But, speaking to RNZ Midday Report, Clark said New Zealand needed to come on board.
“We are watching a catastrophe unfold in Gaza. We’re watching starvation. We’re watching famine conditions for many. Many are using the word genocide,” she said.
“If New Zealand can’t act in these circumstances, when can it act?”
Elders call for recognition “The Elders, a group of world leaders of which Clark is a part, last month issued a call for countries to recognise the state of Palestine, calling it the “beginning, not the end of a political pathway towards lasting peace”.
Clark said the government seemed to be trying avoid the ire of the United States by waiting until the peace process was well underway or nearing its end.
“That is no longer tenable,” she said.
“New Zealand really is lagging behind.”
Even before the recent commitments from France, Canada and the UK, 147 of the UN’s 193 member states had recognised the Palestinian state.
Clark said the hope was that the series of recognitions from major Western states would first shift the US position and then Israel’s.
“When the US moves, Israel eventually jumps because it owes so much to the United States for the support, financial, military and otherwise,” she said.
“At some point, Israel has to smell the coffee.”
Surprised over Peters Clark said she was “a little surprised” that Foreign Minister Winston Peters had not been more forward-leaning given he historically had strongly advocated New Zealand’s even-handed position.
On Wednesday, New Zealand signed a joint statement with 14 other countries expressing a willingness to recognise the State of Palestine as a necessary step towards a two-state solution.
However, later speaking in Parliament, Peters said that was conditional on first seeing progress from Palestine, including representative governance, commitment to non-violence, and security guarantees for Israel.
“If we are to recognise the state of Palestine, New Zealand wants to know that what we are recognising is a legitimate, representative, viable, political entity,” Peters told MPs.
Peters also agreed with a contribution from ACT’s Simon Court that recognising the state of Palestine could be viewed as “a reward [to Hamas] for acts of terrorism” if it was done before Hamas had returned hostages or laid down arms.
Luxon earlier told RNZ New Zealand had long supported the eventual recognition of Palestinian statehood, but that the immediate focus should be on getting aid into Gaza rather than “fragmenting and talking about all sorts of other things that are distractions”.
“We need to put the pressure on Israel to get humanitarian assistance unfettered, at scale, at volume, into Gaza,” he told RNZ.
“You can talk about a whole bunch of other things, but for right now, the world needs to focus.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The former head of Human Rights Watch — and son of a Holocaust survivor — says Israel’s military campaign in Gaza will likely meet the legal definition of genocide, citing large-scale killings, the targeting of civilians, and the words of senior Israeli officials.
Speaking on 30′ with Guyon Espiner, Ken Roth agreed Hamas committed “blatant war crimes” in its attack on Israel on October 7 last year, which included the abduction and murder of civilians.
But he said it was a “basic rule” that war crimes by one side do not justify war crimes by the other.
There was indisputable evidence Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza and might also be pursuing tactics that fit the international legal standard for genocide, Roth said.
30′ with Guyon Espiner Kenneth Roth Video: RNZ
“The acts are there — mass killing, destruction of life-sustaining conditions. And there are statements from senior officials that point clearly to intent,” Roth said.
He cited comments immediately after the October 7 attack by Hamas from Israel’s former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who referred to Gazans as “human animals”.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also said “an entire nation” was responsible for the attack and the notion of “unaware, uninvolved civilians is not true,” referring to the Palestinean people. Herzog subsequently said his words were taken out of context during a case at the International Court of Justice.
The accusation of genocide is hotly contested. Israel says it is fighting a war of self-defence against Hamas after it killed 1200 people, mostly civilians. It claims it adheres to international law and does its best to protect civilians.
It blames Hamas for embedding itself in civilian areas.
But Roth believes a ruling may ultimately come from the International Court of Justice, especially if a forthcoming judgment on Myanmar sets a precedent.
“It’s very similar to what Myanmar did with the Rohingya,” he said. “Kill about 30,000 to send 730,000 fleeing. It’s not just about mass death. It’s about creating conditions where life becomes impossible.”
‘Apartheid’ alleged in Israel’s West Bank Roth has been described as the ‘Godfather of Human Rights’, and is credited with vastly expanding the influence of the Human Rights Watch group during a 29-year tenure in charge of the organisation.
