeping, and climate change.

In recent years, Israeli technology has played a crucial role in Fiji’s efforts to combat climate change.

Invitation to Rabuka to visit Israel
During the meeting, Minister Moshe extended an invitation to Prime Minister Rabuka to visit Israel as part of ongoing efforts to strengthen diplomatic ties.

The Israeli government also expressed readiness to assist Fiji in its plans to establish an embassy in Jerusalem.

Additionally, in response to a request from Prime Minister Rabuka, Minister Moshe offered support for providing patrol boats to enhance Fiji’s fight against illicit drugs.

The last time Israel provided patrol boats to Fiji was in 1987, when four Dabur-class boats were supplied to the Fiji Navy.

Both leaders acknowledged significant opportunities for collaboration and expressed optimism about further strengthening bilateral relations in the future.

Pariah State: Israeli Soldiers Face Arrests and Travel Bans Worldwide

Fiji defies UN, global condemnation of Israel
Asia Pacific Report comments: Fiji has been consistently the leading Pacific country supporting Israel, in defiance of United Nations resolutions and global condemnation of Tel Aviv in the 15-month war on Gaza that has killed at least 47,000 Palestinians — mostly women and children.

Israel currently faces allegations of genocide in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by South Africa and a growing number of other countries, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minster Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Last September, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in a resolution (124-43) that Israel end its “unlawful presence” in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and demanded that it withdraw without delay.

Vanuatu was the only Pacific island country to vote for this resolution.

East Jerusalem is planned to become the capital of an independent Palestinian state.

Six people have been arrested in a New Zealand a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the Port of Auckland, police say.

Dozens of people blocked the entry and exit into the port yesterday and one of the protesters said several were pepper-sprayed by the police.

The group were calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and want a boycott of shipments to and from Israel.

• READ MORE: War on Gaza: Anticipation builds as Gaza truce to begin
• The details of the truce between Israel and Hamas?

Inspector David Christoffersen said initially pro-Palestinian supporters were protesting lawfully. However, they decided to block the roadway, entrance and exit to the port.

“The group was warned they were obstructing the roadway and port operations and asked to move, however, they refused to do so.

“Six arrests were made, five for obstruction and one for disorderly behaviour,” Christoffersen said.

He said OC spray “was deployed on one occasion” and one officer was assaulted, suffering a split lip but not requiring medical attention.

‘Excessive force’ accusation
Some of the protesters have accused police of using excessive force to break up the demonstration.

Videos sent to RNZ show a man with raised arms tackled to the ground by an officer, while another shows police pushing back the protesters. Others said officers used headlocks and chokeholds, and one woman said a chunk of her hair was yanked out.

Protester Lillian Murray said about 40 officers were there. One protester, an elderly Muslim woman, was yanked up off the ground and shoved very excessively for any force that she could ever offer back”, Murray said.

“All of a sudden I feel a small but significant tuft of my own hair being yanked from the back of my head, and my leather bag with metal bindings was yanked backwards so hard that the bindings broke and the bag broke off my back.”

Police said the protesters were warned they were obstructing the port operations, but refused to move.

Murray said despite police warnings to move, she believed the protest was for the greater good.

“There’s perhaps the law and then there’s what’s well relationally, we’re small enough in Aotearoa for there to be a different track cut between police and protesters, a different way of being.

‘Reminiscent of Springbok tour protests’
“What I saw today was reminiscent on a smaller scale of videos that I’ve seen from the police brutality during the Springbok tour protests.”

The protest lasted for four hours, ending at 6pm.

Protesters were also asking workers to go on strike as a show of support for Palestinians.

Some port workers tooted their horns in support of the protesters. Others watched while the protesters tried to enlist their support.

A truck driver waiting in the carpark said he had been held up for three hours while trying to bring his truck into the port. He said many other trucks had also had their movements held up.

Christofferson said police had given the protesters some advice on holding their demonstration legally at a nearby site, however, this was ignored.

“This behaviour is unacceptable as it disrupts the operations of a busy workplace and puts those in the area at risk.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The Aotearoa New Zealand government decision to take on observer status at the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is a step backwards in the fight against anti-semitism and the struggle for Palestinian human rights.

The IHRA is a partisan, political organisation working hard to deflect criticism of Israel’s racist policies towards Palestinians with false smears of anti-semitism.

For example the IHRA has adopted its own definition of anti-semitism which claims calling Israel an apartheid state (as every major international human rights group such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch does) or calling for sanctions against Israel is anti-semitic.

• READ MORE: Open letter to Nanaia Mahuta: Do the right thing over Palestine protest
• Other Palestine and Israel human rights reports

The New Zealand Jewish Council and the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand have already adopted this bogus IHRA definition which they used in a so-called “survey of anti-semitism” earlier this year to make the absurd claims that describing Israel as an apartheid state or calling for sanctions against Israel were anti-semitic.

Palestinian civil society organisations called for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) in 2005 to build international pressure to require Israel to abide by international law and United Nations resolutions.

BDS was an important part of the fight against apartheid in South Africa and is also an important strategy in the fight against apartheid in Israel.

The three aims of BDS are to end Israel’s military occupation, end its apartheid policies towards Palestinians and allow Palestinian refugees to return to the land and homes from which they were ethnically cleansed by Israel in 1948.

This legitimate and successful BDS strategy is fiercely opposed by Israel which is weaponising the Holocaust against Palestinian demands for human rights.

Needless to say, Palestinians had no role in the Holocaust whose cause was European anti-semitism.

By joining the IHRA, Aotearoa New Zealand is undermining the fight against anti-semitism and racism of all kinds.

The government has caved in to relentless bullying and threats of false smears of anti-semitism from the pro-Israel lobby.

Joining the IHRA is a weak, cowardly decision.

Aotearoa New Zealand should adopt the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism and insist on Holocaust education in every school in the country as part of a comprehensive anti-racism education programme.

John Minto is a political activist and commentator, and spokesperson for Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished with the author’s permission.

When Marilyn Garson’s memoir of working in Gaza was published, Radio NZ scheduled an interview. On the day of the interview, RNZ first promoted and then cancelled it. In response to her OIA request, RNZ disclosed this internal email:

It reads in full, “Hi guys, given the huge flood of formal complaints we get any time we do a Palestine story without Israeli balance, [e]ither we have to drop it or set up another interview — which you would have to mention before and after tonights one.”

We hear about Israel casually, without always hearing from Palestine before and after. But we are not allowed to hear a first-person story of Gaza unless it is bookended by something, anything, from Israel. That’s not journalistic balance, that’s a one-way concession to the possible inconvenience of complaint.

• READ MORE: John Minto: NZ government and media must own up to their silence over Shireen Abu Akleh
• Behind the tears for Shireen, more evidence of Israel’s daily crimes with impunity
• Photos: Israeli forces attack Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral
• APR Nakba gallery: Nakba Day in Auckland – protesting against Israel’s ‘ethnic cleansing’
• Other Shireen Abu Akleh reports

On Sunday, May 15, Nakba Day, Wellington Mayor Andy Foster was advised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) to disallow an already-approved display of Palestinian colours on a public building.

Although the same building had recently displayed Ukrainian colours without evident concern for the Russian ambassador’s feelings, MFAT advised that “displaying the Palestinian colours could result in complaints from the Israeli ambassador and other Israeli groups.” The Mayor shut it down — leaving Justice for Palestine to get the job done on the following evening.

Again, Palestinian expression was forbidden because someone might complain. Forget the validity of the complaints – there were none to evaluate. The mere prospect of Palestinian stories or the display of a Palestinian flag was problematised in advance.

When the right to be Palestinian in public is made contingent, policy has become racially intolerant. We share this space and we are prevented from enjoying it equally. That makes the suppression of Palestine everyone’s issue.

MFAT’s advice angers us as Jews
MFAT’s advice is further inappropriate in ways that anger us as Jews. A government ministry issued advice that “displaying the Palestinian colours could result in complaints from the Israeli ambassador and other Israeli groups.”

The Israeli ambassador is a guest in Aotearoa, whose presence ought not to drive our municipal policy. Given the frequency with which his government is characterised as apartheid, and given the exceptional brutality it has displayed in the past week, he might benefit from seeing the healthy exercise of pluralist public expression.

See our joint open letter to the Prime Minister on the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and the desecration of her funeral procession by Israeli police.

And exactly who are these “other Israeli groups” whose sensitivities preempt citizens’ peaceful public expression? Is Mossad operating here again? Or does a ministry of our own government truly not know the difference between the Jewish community of New Zealand and an Israeli interest group — can that possibly be??

MFAT, RNZ, Mayor Foster; we are Aotearoa Jews and you need to outgrow your stereotypes of our community.

Members of Aotearoa’s Jewish community express our identities in many ways. Some Jews place a nationalist project called Israel at the centre of their identity.

We and other Jews who love justice oppose the apartheid that Israel enacts in our names. We sharply distinguish it from our Jewish identity and we accept a responsibility to pursue justice and peace for all who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

We hold equal citizenship
You do not aid Aotearoa’s Jews by marginalising our Palestinian neighbours. Do not prevent us from sharing our city and our airwaves by perpetuating such a zero/sum model of belonging. We hold equal citizenship and we enjoy equal rights to public space and expression.

We are members of a pluralist community that needs to unite against exclusion or racism in all of its forms.

Our support of Palestinian expression is pro-democratic, not anti-anyone. We uphold Palestinian rights as we expect others to stand with us when we need them.

Our safety lies in the mutual respect we build with our neighbours. That is a necessity, not a nicety. We live together in a dangerous time and we are each others’ best hope.

Alternative Jewish Voices. Republished with permission.

OPEN LETTER to the Foreign Minister of Aotearoa New Zealand, Nanaia Mahuta:

Kia ora Nanaia,

We have been informed that the Wellington City Council has been advised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs not to light up the Michael Fowler Centre in the colours of the Palestinian flag tomorrow — which has been arranged through councillor Tamatha Paul and approved by council — because Aotearoa New Zealand does not recognise a Palestinian state and this will cause offence to the Israeli Embassy in Wellington.

This is outrageous advice. We want you to intervene and immediately override this advice from your ministry officials so the Fowler Centre can be lit up tomorrow.

• READ MORE:  RSF calls for independent probe into Al Jazeera reporter’s West Bank killing
• Gallery: Nakba Day in Auckland – protesting against Israel’s ‘ethnic cleansing’
• John Minto: NZ government and media must own up to their silence over Shireen Abu Akleh
• Behind the tears for Shireen, more evidence of Israel’s daily crimes with impunity
• Photos: Israeli forces attack Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral
• Other Shireen Abu Akleh reports

Firstly New Zealand’s official policy is to support a “two-state” solution in historic Palestine and this policy in effect recognises a Palestinian state. You cannot have a “two-state solution” with just one state.

Secondly it is deeply insulting to Palestinians to have official recognition of their national day — Nakba Day — effectively vetoed by ministry officials and the “sensitivities” of the Israeli embassy. It is Israel which is refusing to allow a Palestinian state to be formed.

The current Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, has said he refuses to meet with Palestinian leaders, refuses to negotiate a peace deal and will refuse to recognise a Palestinian state while he is Prime Minister.

Why should Israel’s veto over a Palestinian state dictate Aotearoa New Zealand’s support for Palestinians?

Why would we take any notice of the “sensitivities” of an embassy which is supporting and promoting what every international human rights organisation has declared to be an apartheid state?

Parliament has flown the Ukrainian flag in recent weeks over Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine so why shouldn’t New Zealand fly the Palestinian flag in recognition of Israel’s ongoing brutal military occupation of the entire area of historic Palestine?

Within the last 10 days an Israeli court has approved the eviction of 1000 more Palestinians from their land and homes in the occupied West Bank of Palestine and the Israeli regime has announced it is ready to approve the building of 4000 more Jewish-only homes in illegal settlements on Palestinian land.

And just this last week we have seen the brutal “cold-blooded murder” of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the shocking sight of pall bearers and mourners at her funeral being brutally attacked by Israeli state forces.

