It’s now more than a week since Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced his government had begun to formally consider New Zealand’s position on the recognition of a Palestinian state.

That leaves two weeks until the UN General Assembly convenes on September 9, where it is expected several key allies will change position and recognise Palestinian statehood.

Already in a minority of UN member states which don’t recognise a Palestinian state, New Zealand risks becoming more of an outlier if and when Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom make good on their recent pledges.

• READ MORE: ‘Moral imperative’: Hundreds of UK business leaders demand action on Israel

Luxon has said the decision is “complex”, but opposition parties certainly don’t see it that way. Labour leader Chris Hipkins says it’s “the right thing to do”, and Greens co-leader Chloë Swarbrick has called on government MPs to “grow a spine” (for which she was controversially ejected from the debating chamber).

Former Labour prime minister Helen Clark has also criticised the government for trailing behind its allies, and for appearing to put trade relations with the United States ahead of taking a moral stand over Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Certainly, those critics — including the many around the country who marched last weekend — are correct in implying New Zealand has missed several opportunities to show independent leadership on the issue.

The distraction factor
While it has been open to New Zealand to recognise it as a state since Palestine declared its independence in 1988, there was an opportunity available in May last year when the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian governments took the step.

That month, New Zealand also joined 142 other states calling on the Security Council to admit Palestine as a full member of the UN. But in a subsequent statement, New Zealand said its vote should not be implied as recognising Palestinian statehood, a position I called “a kind of muddled, awkward fence-sitting”.

It is still not too late, however, for New Zealand to take a lead. In particular, the government could make a more straightforward statement on Palestinian statehood than its close allies.

The statements from Australia, Canada and the UK are filled with caveats, conditions and contingencies. None are straightforward expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian right of self-determination under international law.

As such, they present political and legal problems New Zealand could avoid.

Politically, this late wave of recognition by other countries risks becoming a distraction from the immediate starvation crisis in Gaza. As the independent Israeli journalist Gideon Levy and UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese have noted, these considered and careful diplomatic responses distract from the brutal truth on the ground.

This was also Chloë Swarbrick’s point during the snap debate in Parliament last week. Her private members bill, she noted, offers a more concrete alternative, by imposing sanctions and a trade embargo on Israel. (At present, it seems unlikely the government would support this.)

Beyond traditional allies
Legally, the proposed recognitions of statehood are far from ideal because they place conditions on that recognition, including how a Palestinian state should be governed.

The UK has made recognition conditional on Israel not agreeing to a ceasefire and continuing to block humanitarian aid into Gaza. That is extremely problematic, given recognition could presumably be withdrawn if Israel agreed to those demands.

Such statements are not exercises in genuine solidarity with Palestinian self-determination, which is defined in UN Resolution 1514 (1960) as the right of peoples “to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”.

Having taken more time to consider its position, New Zealand could now articulate a more genuine statement of recognition that fulfils the legal obligation to respect and promote self-determination under international law.

A starting point would be to look beyond the small group of “traditional allies” to countries such as Ireland that have already formally recognised the State of Palestine. Importantly, Ireland acknowledged Palestinian “peaceful self-determination” (along with Israel’s), but did not express any other conditions or caveats.

New Zealand could also show leadership by joining with that wider group of allies to shape the coming General Assembly debate. The aim would be to shift the language from conditional recognition of Palestine toward a politically and legally more tenable position.

That would also sit comfortably with the country’s track record in other areas of international diplomacy — most notably the campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, where New Zealand has also taken a different approach to its traditional allies.

Dr Treasa Dunworth is professor of law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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

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

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

• READ MORE: Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

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

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

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

What can we do? Some options:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This double standard persists:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As the NYT also says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Zealand Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has been ejected from Parliament’s debating chamber and told to leave for the rest of the week after a fiery speech about the war in Gaza.

The incident occured during an urgent debate this afternoon which was called after the coalition government’s announcement that it would come to a formal decision in September over whether to recognise the state of Palestine.

As Swarbrick came to the end of her contribution, she challenged coalition MPs to back her member’s bill allowing New Zealand to apply sanctions on Israel “for its war crimes”.

Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick asked to leave Parliament after Gaza speech   Video: Parliament TV

“If we find six of 68 government MPs with a spine, we can stand on the right side of history,” Swarbrick said.