In the full interview with Guyon Espiner, Roth defended the group’s 2021 report that accused Israel of enforcing a system of apartheid in the occupied West Bank.
“This was not a historical analogy,” he said, implying it was a mistake to compare it with South Africa’s former apartheid regime.
“It was a legal analysis. We used the UN Convention against Apartheid and the Rome Statute, and laid out over 200 pages of evidence.”
Kenneth Roth appears via remote link in studio for an interview on season 3 of 30′ with Guyon Espiner. Image: RNZ
He said the Israeli government was unable to offer a factual rebuttal.
“They called us biased, antisemitic — the usual. But they didn’t contest the facts.”
The ‘cheapening’ of antisemitism charges Roth, who is Jewish and the son of a Holocaust refugee, said it was disturbing to be accused of antisemitism for criticising a government.
“There is a real rise in antisemitism around the world. But when the term is used to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel, it cheapens the concept, and that ultimately harms Jews everywhere.”
Roth said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had long opposed a two-state solution and was now pursuing a status quo that amounted to permanent subjugation of Palestinians, a situation human rights groups say is illegal.
“The only acceptable outcome is two states, living side by side. Anything else is apartheid, or worse,” Roth said.
While the international legal process around charges of genocide may take years, Roth is convinced the current actions in Gaza will not be forgotten.
“This is not just about war,” he said. “It’s about the deliberate use of starvation, displacement and mass killing to achieve political goals. And the law is very clear — that’s a crime.”
Roth’s criticism of Israel saw him initially denied a fellowship at Harvard University in 2023. The decision was widely seen as politically motivated, and was later reversed after public and academic backlash.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
It’s time that the nations of the world (or at least the influential western nations) accept the reality that all the lands that constituted 1920-1948 Mandatory Palestine should be formally recognised as a single nation-state; ideally called Palestine Israel or Israel-Palestine, but more realistically called Israel.
In other words, the never-viable notion of a two-nation-state division of ‘Israel’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eretz_Israel) should be dropped as a viable solution in favour of the promotion of a liberal bicultural (or multicultural) nation-state. The role model for change could be South Africa.
Jewish and Non-Jewish intellectuals (such as Hans Kohn, Shlomo Sand and Yanis Varoufakis) – on the political left – have been arguing for this ‘one-state-solution’ for over 100 years. It’s just that their voices have always been deamplified by those on the political centre and the political right. (On the centre, we think of people like Joe Biden, Keir Starmer, and their predecessors. On the right, we may consider former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, a leader in the 1940s of the openly fascist Lehi, yet a moderate by today’s Israeli political standards.)
Shlomo Sand outlines the history of the arguments for a single ‘binational’ state in his 2024 book Israel-Palestine: Federation or Apartheid? His vision, which is not quite what I favour, emphasises binationalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/binationalism), and looks towards these successful liberal examples of bi- or multi- nationalism: Canada, Belgium, Switzerland.
The better framing of this approach, I believe, is biculturalism; though even that is not problem-free, because it is an exclusive concept. What I think would work best for Palestine Israel is also the same as what would work best for Aotearoa New Zealand: multiculturalism with a bicultural (treaty) emphasis. (Ireland could have become something similar, as in Irish rugby; but it went down a failed two-state path, and experienced two substantial civil wars last century.) The ideal is for Palestine Israel to become a liberal democracy in which all people born within its borders become citizens with equal citizenship rights; a nation state which commits to both the domestic and international norms of liberal democracy.
(In a bicultural nation-state, the principal divider is religion; normally people’s religious loyalties are discrete, meaning that being, say, a Muslim or Jew or Christian is mutually exclusive. The word ‘national’ is increasingly used in the 21st century as it was in the 19th century; to refer to a ‘people’ or a ‘race’ rather than to relate to a territory defined by its borders and its sovereign institutions. Ethnicity – the better word is ‘ancestry – is not a discrete concept such as ‘religion’; individual people have multiple ancestries, and should not be required to identify as one over another.)
How can this be achieved?