Aotearoa New Zealand is bigger than the venal, self-serving advice of cowardly MFAT officials.

Please direct your ministry officials to approve Wellington City Council lighting up the Fowler Centre tomorrow in the colours of the Palestinian flag.

Asia Pacific Report editors join the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) in solidarity with this open letter protest over the Nakba Day censorship and in memory of the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh assassinated by Israeli troops last Wednesday.

Aotearoa New Zealand is deeply saddened by the death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin and the violence at her funeral. We call for an independent, transparent and thorough investigation into the circumstances of her death.

— Nanaia Mahuta (@NanaiaMahuta) May 15, 2022

A tweet after this open letter – but still no condemnation of Israel for the killing of Abu Akleh by the New Zealand government.

Today is Nakba Day — “the great catastrophe”. This is the day marking the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and forced 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 photographs 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

• Other reports on the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh and Nakba 2022.

Nakba Day in Auckland 2022

1 of 12

COMMENTARY: By Mazin Qumsiyeh

It is so hard for me to write today — too many tears. The US-supported Israeli occupation forces’ crimes continue daily but some days are harder than others.

Shireen Abu Akleh, wearing a blue helmet and vest with “PRESS” written over it has been assassinated by Israeli occupation forces.

All journalists on the scene explained how Israeli snipers simply targeted journalists. The first three bullets were a miss, then a hit on one male journalist (in the back). Then when Shireen shouted that he was hit, she was killed with a bullet beneath the ear.

• READ MORE: Latest Abu Akleh killing updates: Palestine rejects Israeli probe
• Shireen Abu Akleh: Al Jazeera reporter killed by Israeli gunfire
• Palestinians in besieged Gaza Strip mourn Abu Akleh’s killing

Shireen was also a US citizen (she was a Bethlehemite Christian who lived in Jerusalem). But that is no protection.

Rachel Corrie was run over by an Israeli military bulldozer and killed intentionally in Rafah two decades ago and the killers were rewarded. Both killings happened as the world was distracted by other conflicts (Iraq and now Ukraine).

The US government cares nothing about its own citizens because politicians are under the thumb of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Thousands of others were killed and the murderers still roam free and are funded by US taxpayers.

War crimes and crimes against humanity continue daily here. The US government is a partner in crime (just note how the US Ambassador simply hoped for an investigation — why not send the FBI to investigate the murder of countless US citizens). The events and the reaction in Western corporate (“mainstream”) media and Western governments makes us so mad.

Same day murder of teenager
If you are not outraged to act, you are not human. In the same day today the apartheid forces murdered 15-year-old Thaer Alyazouri as he was returning from school.

As we pointed out before, Palestine remains the fulcrum and the litmus test and it exposes hypocrisy and collusion.

It is actually the achilles heel for Western propaganda. Like with South Africa under apartheid, Western leaders’ empty rhetoric of human rights and democracy is exposed by their direct support for apartheid and murder.

May this intentional murder of a journalist finally be the straw that breaks the back of hypocrisy, Zionism and imperialism.

Millions of people mourn this brave journalist murdered by a fascist racist regime. Millions will rededicate themselves to challenge Western hypocrisy and US-supported Israeli crimes against humanity.

The Nakba atrocities
My 90-year-old mother born before the Nakba told me about the atrocities done since 1948 and before by the terrorist Zionist militias in their quest to colonise Palestine. From the first terrorist attack (and yes, Zionists were first to use terrorism like bombing markets or hijacking airplanes) to the 33 massacres during the 1948-1950 ethnic cleansing of Palestine (Tantura, Deir Yassin etc).

We will not forget nor forgive. Justice is key to peace here and justice begins with ending the nightmare called Zionism and prosecuting its leaders and collaborators and funders in real fair trials.

Only then will Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all others flourish in this land of Palestine. Palestine will then retun to be a multiethnic, multicultural, and multireligious society instead of a racist apartheid state of Israel.

It is inevitable but we can accelerate it with our actions.

We honour Shireen, Rachel and more than 110,000 martyrs by acting as they did: telling truth, challenging evil deeds, working for justice (which is a prerequisite for peace).

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities. He previously served on the faculties of the University of Tennessee, Duke, and Yale Universities. He and his wife returned to Palestine in 2008, starting a number of institutions and projects such as a clinical genetics laboratory that serves cancer and other patients. Qumsiyeh has been harassed and arrested for non-violent actions but also received a number of awards for these same actions.

Veteran Al Jazeera journalist killed by Israeli forces: Live news https://t.co/5B5gkk1MKI

— El_Grillo (@El_Grillo1) May 11, 2022

COMMENTARY: By John Minto

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed so much hypocrisy in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the Western world that’s it’s hard to keep track.

Israel has racism down to a fine art.

While the world was putting their hand up for Ukrainian refugees — Israel put its hand up only for Jewish Ukrainian refugees (at least one grandparent must be Jewish).

• READ MORE: What the war in Ukraine taught us, Palestinians
• A threshold crossed: Israeli authorities and the crimes of apartheid and persecution

As early as January 2022, Israel began planning to transfer Ukrainian Jews to become colonists in the land of the Palestinians. Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption proclaimed: “We call on the Jews of Ukraine to immigrate to Israel – your home.”

The refugees/colonists began to arrive in early March, receiving preferential treatment, while Ukrainians who could not prove their Jewishness according to Israel’s racist criteria for refugees face myriad difficulties.

Meanwhile, the World Zionist Organisation’s Settlement Division has begun preparing 1000 housing units for Ukrainian Jews on stolen and occupied Palestinian and Syrian land in the occupied West Bank and the occupied Golan Heights.

When there was an outcry from Israeli liberals saying, quite rightly, that this was not a reflection of Jewish values, the government said they would take non-Jewish refugees as well.

Predictable reaction
The predictable reaction from racist Israelis was “We are a Jewish state — why are we taking in these gentiles?”

The government, however, says the non-Jewish refugees won’t be able to claim Israeli citizenship — they will have to leave when the fighting stops.

Important to point out here that Israel is NOT a Jewish state. Twenty percent of Israeli citizens are Palestinians. Israel is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural state dominated by a racist regime which has made indigenous Palestinians second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth class inhabitants in the land of their birth and the land of their ancestors, Palestine.

This is well described in Amnesty International’s short video on Israeli apartheid.

The Amnesty International video.

Jewish Ukrainian refugees are being welcomed because it helps Israel maintain a majority Jewish population. It’s a country obsessed with demographics and determined to maintain what Israel’s largest and most respected Human Right Group, B’Tselem, calls “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea”.

It is proposed that most of the Jewish Ukrainian refuges will be settled in illegal Jewish-only settlements on stolen Palestinian land while Israel’s apartheid government continues its refusal to allow Palestinians to return to their homes and land after around 800,000 were ethnically cleansed from vast swathes of Historic Palestine by Israeli militias in 1948 — a process which continues to this day.

And Jewish Ukrainian refugees will qualify for automatic Israeli citizenship — something denied the big majority of Palestinians in their homeland Palestine – all of which has been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali — “I’ve killed a lot of Arabs in my time and there’s nothing wrong with that” — Bennett has been promoting himself as an international mediator.

International condemnation
Israel didn’t join the international condemnation of Russia and has repeatedly refused Ukrainian appeals for military assistance, but Bennet flew to Moscow for a three-hour meeting with Putin and was then on the phone to Zelensky suggesting to him he should think about the cost in death and destruction in Ukraine and agree to Russian terms.

Bennett followed up by trying to get the parties together for a mediation meeting in Jerusalem.

This is the same Israeli leader who refuses to meet with Palestinian leaders, refuses to negotiate any peace deal with Palestinians and says he will never agree to a Palestinian state being established on his watch. Not the credentials for an international mediator.

And in case readers missed the recent news a further two high-profile groups have joined the international human rights condemnation of Israel as an apartheid state.

A short summary of the highest profile groups that have described Israel in this way over the past 18 months is here:

• Numerous Palestinian civil society organisations
• The late South African Archbishop and Nobel Peace prize winner Desmond Tutu — “Name Israel an apartheid state and boycott”.
• B’Tselem — Israel’s largest and most respected human right organisation, in their January 2021 report “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid”
• Human Rights Watch, the US largest human rights organisation, in their April 2021 report “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution”
• Amnesty International, in their February 2022 report “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians”
• Addameer prisoner support group and Harvard Law School label Israel an apartheid state
• UN Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Human Right Council, Michael Lynk, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world

Racism on steroids
It’s racism on steroids in Israel just as it was in apartheid South Africa. And increasingly Jews around the world are seeing it as such. From an opinion poll last year 25 percent of American Jews already regard Israel as an apartheid state and 38 percent of young American Jews say the same thing.

We need regime change in Israel and everyone living in historic Palestine enjoying equal rights.

John Minto is a political activist and commentator, and spokesperson for Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished with the author’s permission.

Ten lessons to be learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the war rages into its second week.

• READ MORE: The world is united on Ukraine, divided on America
• ‘Double standards’ claims as world reacts to Ukraine crisis, ignores Papua
• Other Palestine reports

1. The people of Ukraine are “European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed” while Palestinians are Arab and have darker complexion. Lesson one: Empathy and recognition of pain and suffering is colour coded and race still matters in 2022.
2. Palestine, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Syria where violence is normal and death is “baked” into the culture while Ukraine is a “European city” that is modern and advanced and these things are not supposed to happen in this area. Lesson two: Western and European history is but a long series of erasures, amnesia and deeply held view of exceptionalism.
3. Volunteering to fight in defence of the Ukraine from outside is a heroic act, which indeed it is, but volunteering to resist settler colonialism and Apartheid is framed as “terrorism” by Western powers. Lesson three: Palestinians are demonised no matter what heroic acts they underake.
4. When an officer in the Ukraine blows himself and destroys a bridge to prevent the Russians from advancing then he is celebrated for this sacrifice. Lesson four: Palestinians are demonised for merely being Palestinians and any and all resistance are framed as terrorism.
5. Sport teams and famous sport figures can express solidarity and carry the Ukrainian flag, post messages on the electronic boards and demonstrate this on the play field, which are all very positive and players should have the right and ability to do it. However, Palestine is an exception when it comes to sport figures expressing any support for the Palestinians who are living under settler colonial occupation that structured with an embedded Apartheid system of racial-religious segregation. Lesson five: The sport administrative structure hands out fines and sanctions (red card) for anyone who expresses support for Palestine including on the occasion of fans hoisting Palestinian flags in the stands.
6. Calls for sending weapons to Ukraine so as to resist and fight Russian invasion and occupation is supported and expressed as a fundamental right for people facing such an enemy. Anyone who calls for supporting the Palestinians by sending military equipment or items to strengthen the resistance is criminalised and often imprisonment under the spacious law designation of material support. Lesson six: Palestinians don’t have the right to defend themselves but must accept to be occupied and the world community is committed to fund and extend all types of support to the settler colonial occupier.
7. For the Ukraine, international law advocates in Western world brought out the defence of the 4th Geneva Convention, brushed-up on definitions of war crimes and genocide but none of this applies to Palestine and Palestinians. One can add must of the Global South and the Muslim World suffer the same type of double standards when it comes to international law and 4th Geneva Convention. If you have a doubt for a moment then ask the Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians on this single point then we can have a large discussion. Lesson seven: Palestinians are made to live outside the scope of international law and the Western world delivers the weapons and instruments used by Israel to violate the 4th Geneva Convention and the Convention on Genocide. The Ukraine invasion made this very clear.
8. Media coverage rightly focused on the victims of the Russian invasion and the human stories with people taking weapons to defend their families, homes, and cities. Palestine always faces the media coverage that amplifies, humanises and centres the narrative of the settler colonial occupation, while erasing or often problematising Palestinian narrative in the often deployed euphemism of death during “clashes”, Israel having the right to defend itself or responding to rocket firing. Lesson eight: Palestinians are made to be the guilty party for wanting to live on their land and having the audacity to insist on it. Double standard and culpability of the Western world in furthering settler colonialism in Palestine.
9. Educational institutions across the Western World expressed solidarity with the Ukraine, again rightly so when a people face an invasion. Last April-May period, Israel launched a massive attack on the Palestinians on the holiest night of Ramadan, the 27th Night of Ramadan, then followed by a massive bombardment of Gaza. When faculty members, departments and students at universities expressed solidarity with Palestine and Palestinians, a steady stream of political figures, university presidents and media figures insisted that colleges and universities should not be politicised and to make sure that their internal policies prevent them from expressing such solidarity positions. Lesson nine: Palestine on college campuses always meets the administration, Zionist and settler colonial checkpoints that are structured to prevent solidarity with the Palestinians.
10. The push for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Russia are moving faster than the speed of light and often by the same set of characters that pushed for legislations to criminalise and punish the Palestinian BDS movement. Lesson ten: Palestine faces the constant double standard on the BDS front, free speech and constitutional rights. No clear evidence of double standard than to listen to the same individuals and groups who now are on the front line of seeking legislation to authorise BDS effort directed at Russia while on record opposing the Palestinian BDS Movement.