Almost immediately, Speaker Gerry Brownlee condemned the remark as “completely unacceptable” and demanded she “withdraw it and apologise”.

Swarbrick shot back a curt — “no” — prompting Brownlee to order her out of the chamber for the remainder of the week.

“Happily,” Swarbrick said, as she rose to leave.

Green Party whip Ricardo Menéndez March later stood to question the severity of punishment, saying Parliament’s rules suggested Swarbrick should be barred for no more than a day.

Brownlee later clarified that Swarbrick could come back to the debating chamber on Wednesday, but only if she agreed to withdraw and apologise.

“If she doesn’t, then she’ll be leaving the House again,” he said.

“I’m not going to sit in this chair and tolerate a member standing on her feet . . .  and saying that other members of this House are spineless.”

‘What the hell is the point?’ — Swarbrick
Speaking outside the debating chamber, Swarbrick described the ruling as “ridiculous” and the punishment excessive.

“As far as the robust debate goes in that place, I think that was pretty mild in the context of the war crimes that are currently unfolding.”

She drew a comparison with comments made by former prime minister Sir John Key in 2015 when he challenged the opposition to “get some guts”.

Swarbrick said she was tired and angry at the massacre of human beings.

“What the hell is the point of everything that we do if the people in my place, in my job don’t do their job?” she said.

“If we allow other human beings to be just mercilessly slaughtered, to be shot while waiting for food aid, what hope is there for humanity?”

Swarbrick was not the only MP to run afoul of the Speaker during today’s debate.

Earlier, Labour MP Damien O’Connor was told to either exit the chamber or apologise after interjecting while Foreign Minister Winston Peters was speaking. O’Connor stood and left.

Brownlee also demanded ACT MP Simon Court say sorry — which he did — after Court accused Swarbrick of “hallucinating outrage”.

Government urges caution, opposition demands action
In his speech, Court said any recognition of a Palestinian state must be conditional on all Israeli hostages being returned and Hamas being disarmed and dismantled.

“Security must come before politics,” he said.

No National MPs spoke during the urgent debate.

Peters — who is also NZ First leader — told MPs the matter of Palestinian statehood was not a straightforward or clear-cut issue.

“There are strong opinions on both sides,” he said. “That is why we are approaching this issue carefully, judiciously and calmly.”

Peters also took umbrage with the opposition’s complaints, pointing out Labour never moved on the matter when it was in government.

In a 10 minute speech, Labour foreign affairs spokesperson Peeni Henare said New Zealand was being left behind as the coalition walked into a “sunset of denial”.

“How many more people will suffer and how many more people will die?”

‘Despicable’ justifications
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told MPs it was “despicable” to hear the justifications for another month’s delay.

“What will be left? Rubble? Martyred spirits? What is that you want to have left in a month’s time?” she said. “I have never been more ashamed to be in the House than I am today.”

In her speech, Swarbrick told MPs libraries of evidence demonstrated that the events unfolding in Palestine were “ethnic cleansing… apartheid [and]… genocide”.

“We are a laggard, we are an outlier,” she said. “We are one of the very few countries in the world who so far refuse to acknowledge the absolute bare minimum.”

Earlier, during Parliament’s Question Time, ACT leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour objected to Swarbrick having a Palestinian scarf, or keffiyeh, draped across her seat.

“I invite you to consider what this House might look like if everybody who had an interest in a global conflict started adorning their seats with symbols of one side or another of a conflict,” he said.

“I think that would bring the House into disrepute and no member should be allowed to do such a thing.”

Brownlee said Seymour raised a good point, only for Swarbrick to then wrap the scarf around her neck.

“Oh, here we go,” he said. “Well, stay warm. We’ll move on now.”

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

In the absence of any measures taken by the New Zealand government to respond to the genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza, Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick is doing the principled thing by trying to apply countervailing pressure on Israel to stop its brutal actions in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

New Zealand is a state party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).

As a contracting party New Zealand has a clear obligation to respond to a genocide when it is indicated and which it must “undertake to prevent and to punish”.

