Foreign Minister Winston Peters' speech at the UN puts the country firmly on the wrong side of history, writes Mick Hall.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced the decision during an address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on Saturday, September 27.
“With a war raging, Hamas still in place, and no clarity on next steps, we do not think that time is now,” he said in his address.
“We have, ever since the October 7 attacks, repeatedly demanded a ceasefire, the release of the remaining hostages, and for Israel to allow vital aid to flow into Gaza. That is where our focus remains.”
The speech was praised by Israel’s ambassador to New Zealand, Alon Roth-Snir, who said the decision sent “a clear message to Hamas terrorism: violence will not be rewarded.”
Peters’ speech was remarkable, not only because these set forth a rejection of traditional partners positions on the issue, but because of the colonial racism and hypocrisy expressed.
In the lead-up to the 80th meeting of the UNGA, French President Emmanual Macron had set in motion an initiative that brought genocide-enabling countries like Canada, Australia and the UK together to recognise Palestine as a state and set out conditions for peace talks after Israel ends its destruction of Gaza.
Conditional on this recognition was an envisioned future governance of Palestinian territory where Hamas was excluded and Palestinian armed resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory effectively defeated.
The issue of recognition itself – something the vast majority of the world had already committed to - was also a way of distracting public attention away from the fact their governments had failed to abide by the Genocide Convention and intervene in stopping the genocide, through sanctions and other concrete steps, including stopping arms sales to Israel.
Macron’s initiative was basically an attempt by the wolves to put on sheep’s clothing and absolve themselves of their complicity in the genocide, breaking from the diplomatic position of the United States.
The decision of Peters and his coalition partners to not do so signalled their instincts were too rabidly imperial, their loyalty too fanatical to pack leader Donald Trump and his Lieutenant Benjamin Netanyahu to don Macron’s costume.
Peters would not step out of line with Washington for a statement of recognition that he told the UN would amount to “little more than an existential act of defiance against an unalterable state of affairs”.
In doing so, New Zealand joins vassal nations in the Pacific Islands like Micronesia, Nauru and Palau, dependent on US aid via compact agreements, who also refuse to recognise Palestine, as well as side with Israel at the UN. New Zealand also joins Japan, Germany and Italy - countries that already know what it is like to be on the wrong side of history - in failing to confer full diplomatic status to Palestinian representatives and offer even symbolic solidarity to a people under occupation and suffering a genocide.
The New Zealand coalition government had made the decision ‘in principle’ to avoid recognition on September 15, during a Cabinet meeting. It left the public in the dark over that call, citing a need to consult with partners at a UN Two State Conference last week, before a final decision was announced. The move seems to have been a stalling tactic, to avoid criticism and pressure in the lead-up to the UNGA week of high-level engagements.
Stalling tactics have been the name of the game for Israel, the United States and the collective West for decades. Peters’ talk of backing a two-state solution and recognising Palestinian statehood “when the time is right”, should be understood in this context.
It is instructive that he praised “the courageous leadership” of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in addressing the Israeli Knesset in 1977 “to extol peace”, the type of leadership, Peters told the UN, that was needed now.
Two years after Sadat’s speech, the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel were signed. That agreement excluded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from the talks and Israel never attempted to resolve the Palestine question with Egypt and other neighbour Jordan’s involvement.
The agreement, lacking any mechanism to enforce it, never permitted Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, as promised, or ended Israeli settlements.
Decades later, the Oslo Peace Accords, signed after talks with the PLO, did largely the same. It allowed nominal self-government and set out a roadmap to long-term talks towards a Palestinian state, but only served to buy time for Israel to intensify illegal settlement building, making the two-state solution impossible, as Western leaders stood idly by.
Now, the West seeks an interim Gaza Authority headed by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in a post-genocide situation, leading to an expanded Palestinian Authority, elections that exclude Hamas and a roadmap to Palestinian statehood that leads nowhere. Such an arrangement would leave Palestinians once again disenfranchised, abandoned and powerless, as Israel continues its expansion and annexations of territory.
Peters’ cynical claim that statehood will be recognised when there is no Hamas and when there exists a “fully legitimate and viable State of Palestine” means it will never be recognised.