Professor Hatem Bazian is executive director of the Islamophobia Studies Center and a professor at Zaytuna College and lecturer in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and Asian American Studies, UC Berkeley.

We, Alternative Jewish Voices, hope for a productive and unifying second day at the Christchurch anti-terrorism hui. Security is something we build together and give each other. A threat may be singular, but our safety is collective.

We are saddened to hear that such a kaupapa has been disrespected and we are, additionally, horrified to hear Jewish Council spokesperson Juliet Moses double down on her claim that she was expressing the sentiment of our national Jewish community.

It was wrong to coopt the hui for statements that (according to the comments of those present) “securitised” and “essentialised” the Muslim community.

• READ MORE: Juliet Moses attack on Palestine solidarity protesters at the Christchurch counter-terrorism conference was wrong – John Minto
• Hui on countering terrorism sees mass walkout over Hezbollah comment

We object to any statement that presumes Palestinian solidarity must imply a love of violence. Such statements are wrong, period; and it was additionallty wrong to bring those politics into the anti-terrorism venue in particular.

We feel for those who have been hurt, but we are heartened to hear that the hui will continue with its mission.

We have challenged the Jewish Council’s claim to represent our community. We repeat our statement in order to challenge Ms Moses’s present claim that the council’s politics represent the fears of all NZ Jews.

The NZ Jewish Council records its mission thus: “The council is the representative organisation of New Zealand Jewry. Its objective is to promote the interests, welfare and wellbeing of New Zealand Jewry.”

Chosen by regional councils
However, as we understand it, NZ Jewish Council members are chosen by a number of regional Jewish councils. The NZ Jewish Council members seem to be appointed through a series of indirect institutional processes.

Members of Alternative Jewish Voices who belong to synagogues — some for many years — have never had any direct input to the composition of the NZ Jewish Council. Jews who are not members of a synagogue don’t appear to have any voice in these processes at all.

The NZ Jewish Council does not attempt to elicit, include or represent the spectrum of views within the Jewish community.

We want our neighbours to understand that the ardent Zionist voices of the NZ Jewish Council and Israel Institute do not represent the whole community of New Zealand Jews. They emphatically do not represent us.

Alternative Jewish Voices wishes all participants in the Christchurch hui wisdom and unity. We all need your kaupapa and we will all benefit from it.

• Alternative Jewish Voices of New Zealand

New Zealand’s anti-terrorism hui has been marked by a mass walkout from members of the Muslim community.

The country’s first hui on Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism in Ōtautahi/Christchurch involved experts discussing the evolution of terrorism risk in New Zealand, online extremism, the role of media, and the consequences of hate.

The walkout happened yesterday during a panel addressing the causes of terrorism after a comment from NZ Jewish Council spokesperson Juliet Moses about the Israel-Palestine conflict sparked a commotion.

• READ MORE: Juliet Moses attack on Palestine solidarity protestors at the Christchurch counter-terrorism conference was wrong – John Minto

Moses had told the crowd that leaders should be consistent in condemning terrorism.

“We need to hear leaders condemn all support for terrorism and all terrorism equally whatever the source, target, and circumstances, and even when it is not politically expedient to do so,” she said.

“Hezbollah and Hamas, their military wings are proscribed terror organisations in New Zealand but we saw a rally in support of Hezbollah on Queen St in 2018.”

Her remarks caused a strong response from members of the Muslim community, including victims of the Christchurch mosque attacks, as people shouted: “Free Palestine.”

Federation of the Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ) chair Abdur Razzaq said the hui was about “discussing social cohesion … we came here to discuss ways to peace”.

“There are lots of things out there that divide us, let us have some wisdom and prioritise what unites us first.”

He said it was “inappropriate” to discuss issues “that divide us” and was not the tikanga way.

After the panel had finished, the hui organisers gave those in attendance a chance to respond to the comments which included a remark from Rashid Omar whose son Tariq died in the 15 March 2019 mosque attacks.

Moses said she was only “stating fact” and did not believe her comments were controversial and that she was referring to the 2018 march, not the one that happened in Auckland in support of Palestine this year.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Thanks Simon. For those wondering, I said that leaders should be consistent in condemning support for terrorism and that the military wing of Hezbollah is a proscribed terror group which we had seen a rally supporting in Auckland 2018. I said we need to leave that overseas. https://t.co/Bjh51z2Z2S

— Juliet Moses (@JulietMosesNZ) June 15, 2021

The swearing in of a new Israeli Prime Minister after 12 years of appalling anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism from former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not good news.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett tips the scales as even more racist than Netanyahu.

Netanyahu was infamous for statements of race-hatred such as:

• “The way to deal with Palestinians is to beat them up. Not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until its unbearable”;
• “Palestinians are an existential threat to Israel” (shades of the Nazi attitudes to Jews); and
• “Israeli is not a state for all its citizens” (ie he’s right – it’s an apartheid state – Palestinians are second-class citizens)

(If anyone isn’t sure just how racist these statements are – replace the word “Palestinians” with the word “Jews” and read them again!).

• READ MORE: On the politics of victory and defeat: How Gaza dethroned the King of Israel – Ramzy Baroud
• Israel swears in new government, ending Netanyahu’s 12-year rule

Appalling attitudes
Bennett has, if anything, even more appalling attitudes:

His comment to a Palestinian representative in the Israeli Parliament “…when you were still swinging from trees, we had a Jewish state here.”

Bennett is on record as advocating the murder of Palestinians taken prisoner. The former Israeli Defence Force officer said: “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life and there’s no problem with that.”

“The establishment of a Palestinian state based on the ’67 borders is impossible.” He said there will never be a Palestinian state on his watch. “It’s just not going to happen.”

He supports illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, the continuation of the siege on Gaza, and laws and institutions which perpetuate Jewish superiority and the marginalisation of the Palestinian citizens.

Bennett’s number two on his Yamina Party list, and predicted to be the new Israeli Interior Minister, Ayelet Shaked, has to be seen to be believed.

She has posted on Facebook, saying “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and justifies its destruction, “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.”

‘Little snakes’
She calls for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes.”

She is a self-declared fascist. Here is a recent Ayelet Shaked election campaign video. It is not a spoof – it’s her actual election video.

In Israeli, it is business as usual in the racism, apartheid and brutality meted out against Palestinians.

And it is business as usual for the international solidarity movement which is building the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaigns against apartheid Israel just as we did against apartheid South Africa.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

New Zealand’s largest ever crowd in support of migrant rights gathered in Auckland’s Aotea Square at the weekend in triple protests that also marked solidarity for Palestinian justice and the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, China.

More than 1500 people filled the square on Saturday proclaiming “migrant lives matter” with speakers calling on them to stand up for their rights.

New Zealand governments over the past few years were accused of cynically exploiting migrant workers and that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s “nation of 5 million people” excluded about 300,000 migrants.

The protesters then marched down Queen Street calling for changes to the “broken” immigration policies.

Among demands were:

• Visas to be extended to allow for workers who had been trapped overseas, and
• Creation of “genuine pathways” to permanent residence.

Unite union national director Michael Treen said successive governments had built the economy on the back of migrants and then consistently “lied” to them about their prospects.

President of the Migrant Workers Association Anu Kaloti said migrants were suffering at the hands of the “broken immigration system”.

Before the march, Palestinian community leader Maher Nazza declared to the crowd “No one is free until we are all free”, saying that the world community must pressure Israel into honouring the United Nations resolutions and restore justice and hope for Palestinians.

A smaller crowd of Chinese dissidents marked the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, with more than 10,000 deaths, according to a BBC report.

One speaker said: “If I said the truth [about the Chinese Communist Party] as I am saying here today in China, somebody would come within minutes and take me away.”

Photographs by David Robie

Palestine, migrant rights and the Tiananmen massacre

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International reporting has hardly been a strong feature of New Zealand journalism. No New Zealand print news organisation has serious international news departments or foreign correspondents with the calibre of such overseas media as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

It has traditionally been that way for decades. And it became much worse after the demise in 2011 of the New Zealand Press Association news agency, which helped shape the identity of the country for 132 years and at least provided news media with foreign reporting with an Aotearoa perspective fig leaf.

It is not even much of an aspirational objective with none of the 66 Voyager Media Awards categories recognising international reportage, unlike the Walkley Awards in Australia that have just 34 categories but with a strong recognition of global stories (last year’s Gold Walkley winner Mark Willacy of ABC Four Corners reported “Killing Field” about Australian war crimes in Afghanistan).

• READ MORE: Papuan resistance slams Indonesian internet gag amid leader crackdown
• Papuan armed resistance insists talks with Jakarta must be mediated by UN
• Other West Papua reports
• Reinstate victimised Palestinian journalists’ union leader, says IFJ

Aspiring New Zealand international reporters head off abroad and gain postings with news agencies and broadcasters or work with media with a global mission such as Al Jazeera.

Consequently our lack of tradition for international news coverage means that New Zealand media tend to have many media blind spots on critical issues, or misjudge the importance of some topics. Examples include the Samoan elections in April when the result was the most momentous game changer in more than four decades with the de facto election of the country’s first woman prime minister, unseating the incumbent who had been in power for 23 years.

The recent Israel-Palestine conflict in May was another case of where reporting was very unbalanced in favour of the oppressor for 73 years, Israel. Indonesian’s five decades of repression in the Melanesian provinces of West Papua is also virtually ignored by the mainstream media apart from the diligent, persistent and laudable coverage by RNZ Pacific.

There is a deafening silence about the current brutal and draconian attack on West Papuan pro-independence resistance fighters and leaders in remote areas with the internet unplugged apart from insightful journalists such as Johnny Blades.

No threat to status quo
As national award-winning cartoonist Malcom Evans wrote in a Daily Blog column on the eve of last week’s Voyager Media Awards that whoever won prizes, “it’s a sure bet that, he or she, won’t be someone whose work threatens the machinery that manufactures our consent to a perpetuation of the status quo”.

He continued:

“There will be no awards for anyone like Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, but none either for our own Nicky Hager or Jon Stephenson, who exposed war crimes committed in Afghanistan by New Zealanders, and none for Chris Trotter, Bryan Bruce or Susan St John whose writings have consistently exposed the criminal outcomes wrought on New Zealanders by neo-liberalism.”

Evans also cited “Indonesia’s rape of West Papua and East Timor” and the “damning Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians” as examples of lack of media exposure of “New Zealand duplicity and connivance”.

Hanan Ashrawi, the first woman member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), told Middle East Eye in the wake of the conflict that left 256 Palestinians — including 66 children — and 13 Israelis dead that it was illogical to expect Israel to be both the “gatekeeper and to have the veto”.

“Israel has never implemented a single UN resolution at all, since its creation [in 1948]. And Israel has always existed outside the law. So why do you expect Israel suddenly to become a state that will respect others, human rights, international law and the multilateral system.

“Israel is the country, the only country that legislated a basic law that says only Jews have the right to self-determination in this land which is all of historical Palestine.