First, we should note that the status quo in Eretz Israel is at least as unacceptable as Apartheid South Africa was to our world of mostly ‘internationally-civilised’ nation-states. (An internationally civilised state is one that accepts agreed norms in the ways that it relates to other nation states, meaning that it does not indulge in offensive hard-power geopolitics – such as ‘gunboat diplomacy’; and it practises cultural equality. Terrorism is understood as criminality. Such a state does not have to be a ‘democracy’ in the Westminster or American sense; but it should meet open liberal standards in the ways it treats its resident denizens – non-citizens – and it should subscribe to international treaties on matters such as climate sustainability and nuclear energy and election authenticity.)
Second, this desired outcome will not come about by force. The community of liberal nations should simply recognise Eretz Israel as a nation state, based ideally on the prior borders of Mandatory Palestine.
While there should be no demands, such a new nation-state would be risking discriminatory sanctions if it abuses liberal norms; in particular if it implements laws (including civil-marriage laws) that discriminate on the basis of sex, religion, or ancestry. Again, the obvious model is Apartheid South Africa, and the ways that South Africa was excluded from international sport so long as it implemented laws which discriminated on the basis of ethnicity. (Palestinians and many Israelis have Levantine ethnicity. Many Israelis have European, African or Asian co-ethnicity; that non-indigeneity should never be held against them. Nor should the indigeneity of the Palestinians.)
In recognising Eretz Israel as Israel-Palestine (or even just under the name ‘Israel’), a Levantine nation state, Israel’s nuclear status should be addressed and normalised. (Likewise, India and Pakistan should be pressured to join the ‘nuclear club’. One of the most problematic regional asymmetries at present is the advanced nuclear-status of Israel versus the embryonic nuclear status of Iran; Israel at present hides behind its non-membership of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to make it seem that Iran is a bigger nuclear threat to the world than Israel is.)
Recognition of Eretz Israel as a sovereign nation state, under any name, should come with overt expectations of democracy, amnesty, truth, reconciliation, and press freedom. There should be no formal or informal mechanism of ‘settling scores’, no matter how reprehensible anyone’s past or present behaviour has been. Truth trumps vengeance cloaked as ‘accountability’.
Lebanon was an initially successful, but now largely failed, version of a similar attempt at creating a tolerant multicultural nation state in the Levant. Lebanon’s main problem was its belligerent southern neighbour. Israel-Palestine would not have Israel as a neighbour.
Abandon the naïve two-state solution.
There is no way a Palestinian nation-state can be viable. At the very best it could become like a mini-Pakistan or mini-Bangladesh; and even that would take decades. (And the last Israeli prime minister to formalise a two-state future – Yitzhak Rabin – was assassinated in 1995, having achieved a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.) The two-state-solution agenda seems to be more about deescalating sufficiently for the Palestine issue to disappear from its media prominence; and not at all about ending a forever war which began in 1948.
The present forever war – now in its hottest phase – followed a brutal war for Israeli-Jewish independence and non-Jewish expulsion waged by fascist and non-fascist ‘non-state actors’ from 1939 to 1948 against the British ‘protectors’. That, in turn, followed a prior Palestinian insurrection against the British and the settlers from 1936-1939 (though overshadowed in the international media by the Spanish Civil War), which in its turn followed the 1929 Palestine riots. That’s 96 years of escalating forever violence.
In Summary
Recognise a new expanded state, with or without a new name, but with certain (unenforceable, but well-publicised) expectations. This expectation should be a multi-cultural Levantine sovereign state, embracing adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths (as well as people of other religions, or no religion, as citizens; people born in Israel or Palestine, and documented immigrants): Levantine Jews, Levantine Muslims, Levantine Christians, plus others. All Israelis. And all Palestinians.
*******
Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
It’s time that the nations of the world (or at least the influential western nations) accept the reality that all the lands that constituted 1920-1948 Mandatory Palestine should be formally recognised as a single nation-state; ideally called Palestine Israel or Israel-Palestine, but more realistically called Israel.
In other words, the never-viable notion of a two-nation-state division of ‘Israel’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eretz_Israel) should be dropped as a viable solution in favour of the promotion of a liberal bicultural (or multicultural) nation-state. The role model for change could be South Africa.