• READ MORE:  ‘Wiped out’: Israel kills ‘entire family’ in latest attacks on Gaza
• Other articles by John Hobbs

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January 2024, deemed that a “plausible genocide” is occurring in Gaza. That was a year ago. Thousands of Palestinians have died since the ICJ’s determination.

The New Zealand government has failed its responsibilities under the Genocide Convention by applying no pressure to influence Israel’s military actions in Gaza. There are a number of interventions New Zealand could have chosen to take.

For example, a United Nations resolution which New Zealand co-sponsored (UNSC 2334) when it was a non-permanent member of the Security Council in 2015-16 required states to distinguish in their trading arrangements between Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank and the rest of Israel.

New Zealand could have extended this to all trading arrangements with Israel.

Diplomatic pressure needed
Diplomatic pressure could have been put on Israel by expelling the Israeli ambassador to New Zealand. Finally, New Zealand could have shown well-needed solidarity with Palestine by conferring statehood recognition.

In contrast, Swarbrick is looking to bring her member’s Bill to Parliament to apply sanctions against Israel for its ongoing illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza).

The context is the UN General Assembly’s support for the ICJ’s recent report which requires that Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem comes to an end.

New Zealand, along with 123 other general assembly members, supported the ICJ decision. It is now up to UN states to live up to what they voted for.

Swarbrick’s Bill, the Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill, responds to this request, in the absence of any intervention by the New Zealand government. The Bill is based on the Russian Sanctions Act (2022), brought forward by then Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta, to apply pressure on Russia to cease its military invasion of Ukraine.

While Swarbrick’s Bill has the full support of the opposition MPs from Labour and Te Pāti Māori she needs six government MPs to support the Bill going forward for its first reading.

Andrea Vance, in a recent article in the Sunday Star-Times, called Swarbrick’s Bill “grandstanding”. Vance argues that the Greens’ Bill adopts “simplistic moral assumptions about the righteousness of the oppressed [but] ignores the complexity of the conflict.”

‘Confict complexity’ not complicated
The “complexity of the conflict” is a recurring theme which dresses up a brutal and illegal occupation by Israel over the Palestinians, as complicated.

It is hardly complicated. The history tells us so. In 1947, the UN supported the partition of Palestine, against the will of the indigenous Palestinian people, who comprised 70 perent of the population and owned 94 percent of the land.

In 1948, Jewish paramilitary groups drove more than 700,000 Palestinian people out of their homeland into bordering countries (Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, the UAE) and beyond, where they remain as refugees.

Finally, the 1967 illegal occupation by Israel of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. This occupation, which multiple UN resolutions has termed illegal, is now over 58 years old.

This is not “complicated”. One nation state, Israel, exercises total power over a people who have been dispossessed from their land and who simply have no power.

It is the unwillingness of countries like New Zealand and its Anglosphere/Five-Eyes allies (United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia) and the inability of the UN to enforce its resolutions on Israel, which makes it “complicated”.

Historian on Gaza genocide
One of Israel’s most distinguished historians, Emeritus Professor Avi Shlaim at Oxford University, in his recently published book Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine, now chooses to call the situation in Gaza “genocide”.

In arriving at this position, he points to the language and narratives being adopted by Israeli politicians:

“Israeli President Isaac Herzog proclaimed that there are no innocents in Gaza. No innocents among the 50,000 people who were killed and nearly 20,000 children.

“There are quotes from [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] that are genocidal, as well as from his former Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, who said we are up against ‘human animals’.

“I hesitated to call things genocide before October 2023, but what tipped the balance for me was when Israel stopped all humanitarian aid into Gaza. They are using starvation as a weapon of war. That’s genocide.”

There is growing concern among commentators about the ability of international rules-based order to function and hold individuals and states to account.

Institutions such as the UN, the ICJ and the ICC are simply unable to enforce their decisions. This should not come as a surprise, however, as the structure of the UN system, established at the end of the Second World War was designed to be weak by the victors, with regard to its enforcement ability.

Time NZ supports determinations
It is time that New Zealand supported these same institutions by honouring and looking to enforce their determinations.

Accordingly, New Zealand needs to play its part in holding Israel to account for the atrocities it is inflicting on the Palestinian people and stand behind and support the Palestinian right to self-determination.

Swarbrick is absolutely right to introduce her Bill.