“Israel has destroyed the two-state solution.

When Israel opens up …
“Only when Israel opens up, when this system of discrimination, repression, apartheid is dismantled, only then will you begin to see that there are opportunities of equalities and so on.”

However, Ashrawi was complimentary about the new wave of youth leadership and support for the Palestinian cause sweeping across the globe. She was optimistic that a new political language, new initiatives for a solution would emerge.

New Zealand media did little to reflect this shifting global mood of support for Palestine – apart from Stuff and its publication of Jewish dissident Marilyn Garson’s articles from Sh’ma Kolienu – and it ignored the massive second week of protests for a lasting peace.

RNZ Mediawatch’s Hayden Donnell was highly critical over the lack of news coverage of the “newsworthy and historic” Samoan elections on April 9, commenting: “For nearly two days, RNZ was the only major New Zealand news website carrying information about the election results, and analysis of the outcome.”

As he pointed out, since 1982, the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) had been in power and the current prime minister, Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi (now caretaker), had been prime minister since 1998.

“It’s very monumental that we’ve had a political party [opposition FAST Party led by Fiame Naomi Mata’afa] come through so quickly within 12 months to challenge the status quo in many different ways.”

Fiame has a slender one seat majority, 26 to 25, in the 51-seat Parliament, and was sworn in as government in still-disputed circumstances. But the New Zealand media coverage has still been patchy in spite of the drama of the deadlock, with the notable exception of journalists such as Barbara Dreaver, Vaimoana Tapaleao, Teuila Fuatai, and Michael Field at The Pacific Newsroom.

Woke up to Samoa crisis
The New Zealand Herald, for example, finally woke up to the crisis and splashed the story across its front page on May 25, but then for the next three days only published snippets on the crisis, all drawn from RNZ Pacific coverage. For the actual election result, the Herald only published a single paragraph buried on its foreign news pages.

As for West Papua, the silence continues. Not a single major New Zealand newspaper has given any significant treatment to the current crisis there described by The Sydney Morning Herald as a “manhunt for 170 ‘terrorists’ slammed as a ‘licence’ to shoot anyone”.

Singapore-based Chris Barrett and Karuni Rompies reported that “Indonesian forces are chasing 170 members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement [OPM]. The crackdown has reportedly displaced several thousand people.

“Tensions have been high since the separatists’ shooting in April of two teachers suspected of being Indonesian spies and the burning of three schools in Beoga, Puncak.”

This is the worst crisis in West Papua since the so-called Papuan Spring uprising and rioting in protest against Indonesian racism and repression in August 2019.

The Jakarta government was reported to have deployed some 21,000 troops in the Melanesian region, ruled since the fiercely disputed “Act of Free Choice” when 1025 people handpicked by the Indonesian military in 1969 voted to be part of Indonesia. The latest crackdown followed the killing in an ambush of a general who was head of Indonesian intelligence on April 25.

Discrimination against Papuans
This latest round of strife marks widespread opposition to Indonesia’s 20-year autonomy status for the region which is due to expire in November and is regarded by critics as a failure.

Interim president Benny Wenda of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) denounces Indonesian authorities who have variously tried to label Papuan pro-independence groups “separatists”, “armed criminal groups”, and “monkeys” (this sparked the 2019 uprising).

“Now they are labelling us ‘terrorists’. This is nothing but more discrimination against the entire people of West Papua and our struggle to uphold our basic right to self-determination,” he says.

Wenda has a message for the United Nations and Pacific leaders: “Indonesia is misusing the issue of terrorism to crush our fundamental struggle for the liberation of our land from illegal occupation and colonisation.”

The West Papua issue is a critical one for the Pacific, just like East Timor was two decades ago in the lead-up to its independence. Why is our press failing to report this?

The International Federation of Journalists has called for the urgent reinstatement of Nasser Abu Bakr, head of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, following his victimisation by the French news agency AFP.

Abu Bakr, who has worked for Agence France-Presse (AFP) for more than 20 years, was sacked without valid reason, in what the IFJ’s leading body has called “a clear case of victimisation for his trade union activities, in contravention of the law and international standards”.

The dismissal came following the agency’s concerns over his strong public defence of the rights of Palestinian journalists in his role as president of the PJS.

• READ MORE: ‘Shut down news’: Palestinian journalists on the front line

Abu Bakr, who is an elected member of the IFJ’s executive committee, had been instrumental in filing complaints about the systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists by Israeli forces to the United Nations Special Rapporteurs and in documenting and exposing attacks on Palestinian journalists and media.

The IFJ will launch a global campaign to demand justice for Nasser.

Already support has flowed in from public bodies in Palestine, from unions around the world and from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions.

Journalists in Palestine have staged protests outside the offices of AFP. Unions representing staff at AFP’s headquarters and other offices around the world have pledged their support.

The IFJ has already been in contact with AFP management in Paris.

IFJ general secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “The dismissal of Nasser, an elected trade union leader, for nothing more than giving a voice to Palestinian journalists under threat and facing daily attacks is totally unacceptable.

“He must be reinstated.”

12 plus Palestinian journalists arrested
Al Jazeera reports that more than a dozen Palestinian journalists were recently arrested by Israeli authorities after attempting to report the news under often “extremely stressful and dangerous” conditions.

Wahbe Mikkieh, one of the journalists detained and later released, told Al Jazeera the message the Israeli police was trying to send was meant to frighten journalists.

“The occupation forces claimed that I tried to obstruct the arrest of my colleague Zeina [Halawani] and that I assaulted the occupation army. That did not happen,” said Mikkieh, who was hit on the head with the butt of a gun causing him to bleed, describing the five days in prison as the hardest in his life.

Republished from the International Federation of Journalists.

More than 2000 people took part in Auckland today in a demonstration for justice for Palestine and against “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”.

While speakers welcomed the ceasefire on Thursday night in the Israeli attack on Gaza after 11 days of bombardment, they lamented the lack of progress in addressing the “root causes” of the conflict.

The protesters marched to the US consulate in Auckland and condemned uncritical US policy in support of Israel.

• READ MORE: Israel and Hamas claim victory as fragile ceasefire holds
• Time for NZ to speak up clearly for Palestinian rights and international law – John Minto
• Other Palestine reports

This is the second weekend in a row when protests in support of Palestinian statehood and self-determination have been held across Aotearoa New Zealand.

Palestinian community organisers set-up a pavement vigil for the 70 Palestinian children killed in the continuous barrage of Israeli jets and missiles.

At least 243 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli bombardment, including more than 100 women and children. The Gaza Health Ministry also said more than 1800 Palestinians had been wounded.

Twelve Israelis, including two children, were killed by Palestinian rockets, the country’s medical service said.

The United Nations estimated that at least 94 buildings in Gaza had been destroyed by the Israeli military, comprising 461 housing and commercial units.

Photographs/video: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report

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So many Palestinians have died in the attacks on Gaza in the past fortnight – and people in Israel too from fire going the other way – it seems churlish to highlight the plight of the media.

But the Israelis taking down the HQ of major media outlets in Gaza last weekend was extraordinary.

The owner of the Jalaa Tower housing international media said an Israeli intelligence officer warned him by phone that he had just one hour to ensure that the building was evacuated. His plea for “10 extra minutes”, broadcast live by Al Jazeera, was denied.

• READ MORE: RSF asks ICC if Israeli airstrikes on media in Gaza are war crimes

AP’s footage of their staff bugging out of the building in a hurry was chilling too – before the destruction of the tower by jets, also covered live on TV:

LIVE footage of the moment an Israeli air raid bombed Jalaa Tower housing the offices of Al Jazeera and The Associated Press in Gaza City. pic.twitter.com/NDulJYte6V

— Fuata Nyuki (@ArapKungu) May 15, 2021

It’s extraordinary but not unprecedented.

During the Sarajevo siege in 1992, hotels housing international journalists were targeted  – but so was much of the central city at the time.

In November 2001, the Kabul office of Al Jazeera was destroyed by a missile fired by a US warplane. Al Jazeera’s Baghdad office was hit by a missile fired by a US jet in 2003, killing one reporter and wounding another person.

The US copped a lot of flak for that – and it hasn’t been forgotten. Israel seems more than willing to cop the criticism.

The US news agency Associated Press was also headquartered in the same tower, and also the London-based online outlet Middle East Eye .

To enable them to continue working, Agence France-Presse has opened its Gaza office to AP and Al Jazeera.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists demanded from the Israeli government a “detailed and documented justification for this military attack”.

“This latest attack on a building long known by Israel to house international media raises the spectre that the Israel Defence Forces is deliberately targeting media facilities in order to disrupt coverage of the human suffering in Gaza,” said CPJ executive director Joel Simon.

“Journalists have an obligation and duty to cover unfolding events in Gaza and it would be illegal for the IDF to use military means to prevent it.”

Gaza spills over into coverage of sport
When Leicester City won the English FA cup final on Sunday, two players posed with a Palestinian flag. The TV pictures were only fleeting but — the images went round the world on social media:

Wow! this from the Palestinian Ambassador on behalf of the Palestinian government and people thanking Hamza Choudhury & Wesley Fofana of Leicester City Football Club for using the historic FA Cup triumph to show solidarity. “No one is free until Palestine is free” #FreePalestine pic.twitter.com/eHPIY2I8gG

— Claudia Webbe MP (@ClaudiaWebbe) May 16, 2021

Meanwhile in Melbourne, Wellington Phoenix’s Israeli striker Tomer Hemed was cautioned by the referee for putting out a kippah as part of a goal celebration — and he charged into the arms of fans with Israeli flags after scoring a penalty. That certainly got noticed in Australia too.

When the Phoenix came home on Monday, media wanted to talk to Hemed — but had to make do with putting awkward questions to general manager David Dome instead at the airport.

He said Hemed’s celebrations were “a plea for peace.”

NZME sports writer Michael Burgess said Tomer Hemed is “not playing for Israel at the moment – he’s playing for the Phoenix – and needed to be more respectful of his club and the optics around that and has put them in an awkward situation”.

“Hemed also needs to be respectful towards Australia and New Zealand, where the majority of people probably have a vastly different view to his own about the current conflict, especially the Israeli concept of ‘defending’ their nation with strikes that cause untold collateral damage, including sleeping children in their beds,” he added.

Football authorities take a take a dim view of political posturing on the pitch. But Black Lives Matter has changed the game and emboldened players now they know they have the power.

It also puts the broadcasters in an awkward position.

Sports authorities will want them to treat players making personal/political/nationalistic statements like streaking or fan violence – and turn the cameras away.

But is that a form of censorship?

Some networks suffered blowback in the US for showing sports people taking a knee in support of BLM – but showed the scenes anyway.  And what if the cameras never showed the 1968 Olympic Black Power protest salute?

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The United States has provided Israel with the military means and diplomatic cover it needs to defeat Hamas in Gaza, while devastating the livelihood of more than two million Palestinians, in what qualify as war crimes.

The Biden administration has covered for Israel at the United Nations and lied about it. Its denial of having obstructed a mere statement by the UN Security Council (UNSC) calling for a ceasefire, makes it look foolish, disingenuous and weak.

Washington has stood alone among the members of the council in its opposition to consensus on a ceasefire, not once, not twice, but three times in the past few days.

• READ MORE: Celebrations in Gaza as ceasefire takes hold
• Fear, rage and mourning in Palestine
• John Minto: Time for NZ to speak up clearly for Palestinian rights and international law

The White House spokesperson insisted that the US is pursuing an “effective” approach of “quiet, intensive, diplomacy”, but as it turns out, President Joe Biden has been merely buying Israel time to get on with “finishing the job”.

According to a New York Times report, the US president told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he might not be able to deter growing international and domestic pressure for much longer, with the mounting death and destruction caused by days of pounding Gaza.

When Biden finally asked Netanyahu to start winding down the war, the arrogant Israeli premier rebuffed him, insisting instead on taking his time to realise his objectives in the war, come what may.