Jewish and Non-Jewish intellectuals (such as Hans Kohn, Shlomo Sand and Yanis Varoufakis) – on the political left – have been arguing for this ‘one-state-solution’ for over 100 years. It’s just that their voices have always been deamplified by those on the political centre and the political right. (On the centre, we think of people like Joe Biden, Keir Starmer, and their predecessors. On the right, we may consider former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, a leader in the 1940s of the openly fascist Lehi, yet a moderate by today’s Israeli political standards.)
Shlomo Sand outlines the history of the arguments for a single ‘binational’ state in his 2024 book Israel-Palestine: Federation or Apartheid? His vision, which is not quite what I favour, emphasises binationalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/binationalism), and looks towards these successful liberal examples of bi- or multi- nationalism: Canada, Belgium, Switzerland.
The better framing of this approach, I believe, is biculturalism; though even that is not problem-free, because it is an exclusive concept. What I think would work best for Palestine Israel is also the same as what would work best for Aotearoa New Zealand: multiculturalism with a bicultural (treaty) emphasis. (Ireland could have become something similar, as in Irish rugby; but it went down a failed two-state path, and experienced two substantial civil wars last century.) The ideal is for Palestine Israel to become a liberal democracy in which all people born within its borders become citizens with equal citizenship rights; a nation state which commits to both the domestic and international norms of liberal democracy.
(In a bicultural nation-state, the principal divider is religion; normally people’s religious loyalties are discrete, meaning that being, say, a Muslim or Jew or Christian is mutually exclusive. The word ‘national’ is increasingly used in the 21st century as it was in the 19th century; to refer to a ‘people’ or a ‘race’ rather than to relate to a territory defined by its borders and its sovereign institutions. Ethnicity – the better word is ‘ancestry – is not a discrete concept such as ‘religion’; individual people have multiple ancestries, and should not be required to identify as one over another.)
How can this be achieved?
First, we should note that the status quo in Eretz Israel is at least as unacceptable as Apartheid South Africa was to our world of mostly ‘internationally-civilised’ nation-states. (An internationally civilised state is one that accepts agreed norms in the ways that it relates to other nation states, meaning that it does not indulge in offensive hard-power geopolitics – such as ‘gunboat diplomacy’; and it practises cultural equality. Terrorism is understood as criminality. Such a state does not have to be a ‘democracy’ in the Westminster or American sense; but it should meet open liberal standards in the ways it treats its resident denizens – non-citizens – and it should subscribe to international treaties on matters such as climate sustainability and nuclear energy and election authenticity.)
Second, this desired outcome will not come about by force. The community of liberal nations should simply recognise Eretz Israel as a nation state, based ideally on the prior borders of Mandatory Palestine.
While there should be no demands, such a new nation-state would be risking discriminatory sanctions if it abuses liberal norms; in particular if it implements laws (including civil-marriage laws) that discriminate on the basis of sex, religion, or ancestry. Again, the obvious model is Apartheid South Africa, and the ways that South Africa was excluded from international sport so long as it implemented laws which discriminated on the basis of ethnicity. (Palestinians and many Israelis have Levantine ethnicity. Many Israelis have European, African or Asian co-ethnicity; that non-indigeneity should never be held against them. Nor should the indigeneity of the Palestinians.)
In recognising Eretz Israel as Israel-Palestine (or even just under the name ‘Israel’), a Levantine nation state, Israel’s nuclear status should be addressed and normalised. (Likewise, India and Pakistan should be pressured to join the ‘nuclear club’. One of the most problematic regional asymmetries at present is the advanced nuclear-status of Israel versus the embryonic nuclear status of Iran; Israel at present hides behind its non-membership of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to make it seem that Iran is a bigger nuclear threat to the world than Israel is.)
Recognition of Eretz Israel as a sovereign nation state, under any name, should come with overt expectations of democracy, amnesty, truth, reconciliation, and press freedom. There should be no formal or informal mechanism of ‘settling scores’, no matter how reprehensible anyone’s past or present behaviour has been. Truth trumps vengeance cloaked as ‘accountability’.
