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".
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 could have been 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 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 Times, called Swarbrick’s Bill "grandstanding". Vance argues that the Green’s Bill adopts "simplistic moral assumptions about the righteousness of the oppressed [but] ignores the complexity of the conflict."
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% of the population and owned 94% of the land. In 1948 Jewish para-miliary groups drove over 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".
One of Israel’s most distinguished historians, Emeritus Prof 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 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 World War 2 was designed to be weak by the victors, with regard to its enforcement ability. 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 student at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago.