Israel has concluded from the previous three Gaza offensives that it could no longer accept a “strategic tie” with Hamas; that its military victory must be quick, real and resounding; that Palestinians and other regional nemeses must learn that they cannot achieve by force what they failed to achieve through diplomacy; and that Israel will do what it must to win, regardless of how long or how much the world whines.

Sadistic destruction
On that basis, Israel has been making an example of Gaza, sadistically destroying its administrative, municipal and economic infrastructure, including electricity, water and sewerage systems, setting it back years if not decades.

The images from Gaza speak louder than words.

Netanyahu is making Gaza suffer in a cynical ploy to satisfy his vengeful ultra-nationalist base and continue to maintain his grip on power.

If he loses his premiership, he is likely to end up in jail, like his predecessor Ehud Olmert, on any one of the three serious charges he now faces in court – fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes.

Netanyahu was in dire straits only days before his fascist allies began to run amok in occupied East Jerusalem, terrorising its residents. He had failed yet again to form a coalition government and was finally forced to stand trial after repeated postponements.

But, lo and behold, as soon as the escalation got under way, his opponents failed to form a government, and as the escalation worsened, his chances to remain in office improved dramatically, with smaller right-wing parties like Yamina rallying behind him.

One has to wonder if any of this is in the US national interest.

The short answer is no, none of it. Nada. Zilch.

Grave humanitarian crisis
Indeed, the ensuing grave humanitarian crisis and the deepening hatred for Israel and its enablers in the region and beyond is damaging to US credibility and national interest.

This is especially true when the Biden administration claims to put human rights at the centre of its foreign policy, while its spoiled brat of a client takes advantage of its sympathy and support to commit war crimes.

Even the much-touted war on the Islamist movement, Hamas, is not in the US best interest, not when it destabilises the region, and not when the alternative is a negotiated settlement that could achieve peace and security – peace for Israel and security for the Palestinians – based on freedom and justice.

Unlike other pan-Islamic groups that threatened the US and Western security, Hamas is a national liberation movement with religious undertones, and like countless liberation movements, it uses force to achieve its objectives.

Like it or hate it, Hamas has consistently limited the scope of its activities and objectives to freeing Palestine from Israeli colonialism, and it has long entrusted the negotiations to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

For its part, Washington has negotiated an agreement with the Islamist Taliban, which it has also long accused of terrorism and which proved far more radical and less compromising than Hamas, in order to bring peace to Afghanistan.

All of which begs the question: Why is the Biden administration doing Netanyahu’s dirty bidding, instead of helping to reach a similar agreement in Palestine?

Simple answer
Netanyahu’s answer is simple: “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.” This is what he said in 2001, while assuring Israeli settlers that Israel could destroy the Palestinian Authority and continue with illegal settlement building, regardless of the US position.

In his view, America is gullible, and in the rare case when its government plays hardball, Israel can deploy its influential lobby to whip it into submission.

With the Democrats’ razor-thin majority in the Senate, Biden cannot afford to alienate a single pro-Israel Democrat if he is to pass his ambitious legislative agenda, not when the Republicans are blindly following Netanyahu.

Israel could also count on the overwhelming backing it enjoys in Congress and in the US in general, which is so substantial that Netanyahu aptly called it, “absurd”. Paradoxically, the two senators leading the effort for an immediate ceasefire, Bernie Sanders and Jon Ossoff, are Jewish.

More disturbingly, Netanyahu’s views reflect a general “disdain” among Israelis for Americans, whom they reckon are “inherently dupable people”, according to a report in the Jewish American publication, The Forward.

Over the years, the US has provided Israel with close to $150bn in direct assistance only, and in return they are rewarded with insult, for Israelis basically think the Americans, who long showered them with money and weapons, are suckers.

But then, these are the same Israelis who willingly made an infamous, cheating, deceiving, liar their country’s longest serving prime minister, heading not one, not two, but five governments – and counting.

Gotten away with almost anything
It is no coincidence that, after engaging five US administrations over a quarter of a century, Netanyahu behaves so arrogantly towards US leaders. Not only has he gotten away with almost anything, even things contrary to US interests, he has also been rewarded for it.

Insane.

Netanyahu called US President Bill Clinton “radically pro Palestinian”, even though the US president helped improve Israel’s regional and international standing in the 1990s, when foreign investment skyrocketed, the economy prospered, and trade increased while illegal settlement expanded.

Netanyahu’s chutzpah is best illustrated by his humiliation of US President Barack Obama, lecturing him on the Middle East, denouncing him on the Iran deal and his opposition to settlements, and snubbing him in his talk directly to the Congress.

And Obama’s defeatism is best illustrated by his absurd rush in the last months of his presidency to reward Netanyahu with a $38bn military aid package.

Such military assistance may have been justifiable during the Cold War, but today rich Israel is no longer a strategic asset; it is a strategic liability for the US. Israel may have served US strategy in the past, but that strategy proved bad for the US and the Middle East.

At any rate, if that was not weird enough, Netanyahu stalled, insisting on $45bn, before finally signing on it. Bizarrely, other Israeli leaders also complained about this “single largest pledge of military assistance in US history”.

Wait, there is more.

Lashed out
Shortly after signing the deal, Netanyahu lashed out at the Obama-Biden administration for abstaining during a UNSC vote on Israel’s illegal settlements that Washington long opposed, calling it a “shameful anti-Israeli ploy”.

And then came Donald Trump, the gift that kept on giving concession after concession to Netanyahu. Among others, Trump recognised Israeli annexation of Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights, as well as hundreds of illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

It was no coincidence that Netanyahu made clear his support for Trump during the elections, but after becoming president, Biden resumed the relationship with the ungrateful premier, as if nothing had happened and even provided him with the diplomatic cover to fight his ugly war.

As Netanyahu plunged Palestine into another dark and tragic chapter of violence, and rejected Biden’s appeals to de-escalate the violence in order to reach a ceasefire, the Biden administration is rewarding him with a $735m arms sale that includes precision-guided weapons.

But it is never enough, alas.

Expect Netanyahu to ask for more in return for de-escalation, including more money and arms, and an invitation to Washington before Israel’s fifth elections in two years.

Insane!

And, well, insanely stupid.

Marwan Bishara is an author who writes extensively on global politics for Al Jazeera and is widely regarded as a leading authority on US foreign policy, the Middle East and international strategic affairs. He was previously a professor of international relations at the American University of Paris.

When Nanaia Mahuta was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, there were hopes for a change in government thinking towards the struggles of indigenous people. The minister said she hoped to bring her experience and cultural identity as an indigenous woman to her role on international issues.

Palestine, West Papua and Western Sahara are places where the indigenous people are struggling for freedom and human rights and early on there was hope New Zealand would join the 138 member states of the United Nations that recognise Palestine.

However the hope has faded and Mahuta finally spoke on Tuesday, via a tweet, saying she was “deeply concerned” about the deteriorating situation in Jerusalem and Gaza. She called for a “rapid de-escalation” from Israel and the Palestinians, for Israel to “cease demolitions and evictions” and for “both sides to halt steps which undermine prospects for a two-state solution”.

• READ MORE: This is apartheid: A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea
• Google employees urge firm to support Palestinians: Report
• Netanyahu ‘determined’ to continue Gaza bombardment
• Israeli onslaught against Gaza continues: ‘But we are still alive!’

Speaking with reporters later she said she did not want to apportion blame and in a further statement on Thursday said New Zealand officials had raised Israel’s “continued violation of international law and forced evictions occurring in East Jerusalem” with the Israeli ambassador.

Mahuta speaks as though there was some kind of political or military equality between Israel and Palestinians. But there isn’t.

In reality, it means the minister is appeasing the highly militarised state of Israel, with which we have extensive bilateral relations, against a largely defenceless indigenous Palestinian population that lives under Israeli occupation and/or control.

She is addressing only the symptoms of the problem. The heart of the problem is that for the past 53 years Israel has run what the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organisation Human Rights Watch has called “crimes of apartheid and persecution” against Palestinians.

Their detailed 213-page HRW report on Israel’s systematic abuses of Palestinians across the entire area of historic Palestine was released earlier this year.

With tensions rising, Israel this month mounted an extraordinary brutal attack on Muslim worshippers as they were praying in the Al Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. This mosque is the third holiest site for Muslims and this was seen around the world as an outrage against all of Islam.

From there the Hamas leadership in Gaza, after issuing an ultimatum to Israel to withdraw security forces from Al Aqsa, began firing rockets into Israel, which has responded with heavy bombing of the densely populated Gaza strip.

I have a T-shirt that says “The first casualty of war is truth, the rest are mostly civilians” and so it has been this past week, with Palestinians bearing the brunt of casualties with many dozens killed, including at least 60 children.

Despite all this, anyone reading the minister’s comments would think both sides are equally to blame when the problem lies with Israel’s denial of human rights to Palestinians over as many decades as the issue has remained unresolved.

So what should a small country at the bottom of the world do to influence events in the Middle East? The answer is simple. New Zealand should implement its existing policy on the Middle East and give it some teeth.

It is a policy based on respect for international law and United Nations resolutions. These should be at the heart of our response and direct what we say, how we say it and what we do.

This means the government should demand the following:

• An end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land (UN Security Council resolution 242) and the right of return for Palestinian refugees expelled by Israeli militias (UN General Assembly resolution 194 – reaffirmed every year since 1949).
• The end of the more than 65 laws discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel (These are illegal under the crime of apartheid as defined by the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court).
• Israel stop building Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land (UN Security Council resolution 2334 which was co-sponsored by New Zealand under John Key’s National Government). These settlements are illegal under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Initially Israel will take not a blind bit of notice and these calls will need to be followed by escalating sanctions.

It’s time for the minister to speak up unequivocally for Palestinian human rights and bring Aotearoa New Zealand on to the right side of history.

John Minto is the national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). This article was first published by The New Zealand Herald and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Israel is the most powerful state in the Middle East. Its military forces may not match the likes of Egypt or Turkey in numbers, but the might of its training, equipment, technologies and nuclear weapons make it unassailable.

Given its long-developed capabilities in public order control, such a position should also apply to its control of radical dissent within its own borders, as well as in the Palestinian occupied territories.

Gaza may not be occupied in the conventional sense but it is a small territory with 2 million people living behind borders controlled by Israel. It lacks a port, its sole airport was destroyed many years ago and its Mediterranean coastline is patrolled by Israelis at all times.

It is essentially an open prison.

• READ MORE: Israeli politics and the Palestine question: everything you need to know
• Other war on Palestine articles

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has persistently claimed that his country is indeed safe, that it has nothing to fear from the Palestinians, and that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, especially in East Jerusalem, can and should expand, not least as Israel has established good relations with key Gulf states.

With all this – and US president Joe Biden’s continuing assertion that “Israel has the right to defend itself” – the country should feel safe and secure. But in practice it doesn’t.

Instead, an apt summary is of a state that is impregnable in its insecurity. It is impregnable in the sense that it cannot be defeated, but insecure in that the underlying threats will not go away – as is evident in the current violent confrontations.

Underlying anger
The key element of recent weeks has been the repeated incursion of the Israeli police into al-Aqsa mosque. That will have a far deeper and more longer-lasting effect than is currently recognised in the west.

The Israeli actions at Al Aqsa were extensive and stretched over a month starting on April 13, the first day of Ramadan, when police reportedly entered the mosque’s courtyard and cut the cables to loudspeakers in its four minarets. It has been suggested this was to prevent the call to prayer interfering with a speech due to be given by Israeli president Reuven Rivlin nearby.

This contributed to increasing Palestinian anger and more demonstrations especially at the Damascus Gate and the mosque itself. As tensions rose and Hamas threatened rockets in response, the violence escalated to the evening of Friday, May 7, when, as The New York Times put it, “police officers armed with tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-tipped bullets burst into the mosque compound shortly after 8pm, setting off hours of clashes with stone-throwing protesters in which hundreds were injured, medics said.”

Three days later the police repeated the operation as the violence escalated further. Later that day the first of the Hamas rockets were fired from Gaza.