Lebanon was an initially successful, but now largely failed, version of a similar attempt at creating a tolerant multicultural nation state in the Levant. Lebanon’s main problem was its belligerent southern neighbour. Israel-Palestine would not have Israel as a neighbour.
Abandon the naïve two-state solution.
There is no way a Palestinian nation-state can be viable. At the very best it could become like a mini-Pakistan or mini-Bangladesh; and even that would take decades. (And the last Israeli prime minister to formalise a two-state future – Yitzhak Rabin – was assassinated in 1995, having achieved a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.) The two-state-solution agenda seems to be more about deescalating sufficiently for the Palestine issue to disappear from its media prominence; and not at all about ending a forever war which began in 1948.
The present forever war – now in its hottest phase – followed a brutal war for Israeli-Jewish independence and non-Jewish expulsion waged by fascist and non-fascist ‘non-state actors’ from 1939 to 1948 against the British ‘protectors’. That, in turn, followed a prior Palestinian insurrection against the British and the settlers from 1936-1939 (though overshadowed in the international media by the Spanish Civil War), which in its turn followed the 1929 Palestine riots. That’s 96 years of escalating forever violence.
In Summary
Recognise a new expanded state, with or without a new name, but with certain (unenforceable, but well-publicised) expectations. This expectation should be a multi-cultural Levantine sovereign state, embracing adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths (as well as people of other religions, or no religion, as citizens; people born in Israel or Palestine, and documented immigrants): Levantine Jews, Levantine Muslims, Levantine Christians, plus others. All Israelis. And all Palestinians.
*******
Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
The United States has denounced sanctions by Britain and allies — including New Zealand and Australia — against Israeli far-right ministers, saying they should focus instead on the Palestinian armed group Hamas.
New Zealand has banned two Israeli politicians from travelling to the country because of comments about the war in Gaza that Foreign Minister Winston Peters says “actively undermine peace and security”.
New Zealand joins Australia, Canada, the UK and Norway in imposing the sanctions on Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Peters said they were targeted towards two individuals, rather than the Israeli government.
“Our action today is not against the Israeli people, who suffered immeasurably on October 7 [2023] and who have continued to suffer through Hamas’ ongoing refusal to release all hostages.
“Nor is it designed to sanction the wider Israeli government.”
The two ministers were “using their leadership positions to actively undermine peace and security and remove prospects for a two-state solution”, Peters said.
‘Severely and deliberately undermined’ peace “Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have severely and deliberately undermined that by personally advocating for the annexation of Palestinian land and the expansion of illegal settlements, while inciting violence and forced displacement.”
The sanctions were consistent with New Zealand’s approach to other foreign policy issues, he said.
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (left) and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich . . . sanctioned by Australia, Canada, the UK and Norway because they have “incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights. These actions are not acceptable,” says British Foreign Minister David Lammy. Image: TRT screenshot APR
“New Zealand has also targeted travel bans on politicians and military leaders advocating violence or undermining democracy in other countries in the past, including Russia, Belarus and Myanmar.”
New Zealand had been a long-standing supporter of a two-state solution, Peters said, which the international community was also overwhelmingly in favour of.
“New Zealand’s consistent and historic position has been that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are a violation of international law. Settlements and associated violence undermine the prospects for a viable two-state solution,” he said.
“The crisis in Gaza has made returning to a meaningful political process all the more urgent. New Zealand will continue to advocate for an end to the current conflict and an urgent restart of the Middle East Peace Process.”
‘Outrageous’, says Israel Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the move was “outrageous” and the government would hold a special meeting early next week to decide how to respond to the “unacceptable decision”.
His comments were made while attending the inauguration of a new Israeli settlement on Palestinian land.
Peters is currently in Europe for the sixth Pacific-France Summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Nice.
US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters: “We find that extremely unhelpful. It will do nothing to get us closer to a ceasefire in Gaza.”
Britain, Canada, Norway, New Zealand and Australia “should focus on the real culprit, which is Hamas”, she said of the sanctions.
“We remain concerned about any step that would further isolate Israel from the international community.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