At the very least it says that New Zealand does care about the plight of the Palestinian people and is willing to stand behind them. It is the morally correct thing to do and incumbent on the government to provide support to Swarbrick’s Bill — and not just six of its members.

John Hobbs is a doctoral candidate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) at the University of Otago. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with the author’s permission.

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick called on New Zealand government MPs today to support her Member’s Bill to sanction Israel over its “crazy slaughter” of Palestinians in Gaza.

Speaking at a large pro-Palestinian solidarity rally in the heart of New Zealand’s largest city Auckland, she said Aotearoa New Zealand could no longer “remain a bystander to the slaughter of innocent people in Gaza”.

In the fifth day since Israel broke the two-month-old ceasefire and refused to begin negotiations on phase two of the truce — which was supposed to lead to a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the besieged enclave and an exchange of hostages — health officials reported that the death toll had risen above 630, mostly children and women.

• READ MORE: Israel attacks southern Lebanon, kills 130 in two days in Gaza
• Israel’s former chief justice Aharon Barak fears state risks ‘civil war’
• Israel’s top court halts government’s decision to fire Shin Bet chief
• Other Gaza genocide reports
• Video clips and other images

Five children were killed in a major overnight air attack on Gaza City and at least eight members of the family remained trapped under the rubble as Israeli attacks continued in the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Confirmed casualty figures in Gaza since October 7, 2023, now stand at 49,747 with 113,213 wounded, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

For more than two weeks, Israel has sealed off border crossings and barred food, water and electricity and today it blew up the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the only medical institution in Gaza able to provide cancer treatment.

“The research has said it from libraries, libraries and libraries. And what is it doing in Gaza?” said Swarbrick.

‘Ethnic cleansing . . . on livestream’
“It is ethnic cleansing. It is apartheid. It is genocide. And we have that delivered to us by  livestream to each one of us every single day on our cellphones,” she said.

“That is crazy. It is crazy to wake up every single day to that.”

Swarbrick said Aotearoa New Zealand must act now to sanction Israel for its crimes — “just like we did with Russia for its illegal action in Ukraine.”

She said that with the Green Party, Te Pāti Māori and Labour’s committed support, they now needed just six of the 68 government MPs to “pass my Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill into law”.

“There’s no more time for talk. If we stand for human rights and peace and justice, our Parliament must act,” she said.

In September, Aotearoa had joined 123 UN member states to support a resolution calling for sanctions against those responsible for Israel’s “unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in relation to settler violence”.

“Our government has since done nothing to fulfil that commitment. Our Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill starts that very basic process.

“No party leader or whip can stop a Member of Parliament exercising their democratic right to vote how they know they need to on this Bill,” she said to resounding cheers.

‘No hiding behind party lines’
“There is no more hiding behind party lines. All 123 Members of Parliament are each individually, personally responsible.”

Several Palestinian women spoke of the terror with the new wave of Israeli bombings and of their families’ personal connections with the suffering in Gaza, saying it was vitally important to “hear our stories”. Some spoke of the New Zealand government’s “cowardice” for not speaking out in opposition like many other countries.

About 1000 people took part in the protest in a part of Britomart’s Te Komititanga Square in a section now popularly known as “Palestine Corner”.

Amid a sea of banners and Palestinian flags there were placards declaring “Stop the genocide”, “Jews for tangata whenua from Aotearoa to Palestine”, “Hands off West Bank End the occupation” , “The people united will never be defeated”, “Decolonise your mind, stand with Palestine,” “Genocide — made in USA”, and “Toitū Te Tiriti Free Palestine”.

The ceasefire-breaking Israeli attacks on Gaza have shocked the world and led to three UN General Assembly debates this week on the Middle East.

France, Germany and Britain are among the latest countries to condemn Israel for breaching the ceasefire — describing it as a “dramatic step backwards”, and France has told the UN that it is opposed to any form of annexation by Israel of any Palestinian territory.

Meanwhile, Sultan Barakat, a professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera in an interview that the more atrocities Israel committed in Gaza, the more young Palestinian men and women would join Hamas.

“So it’s not going to disappear any time soon,” he said.

With Israel killing more than 630 people in five days and cutting off all aid to the Strip for weeks, there was no trust on the part of Hamas to restart the ceasefire, Professor Barakat said.