Israel’s problem in Gaza is that it cannot prevent the rockets being fired without a military ground force intervention. However, the last time it sent in troops, during “Operation Protective Edge” in July 2014, they came up against determined paramilitaries who knew the urban areas intimately and had long trained in urban guerrilla warfare.

Over the course of that 2014 conflict, the Israelis lost 68 troops, while several hundreds were left wounded, some maimed for life. Yet, when a ceasefire was eventually agreed, IDF sources accepted that Hamas still had 3000 rockets available, an arsenal that will have increased massively in the past seven years.

IDF leaders may believe that they have since prepared their forces much more effectively for ground operations. However, that same belief after the 2008 “Operation Cast Lead” conflict didn’t stop them failing six years later.

Impregnable but insecure
Prior to the events of the past month, Netanyahu had worked hard to convince Israelis that the Palestinians had been defeated and Israeli Jews could feel secure. This narrative was supported by a 40-year shift to the right in Israel, propped up by the influx of close to a million migrants from Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s, who were understandably determined to be secure in their new country.

It was also aided by the near-wholesale privatisation of the Kibbutz and Moshav cooperatives across Israel that had often provided a more liberal outlook.

Furthermore, the idea that the Palestinians had lost and had to get used to it was promoted vigorously by sectors of the Israeli lobby in the US, most notably the Middle East Forum. And the many millions of Christian Zionists in the US are an ever-present influence on aspiring politicians, both Republican and Democrat.

Whatever happens now, three elements must be factored in. One is that Netanyahu is fighting for his political life and he therefore presents himself as the only politician who can protect Israel. What is happening is very useful for him, even if some of his coalition partners are angered and even afraid of the consequences, not least the serious civil disturbances within Israel and the growing political power of Arab Israelis.

The second is that the mosque incursions are already having an impact across the Islamic world from Indonesia to Morocco and beyond, increasing public support for the Palestinians even if autocratic rulers across the Middle East prefer to deal directly with Israel and ignore the Palestinian predicament.

The final element is something you won’t often see discussed, but is my reading of the situation as it stands now. The Israeli government is reluctant to undertake any direct occupation of Gaza, however short-term.

It will therefore use its current military actions as an essential opportunity to learn how to maximise the impact of strike aircraft, armed drones and artillery – but not ground troops – putting into practice what it learnt from its failures in 2014.

The blunt reality is that weapons designers, strategists and corporations throughout the world will also be watching and learning. In my view this is all part of the global transition to remote warfare, and from that perspective, Gaza, with all its deaths and injuries, is little more than a useful experiment.

Dr Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies, University of Bradford. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article. It is an edited and updated version of an article that first appeared in Open Democracy on May 15.

A Green Party motion asking New Zealand MPs to recognise Palestine as a state has failed in the House, with opposition National and ACT MPs objecting to the effort.

Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman, who arrived in New Zealand at an early age with her family as an Iranian-born refugee,​ today sought leave of the House to debate a motion asking MPs to recognise “the state of Palestine among our community of nations”, reports Stuff.

New Zealand does not recognise Palestine as a state but supports a two-state solution to the conflict, which would mean the creation of a Palestinian state.

• READ MORE: Golriz Ghahraman: Our stand for the statehood rights of Palestinians
• EU, minus Hungary, calls for Israel-Palestine ceasefire
• Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Palestine
• Other Israel-Palestine conflict reports

RNZ News reports that Ghahraman said it was about recognising “the humanity and dignity of Palestinians at a time when they are facing extreme violence and degradation, once again, at the hands of Israeli occupying forces”.

National’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson Gerry Brownlee said the party had consistently been in favour of a two-state system.

“Despite the failure of talks over many years to achieve this, we are firmly of the view that it is the best solution to the extraordinary violence that has for a long time and currently is afflicting both Israelis and Arabs on the two sides of the argument,” Brownlee said.

There had been “administrative signs” that discussions had started to evolve, he said.

‘Get back to the table’
“What we need now is for those parties to desist from their current conflict and to get back to the table, working out how they can co-exist in what is a very, very small part of the world.”

The ACT Party also opposed the motion.

My motion on behalf of the @NZGreens on the right of #Palestine to join our community of states.
The only party who indicated their support was the @Maori_Party.
This was a moment to stand for lasting peace over party politics. Shame.#GazaUnderAttack #FreePalestine pic.twitter.com/vP53fYsgWC

— Golriz Ghahraman (@golrizghahraman) May 19, 2021

A letter sent by the party’s Deputy Leader Brooke Van Velden to Ghahraman said ACT supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Van Velden said the primary reason it was opposing the motion was because of a tweet sent by Green MP Ricardo Menendez last week that said “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! pic.twitter.com/xKDbZ5GLeu

— Ricardo Menéndez (@RMarchNZ) May 15, 2021

“This phrase is used by Hamas, a ‘terrorist’ organisation that calls for the elimination of Israel,” van Velden said. It is actually a phrase widely used by activists across the world in support of Palestinian self-determination.

Without Labour’s support, the Green Party motion failed.

Te Paati Māori was the only other party to support the motion.

The Speaker said it was “disorderly” of Ghahraman to try and move the motion, given she knew it was going to be voted down.

Misinformation ‘deliberately spread’
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national chair John Minto sent a message to van Velden, saying he had read online that she was objecting to the Green Party parliamentary motion by claiming the expression “From the river to the sea – Palestine will be free” was used by Hamas and also by a Green Party MP on Saturday.

“This is NOT a Hamas slogan. It is used in demonstrations the world over because Israel now occupies and/or controls ALL of historic Palestine (one of the longest occupations in modern history) and the saying simply says that every Palestinian living between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea deserves their freedom – something I’m sure you will agree with,” Minto said.

“It’s also important to note that Hamas itself supports a two-state solution based on 1967 borders – as does New Zealand, the US and most other countries we like to compare ourselves with.

“There is a lot of misinformation deliberately spread by the pro-Israeli lobby here and around the world to derail pressure on Israel. Please don’t be dissuaded from supporting this motion by mischievous misinformation.”

We are still fine. The “war front” in our neighborhood is still somewhat quiet, aside from loud explosions near and far. Gaza is a ghost town. It’s the Hiroshima of the 21st century.

My daughter called me last night. She was crying in panic. She said Gaza is burning all around her.Pillars of smoke and massive fires are ignited everywhere as a result of the Israeli missiles. I asked her to calm down. But how could she?

Three wars have passed, this is by far the worst. I remember going to the hospital to work on foot back in 2014. Then, they did not target pedestrians.

• READ MORE: Israel continues Gaza air raids as global calls for ceasefire grow
• Golriz Ghahraman: Our stand for the statehood rights of Palestinians

But now, everything that moves is a target. Homes, civilian structures, and all else are targets.

We can’t leave our home. We can’t even be present in the backyard. The door is locked. We are all waiting. We are running out of food but we are still alive. Anything can be rebuilt, except for human life.

My son shocked us yesterday, when he decided to go to Shifa hospital to donate blood. I begged him not to leave the house.

I barricaded the door, I called on everyone to help so that he may stay home. But he didn’t listen. He turned his cell phone off and went running in the street.

Luckily, he couldn’t find a single car operating between Khan Younes and Gaza City. He waited for hours and eventually came back, angry and defeated.

Thank God he came back. If he did go, he might not be alive anymore, as areas adjacent to Shifa hospital were also bombed.

I want this war to end with our heads held high and our giant resistance triumphant. I can’t bear the thought of all of this going to waste.

Oh Allah, give us victory, give us freedom.

• At least 217 Palestinians, including 63 children, have been killed in Gaza since the attacks began. About 1,500 Palestinians have been wounded. Twelve people in Israel have died, including two children, while at least 300 have been wounded.

Tomorrow I will move a motion calling on the New Zealand Parliament to join the Green Party in recognising the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination and statehood.

This is about acknowledging the humanity and dignity of Palestinians at a time when they are facing extreme violence and degradation, once again, at the hands of Israeli occupying forces.

The harrowing violence we are witnessing in Gaza and East Jerusalem are part of an ongoing atrocity against the Palestinian people.

• READ MORE: Green Party puts forward NZ parliamentary motion to declare Palestine a state
• Other Israel-Palestine conflict reports

Violence against civilians, whether committed by Hamas or the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) must be condemned in the strongest terms, but the massively disproportionate death toll — more than 200 Palestinian deaths, 50 of them children, and 10 Israelis, including two children — speaks to the context of a powerful military force indiscriminately attacking a trapped community.

The path forward from the latest bout of violence must be lasting peace, supported by the international community.

Statehood as part of a two-state solution would uphold and celebrate the inherent rights and dignity of Palestinians.

It would allow that strong and resilient community to move forward to a future where Palestinian children can look forward to building their lives free from violence, with hopes and dreams that they so richly deserve.

This is a longstanding Green Party kaupapa that we hope the House will unanimously support.

Golriz Ghahraman is a Green Party list MP and spokesperson on foreign affairs and social justice issues. She is an Iranian-Kiwi refugee and made history as the first ever refugee to be sworn in as an MP in New Zealand.

“If I don’t steal your house, someone else will.”

This is how an Israeli settler called “Yakob” responded to the Jerusalemite journalist Muna El Kurd when she asked him to leave the garden of her home in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

The video of the exchange Kurd posted on her Instagram page was shared on many news pages and sites, going viral and becoming iconic of the oppression her family—and the neighbourhood—currently faces.

The ongoing apartheid in Jerusalem.

“Even if i get out of the house, it won’t be returned to u” pic.twitter.com/5sELdmClH5

— Abed #SaveSheikhJarrah (@Abd_HajYahia) May 1, 2021

• WATCH: #Palestine: Videos of violence, images of death on social media – Al Jazeera’s Listening Post

Since El Kurd posted her video, tensions in the occupied Palestinian territories have flared up to the worst level in years. The blockaded enclave of Gaza has been pounded by Israeli airstrikes as Muslims marked the end of Ramadan, their holy month of fasting.

So far, at least 212 people, including 61 children, have been killed in Gaza so far since the latest violence began more than a week ago. Some 1500 Palestinians were also wounded.

Ten Israelis, including two children, have been killed as Hamas, which governs Gaza, fired hundreds of rockets on Israeli-occupied territories, in response to earlier Israeli provocation.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Jerusalemites have been wounded by occupation forces who have clamped down on protesters and worshippers in the past weeks.

The tensions in Jerusalem coincided with the start of Ramadan on May 13. Occupation Israeli forces set up barricades to block Jerusalemites from accessing the area of Bab Al-Amud, preventing them from observing a longtime ritual of casual gatherings in that part of the Old City.

This resulted in protests—which have come to be called the “Bab Al Amud Uprising”— which eventually displaced the barriers and obstacles erected by the Occupation forces.

This was followed by Israeli forces’ storming of Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, one of Islam’s holiest sites, firing tear gas and stun grenades and wounding many, and coincided with Israeli settlers appropriating the homes of Palestinians in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, citing Israeli court verdicts.

Sheikh Jarrah: a decades-old struggle
The struggle over Sheikh Jarrah dates back to 1948, when representatives of the then-nascent state of Israel tried to storm the neighborhood, displace its people and destroy their homes. They were prevented from doing so by the British forces, which were protecting the city of Jerusalem at the time.

Fast-forward to the Six-Day War—also known as the June 1967 War—when Israeli forces occupied the West Bank, including Jerusalem and its environs.

Since then, consecutive Israeli governments have sought to displace the Palestinian population from the city of Jerusalem to shift its demographics to a Jewish majority, in line with efforts to position the city as Israel’s capital and mobilise countries to relocate their embassies there.

This despite Palestine’s United Nations-backed claim to at least part of the city as its capital.

The neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located to the north of Jerusalem’s Old City, contains one of the main arteries linking the concentration of the city’s Jewish population in the city to Hebrew University. Seizing control of the neighbourhood would bring the entire eastern side of Jerusalem under Israel’s authority.

The expulsion of Palestinians goes back to the period 1948-1967, when Jerusalem was under Jordanian control. In 1956, the Jordanian authorities, in cooperation with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), constructed housing for 28 refugee families in Sheikh Jarrah. The Jordanian Ministry of Construction and Development provided the land, with the proviso that construction took place through the UNRWA and that ownership of the homes would be transferred to their residents three years after the completion of construction. But this did not happen until 1967, when Jordan lost control of the West Bank.

أيام قليلة تفصلنا عن قرار محكمة الاحتلال بإخلاء حي #الشيخ_جراح او تأجيله.
أكثر من 500 فلسطيني موزعين على 28 عائلة يواجهون شبح نكبة جديدة وتهجير قسري.
لنعلي أصواتنا دعماّ وإسنادا لأهلنا في الحي المقدسي. #انقذوا_حي_الشيخ_جراح pic.twitter.com/XjDc6pL541

— فلسطين27 (@Pal_27KM) April 30, 2021

A few days separate us from the occupation court’s decision to evacuate the Sheikh Jarrah’s neighborhood #الشيخ_جراح or postpone it. More than 500 Palestinians over 28 families face the spectre of a new catastrophe and forced displacement. Let’s raise our voices to support our people in the Jerusalem’s neighborhood. #انقذوا_حي_الشيخ_جراح pic.twitter.com/XjDc6pL541 — فلسطين27 (@Pal_27KM) April 30, 2021

With Jerusalem under Israeli control, Israeli settler organizations began occupying houses whose residents happened to be absent at the time, even if temporarily. The Shatti family, for example, lost their house while they were away on a visit to Kuwait in 1967.

In 1972, two Israeli societies comprising Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews went to the Israeli Land Registry Department claiming ownership of the area of Karm Al-Jaouni in Sheikh Jarrah. The claim was based on a purchase document allegedly dating from the Ottoman period. The societies were granted ownership of the land.

Between 1974-1975, the two societies then filed a lawsuit in an attempt to force four families to evacuate their homes. The Israeli court dismissed the cases because the residents were tenants protected by law.

But the lawsuits resumed again in 1982, this time against 23 families, 17 of whom retained an Israeli lawyer, Tosya Cohen. In 1991, however, Cohen shocked his clients by concluding a deal with the two settler societies, recognising their ownership of the land. Cohen’s recognition created a legal precedent that paved the way for the two societies to strip Palestinians such as the Hanoun and Ghawi families of their homes.

An initial court decision directed these two families to pay rent to the plaintiffs, and although they complied, they were expelled in 2002. In 2003, the two societies sold their share in the land to an investment company. The change in ownership allowed the Hanoun and Ghawi families to appeal their expulsion, enabling them to return to their homes until the case was adjudicated.

Mona ElKurd’s family has been the target of lawsuits since the beginning of the 1990s. After numerous rulings, the last of which was in 2009, Israeli settlers were granted the right to appropriate the ElKurd’s house. Since that time, ElKurd family has been sharing their home with the settlers who appropriated it, leaving them with only 50 metres to live in.

More recently, in October 2020, El Kurd, Al Qasim, Al Jauni and Al Skafi families received evacuations notifications from the Israeli Magistrate’s Court. In September, three other families—Hammad, Dajani, and Al Dawoudi—received similar notifications, bringing the total of people facing threats of eviction from their homes to 55. These decisions were suspended until February 2021, during which an evacuation order was issued to be carried out by Thursday, May 6, 2021, resulting in the current escalation.

Sheikh Jarrah residents ‘can’t breathe’
As tensions brewed, Palestinians took to social media to speak about the oppression they’re facing.

Bentzi Gopstein (Lehava), one of the “Death To Arabs” march organizers, is coming to Sheikh Jarrah tonight at 8:30 pm. #SaveSheikhJarrah from colonial violence. https://t.co/ov5rqBjDVE

— mohammed el-kurd (@m7mdkurd) May 6, 2021

The phrase “I can’t breathe”—the last words uttered by George Floyd as he was killed by police last year in Minnesota—is trending on social media among Palestinian users and sympathisers, as Israeli occupation forces violently cracked down on those expressing solidarity with the evicted residents of Sheikh Jarrah.

“I cant breath” he said.

The apartheid never stops. pic.twitter.com/jnQXZr6W5M

Another Twitter user, Kawther, wrote:

— Abed #SaveSheikhJarrah (@Abd_HajYahia) May 4, 2021

The same violence but no one speak . #انقذوا_حي_الشيخ_جراح pic.twitter.com/N1HYD5M4iF

— kawther slama (@KawtherSlama) May 6, 2021

In a gesture of solidarity with residents of Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalemites broke their fast every day of Ramadan in front of houses whose residents were being made to evacuate. This prompted Itamar Ben Ghafir, a member of Israel’s Knesset and leader of the Israeli far-right party Otzma Yehudit, to participate in a gathering in the district on May 6, the day set by the court to evacuate these houses, where he made the provocative announcement that he would relocate his office to Sheikh Jarrah to confront the “Arab extremists”.

When a crowd of Palestinians gathered to express their rejection of the parliamentarian’s incitements, a settler pepper-sprayed the Palestinians, an act documented in many video clips.

Israeli settlers spray pepper gas at Palestinian youths in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
#SaveSheikhJarrah #انقذو_حي_الشيخ_جراح pic.twitter.com/baiP9UeuH0

— Huda Fadil #Gaza (@HudaFadil2) May 6, 2021

This led to a clash between the two sides, involving the throwing of chairs and stones.

مستوطن يرش الشباب بغاز الفلفل وقت الافطار، والشباب ما قصرو معاه .#انقذو_حي_الشيخ_جراح #SaveSheikhJarrah pic.twitter.com/pmNArc0bFy

— شجاعية (@shejae3a) May 6, 2021

A settler sprays the guys with pepper spray, and the guys didn’t disappoint #انقذو_حي_الشيخ_جراح

#SaveSheikhJarrah pic.twitter.com/pmNArc0bFy

— شجاعية (@shejae3a) May 6, 2021

Israeli occupation forces intervened and arrested several Palestinians.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented the official documents containing details of the displacement operations carried out by Israel to the International Criminal Court on May 5, but the confrontations on the ground are not expected to abate.

On May 10, an Israeli court postponed a session scheduled that day to decide the fate of Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah. Announcing that the date of the upcoming session would be set within 30 days, the court permitted families facing eviction to remain in their houses until the session is held.

Muna El Kurd, whose Instagram video has turned her into an emblem of the struggle of Sheikh Jarrah’s residents, wrote:

We should not stop. Freezing [the decision] is not cancelling it.. The movement of Sheikh Jarrah is a popular and global movement against displacement and colonization in Jerusalem and all of Palestine. We must raise our voices, and intensify efforts through our presence and solidarity in Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, and intensify our voice on social media platforms, because the violence of the colonial occupation is prevalent and its outbreak in our cities has not been frozen.

أيمن حسونة and Yasmeen Omera are Global Voices contributors.Republished with permission from Global Voices under a Creative Commons licence.

So far, the New Zealand government has been remarkably silent about the Gaza-Israel conflict. Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta could be helping meditate for peace, Geoffrey Miller writes.

The growing Gaza crisis is testing Nanaia Mahuta’s recent assertion that New Zealand has an independent foreign policy.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas-controlled Gaza could be a golden opportunity for Mahuta to take the lead and forge her own path on the world stage.

New Zealand could be following Norway’s example and helping to broker a ceasefire and mediate wider peace attempts in the region.

• READ MORE: Ghahraman condemns ‘disappointing’ NZ response over attacks on Gaza
• Gaza death toll nears 200 amid surge of Israeli raids
• Palestinians in NZ stage rallies protesting against Israeli ‘brutality’
• Other Israel-Palestine conflict reports

But if anything, New Zealand’s response to the growing Israeli-Palestinian crisis to date appears to be slower and lower-key than that of its traditional English-speaking partners.

As of Monday morning, Mahuta’s public reaction appears to have been largely limited to a tweet and – in diplomatic terms – a fairly standard, 180-word written statement.

is deeply concerned about the deteriorating situation in Jerusalem and Gaza. We call for rapid de-escalation from and . We call on Israel to cease demolitions and evictions and for both sides to halt steps which undermine prospects for a two state solution.

— Nanaia Mahuta (@NanaiaMahuta) May 11, 2021

Mahuta has largely echoed the calls of others calling for de-escalation in the crisis.

Notably, she does not appear to have given any TV or radio interviews about the topic.

Late PM comments
For her part, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s first comments on the crisis appear to have been made in a scheduled weekly TV interview on Monday morning – nearly a full week after Israel began launching airstrikes on Gaza, in response to the firing of rockets into Israeli territory by Hamas.

Ardern, who talked of her “despair” at the conflict, seems to have been the last of the Five Eyes leaders to comment on the crisis publicly.

Overall, it appears the government would prefer not to become involved in a distant conflict that – to many – appears intractable and unsolvable.

Other NZ parliamentarians – with the notable exception of Green MPs, especially Golriz Ghahraman – appear to be taking much the same position. According to Hansard, the conflict did not even rate a mention in the New Zealand Parliament last week – in stark contrast to its Australian, British and Canadian counterparts, which all debated the issue.

Neither did New Zealand’s public statements differ greatly in tone or substance from those made by other Five Eyes countries.

Marise Payne, Australia’s Foreign Minister, called for de-escalation at a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington on Thursday. And Canada and the United Kingdom have both have issued similar statements at prime ministerial and foreign minister level.

Mediation role?
Other countries are trying to find a solution to the crisis, including Egypt, Qatar, Russia and the US.

Each country has its own potential advantages in mediation: Qatar and Egypt have traditionally held the ear of Hamas, for instance, while Israel is most likely to listen to its closest ally, the United States.

But there is plenty of scope for others to become involved.

For example, China last week worked with non-permanent United Nations Security Council (UNSC) members Tunisia and Norway in repeated attempts to try and find agreement on a joint statement on the crisis – efforts that were ultimately blocked by the United States.

New Zealand, too, could also play a more active role in brokering a solution.

Ardern’s heartfelt response to the conflict on Monday morning resembled that of a political commentator and observer, rather than of a participant in international affairs.

The conflict was tragic, but ultimately for others to solve – or at least that was the impression she gave.

More active earlier role
But New Zealand has played a more active role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before. As Professor Robert Patman pointed out on Sunday, New Zealand co-sponsored UNSC Resolution 2334 in 2016 that condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The move prompted Israel to recall its ambassador from Wellington and sever diplomatic ties with New Zealand for six months as a symbolic punishment.

Despite this history, New Zealand still has a good chance of being seen as an honest broker by all parties.

With most other smaller Western democracies falling under the EU’s umbrella, New Zealand is one of only a handful of countries with the credibility and neutrality to talk to both sides.

Palestinians in #NZ stage #rallies protesting against #Israeli ‘brutality’ #Palestine #PalestineBleeding #PalestineUnderAttack #NakbaDay2021 #AsiaPacificReport #humanrightshttps://t.co/ty6SF2AMkz pic.twitter.com/G4cELFe7dt

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) May 16, 2021

There are other helpful factors.

The fact that New Zealand has recently distanced itself from the Five Eyes alliance – and New Zealand’s overall good working relationship with China – would help to remove any impression of bias towards a particular side.

Moreover, New Zealand has designated only Hamas’s military wing as a terrorist entity, rather than the organisation as a whole – unlike the EU, US, Canada and Japan.

And Jacinda Ardern’s own personal star power and diplomatic clout – as shown again by her leadership of the Christchurch Call meeting at the weekend – would also help New Zealand win friends and influence people at the negotiating table.

Nordic template?
A template for New Zealand’s involvement could come from another small democracy – Norway. The Nordic country – also a ‘team of five million’ – has remained an active player in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993.

In the current crisis, Norway is again trying to help – its top diplomat Tor Wennesland is playing a leading role, under secondment to the UN.

Stop the fire immediately. We’re escalating towards a full scale war. Leaders on all sides have to take the responsibility of deescalation. The cost of war in Gaza is devastating & is being paid by ordinary people. UN is working w/ all sides to restore calm. Stop the violence now

— Tor Wennesland (@TWennesland) May 11, 2021

For New Zealand, former Labour leader David Shearer – who has extensive experience in the Middle East and once headed the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Jerusalem – could be the ideal equivalent appointee.
David Shearer with children in Koch

David Shearer could be an ideal choice for a mediation role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Geoffrey Miller writes. Photo: Supplied

Shearer is now back in New Zealand after finishing up at his job as the head of the UN mission in South Sudan – and he spoke at length about the Gaza conflict in a TV interview on Sunday.

Could New Zealand be the Norway of the South?

Absolutely – if it wants to be.

Geoffrey Miller is an international analyst at the Democracy Project. He has lived and travelled extensively in the Middle East and is a fluent Arabic speaker. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to include Israeli air strikes on more than 20 media outlets in the Gaza Strip in her investigation into the attacks on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Targeted Israeli airforce attacks have destroyed the premises of 23 Palestinian and international media outlets in the past week, reports the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

The latest airstrikes destroyed the offices of the US-based news agency Associated Press and the Qatari-based global TV broadcaster Al Jazeera.

• READ MORE: Israel bombs Gaza tower housing media offices of AP, Al Jazeera
• Palestine: Hold Israel accountable for crimes against journalists, says IFJ

According to the Israeli military, these attacks were justified because the “military intelligence” wing of Hamas, the Gaza Strip’s ruling Islamist movement, had equipment in this building.

“Deliberately targeting media outlets constitutes a war crime,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

“By intentionally destroying media outlets, the Israel Defence Forces are not only inflicting unacceptable material damage on news operations.

“They are also, more broadly, obstructing media coverage of a conflict that directly affects the civilian population. We call on the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor to determine whether these airstrikes constitute war crimes.”

First Israeli attack on media
The first Israeli attack on media outlets occurred four days ago, after Hamas fired a series of rockets into Israel.

THREAD This Sunday, we formally seized the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, about the bombing of local and international media installations and equipment in #Gaza since May 11, which we consider to be war crimes. https://t.co/nrk3k7rcsg pic.twitter.com/Lpxr7tNjCm

— Christophe Deloire (@cdeloire) May 16, 2021

In the early hours of May 12, Israeli airstrikes destroyed the Al Jawhara Tower, a 10-storey building in Gaza City that housed 14 media outlets, including the Palestine Daily News newspaper and the pan-Arab TV channel Al-Araby.

The next day, an Israeli airstrike destroyed Gaza City’s Al Shorouk Tower, a 14-storey building that housed seven media outlets, including the Al Aqsa radio and TV broadcaster.

The IDF claimed it was “striking Hamas weapons stores hidden inside civilian buildings in Gaza”.

Israel is ranked 86th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

The foreign spokesperson for New Zealand’s Green Party, Golriz Ghahraman, is “disappointed” by the government’s response to escalating attacks by Israel on the Gaza enclave, reports TVNZ News.

It comes amid the destruction at the weekend on a Gaza building which was headquarters of international media organisations, including the Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV network and US-based Associated Press news agency.

As the conflict reaches its seventh day, at least 192 people, including 58 children and 34 women, have been killed in the Gaza Strip in the past week. Forty two were killed yesterday alone in the deadliest day so far.

• READ MORE: Gaza death toll nears 200 amid surge of Israeli raids
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More than 1200 others have been wounded. In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have killed at least 13 Palestinians.

“I’ve been disappointed at the New Zealand government response over the [past] six days. I think we should have responded strongly at the very start of what was very violent systemic attacks on the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem, that was backed by the Israel government,” Ghahraman said.

“We then had some retaliation and now have a full-on bombardment of a civilian population in Gaza by one of the world’s most powerful militaries.

“This is an atrocity and it’s absolutely not good enough that the New Zealand government hasn’t condemned it,” Ghahraman says.

She said she viewed the conflict from her background as an international criminal lawyer.

‘Our focus on casualties’
“Our focus is always obviously on civilian casualties and civilian protection.

“Gaza is a trapped population in the context of an occupation. Israel has obligations in humanitarian law to that population every single day. They [Gaza population] don’t have the ability to leave.

“And now over the past few days, what we’ve seen is the occupying force becoming the aggressor,” Ghahraman says.

The former United Nations lawyer said New Zealand had an “obligation” to respond to civilians being killed in what she called an “absolute breach of international humanitarian law”.

New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta has expressed concern over the attacks on both sides, but has not definitively addressed how the government is stepping in, reported TVNZ’s Jane Nixon.

“As we have previously said, Aotearoa New Zealand is very concerned about the ongoing violence in Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” she said in a statement to TVNZ News.

“What’s important is ensuring that that all sides exercise restraint to prevent further civilian casualties and work towards a ceasefire. This is our number one priority for the region.

Calling for ‘rapid de-escalation’
“We are continuing to work alongside the international community, continue to call for rapid de-escalation and for all sides to adhere to international law and international humanitarian law.

“As an international community we need to work to ensure there is a stop in hostilities. We are continuing to raise concerns through international and diplomatic channels,” Mahuta said.

It comes as the Israeli consulate in New Zealand released a press statement today calling on the New Zealand government to “join the many members of the international community who have strongly supported Israel’s right to defend itself”.

Israel’s Prime Minister also issued a tweet today, thanking 25 nations, including Australia – but not New Zealand – for supporting the nation.

What’s next in the latest Middle East convulsion? Will a ceasefire between the Hamas militant group in Gaza and Israel be brokered by Arab mediators in coordination with Western powers, or will the situation continue to deteriorate?

Are we witnessing the beginning of an intensifying conflict in which Israelis find themselves enveloped in a bloody confrontation with Palestinians across the occupied territories and, more threateningly, inside Israel itself?

Will Israel become enmeshed in widespread communal unrest on its own territory in Arab towns and villages?

• READ MORE: With diplomacy all but abandoned, Israel and the Palestinians are teetering on another war
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• Trump’s Middle East ‘vision’ is a disaster that will only make things worse
• Twenty-five years after the Oslo Accords, the prospect of peace in the Middle East remains bleak

In short, are we witnessing the early stages of a third intifada, in which casualties mount on both sides until the participants exhaust themselves?

We’ve seen all this before – in 1987 and 2000. Then, as now, violence spread from territories occupied in the 1967 war into Israel itself.

There are no simple answers to these questions as the crisis enters its second week, with casualties mounting.

In part, the next stage depends on the level of violence Israel is prepared to inflict on Hamas. It is also conditional on Hamas’s tolerance of Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire.

Densely packed civilian population
It will also rely on the extent to which Israel feels its interests continue to be served by courting widespread international opprobrium for its offensive against Hamas, as the militant group’s leadership is embedded in a densely packed civilian population in Gaza.

This is far from a cost-free exercise for Israel, despite the bravado from its leadership, embroiled in a lingering internal crisis over the country’s inability to elect a majority government.

Political paralysis is not the least of Israel’s problems.

As always, the issue is not whether Israel has a right to defend itself against rocket attacks on its own territory. The question is whether its response is disproportionate, and whether its chronic failure to propagate a genuine peace process is fuelling Palestinian resentment.

The short answer is “yes”, whatever legitimate criticisms might be made of a feckless Palestinian leadership divided between its two wings: the Fatah mainstream in Ramallah and Hamas in Gaza.

Israel’s continued provocative construction of settlements in the West Bank, and the daily humiliations it inflicts on a disenfranchised Palestinian population in Arab East Jerusalem, contribute to enormous frustration and anger among people living under occupation.

If nothing else, the latest upsurge of violence between Israelis and Palestinians should persuade the international community that occupation and subjugation of one population by another is a dead-end street.

Less sympathy for Israel
Further complicating things for the Israeli leadership are the circumstances that led to the latest conflagration. This has lessened international sympathy for the extreme measures Israel is using, aiming to bomb the Hamas leadership into submission.

Israeli authorities’ attempts to evict Palestinian families in East Jerusalem from homes they had occupied for 70 years, accompanied by highly provocative demonstrations by extremist Jewish settlers chanting “death to Arabs”, has contributed to a sharp deterioration in relations.

This was followed by a heavy-handed Israeli police response to Palestinian demonstrations in and around Al Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest shrine. In turn, this prompted Hamas rocket strikes into Israel itself from Gaza.

The International Crisis Group has identified the issue that should be most concerning to Israel and its supporters:

This occasion is the first since the September 2000 intifada where Palestinians have responded simultaneously and on such a massive scale throughout much of the combined territory of Israel-Palestine to the cumulative impact of military occupation, repression, dispossession and systemic discrimination.

In a global propaganda war over Israel’s continued occupation of five million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the issue of who started this latest convulsion is relevant.

So, too, are questions surrounding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to cling to power as a corruption trial wends its way through the Israeli court system.

Collateral damage to Israel’s reputation is an unavoidable consequence of the use of a heavy bombardment against Hamas targets in one of the world’s most densely populated areas.

The Nakba legacy
There are two million Palestinians in Gaza, a narrow strip of land between Israeli territory and the Mediterranean Sea. Many are living in refugee camps their families have occupied since they fled Israel in 1948, in what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or catastrophe.

The deaths of an extended Palestinian family at the weekend whose three-storey home was demolished by an Israeli airstrike is a grating reminder of fallout from the use of weapons of war in civilian areas.

This is the reality of a population held hostage to an unresolved – and possibly unresolvable – conflict involving Palestinians living under occupation.

So far, international reaction has been muted. The United States and its allies have gone through the motions in condemning the violence.

US President Joe Biden, in a phone call with Netanyahu, seemed to endorse Israel’s heavy hand.

Biden’s conciliatory tone has drawn widespread criticism in view of the shocking images emanating from Gaza. These include live footage of a building housing foreign media being destroyed by an Israeli airstrike.

Belatedy, the US has sent an envoy to the region.

In Australia, politicians from both sides have called for a de-escalation.

Regionally, Arab states have expressed their support for the Palestinian cause, but remarks by their leaders have been restrained.

Arab states condemn Israel
However, circumstances leading to the outbreak of violence, notably Israeli policing of demonstrations in places sacred to Muslims, have left Arab leaderships no choice but to condemn Israel’s actions.

A hitherto limp US response reflects the Biden administration’s hope that the Israel-Palestine issue would not be allowed to intrude on Washington’s wider Middle East foreign policy efforts. Biden is trying to entice Iran back to the negotiating table to re-energise the nuclear peace deal ripped up by former President Donald Trump.

Part of this strategy has been to calm Israel’s concerns about renewed US efforts to re-engage Iran. Those efforts have been complicated by the violence of recent days.

Washington has been reminded, if that was necessary, that the toxic Palestinian issue could not simply be shoved aside, however much the US and its moderate Arab allies would like it to go away. This was always an unrealistic expectation.

Israeli violence against Palestinians in retaliation for rocket attacks on its territory is an embarrassment for Arab states that had established diplomatic relations with Israel under pressure from the Trump administration.

Bleak moments for peace
The so-called Abraham Accords, involving an exchange of ambassadors between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, is at risk of being discredited in the eyes of the Arab world by the latest conflagration.

Other Arab states that established diplomatic relations with Israel, brokered by Trump officials, include Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Sporadic demonstrations in support of the Palestinians have occurred in the latter two countries.

Finally, this latest conflict between Israelis and Palestinians exposes the failure of various parties to advance a peace agreement based on a two-state solution.

That prospect appears further away than ever, and may even be dead given Israel’s declared intention to annex territory in the West Bank. Such action would end any possibility of compromise based on land swaps to accommodate Israeli settlements in areas contiguous with Israel itself.

These are bleak moments for those who might have believed at the time of the Oslo Declaration in 1993, and subsequent establishment of relations between Israel and the leadership of the Palestinian national movement, that peace might be possible at last.

We are now a very long way indeed from Oslo.

Dr Tony Walker is a vice-chancellor’s fellow, La Trobe University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.