Part of Peters’ argument for rejecting recognition of Palestinian statehood is based on the contention that doing so would embolden Hamas and make Israel more resolute in its actions.
He told the UN it would “likely prove counterproductive”.
“That is, Hamas resisting negotiation in the belief it is winning the global propaganda war, while pushing Israel towards even more intransigent military positions.”
He added: “Those countries who hoped their earlier signalling of Palestinian statehood recognition would protect and promote the two-state solution have instead seen the Israeli Government snap and continue its widely condemned military actions in Gaza while continuing to develop illegal settlements on the West Bank, in defiance of international law.”
There is no evidence or reasonable indication that Israel would have been more willing to stop its destruction of Gaza, end its annexations in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, or be more willing to engage meaningfully in ceasefire talks if Palestinian statehood wasn’t recognised by Western states like France and the UK.
Israel has already ruled out tolerating the existence of a Palestinian state and its attitude over ceasefire talks was summed up by its attempted assassination of Hamas peace negotiators in Qatar earlier this month.
Peter’s entire position for refusing to recognise Palestinian statehood is erroneous. He is simply saying he does not believe any intervention by the rest of the world, however symbolic, should be undertaken.
He also suggests removing Netanyahu and excluding Hamas would “shift the current calculus away from conflict and towards peace”, creating a political environment “more conducive for recognising Palestinian statehood”.
If one thing the past two years of genocide have demonstrated, it is that the vast majority of Israeli society is racist and genocidal. Removing Netanyahu will not change the intrinsic nature of Zionism and the inbuilt structural injustice of Israel’s ethno-supremacism. Hamas is a political movement that has broad support within Palestinian society and disenfranchising its supporters will also not create the conditions for peace.
New Zealand is not and never was a supporter of a two-state solution and Palestinian self-determination in any real sense, regardless of which government has been in power. But the extremism of its current coalition government differentiates it from previous administrations. Its far-right deputy prime minister, Act Party leader David Seymour, is an arch Zionist, as are most of his senior colleagues.
Prime Minister, National Party leader Christopher Luxon, is cut from the same cloth as other Western leaders like UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a neo-liberal without conviction or principle, there to serve corporate interests and US hegemonic power.
The extremism of New Zealand’s position was reflected within Peter’s address to the UN. It included several orientalist tropes, language that dehumanised Palestinians and repeated Israel’s October 7 atrocity propaganda.
Criminalising armed resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation, he called Gaza “a terrorist breeding ground” asserting his opinion that Hamas “only know hate”.
Emphasising that Gaza’s governing party can have no place in any future state, he condemned the “barbarity of Hamas’ attack on Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023, the worst massacre in Israel’s history” and the fact Israeli hostages are still being held in Gaza.
Conversely, he softened his language to express shock at “harrowing images of famine in Gaza” and condemned “a grossly disproportionate response from the Israeli Government”.
For Peters and his government, there is no genocide in Gaza, no forced starvation of a population, just a disproportionate military response by Israel.
New Zealand’s reputation within the global community will have been dented by Peters’ announcement and his speech, his foreign policy extremism a sign of what positions his country is capable of taking in other geopolitical arenas, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, as the US continues to prepare for war with China.
What was remarkable too was Peters’ complete lack of self-insight into how New Zealand would be perceived globally, as he lectured from the podium on the UN’s need to reform “to regain standing of members”.
Sounding the alarm over the erosion of a functioning multilateral system, while refusing to intervene in a genocide in Gaza and backing an imperial hegemon that undermines UN institutions, showed breathtaking hypocrisy.
The US continues to threaten members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for pursuing Israeli ministers over war crimes and its rules-based international order continues to assert a false universalism and usurp genuine multilateralism.
His on Syria showed similar lack of self-insight. “Nearly 17 million people require humanitarian aid in Syria, with a similarly large number displaced”, he remarked. The current horror in Syria is a situation the US and its European allies brought about via Operation Sycamore and the replacement of the Assad regime with that of Islamic jihadist Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Peters’ observation that the world needed “leadership that appeals to our better angels, not our worst instincts”, in the same breath as effectively ignored Israel’s genocide, will be seen by many as one of the most grotesque and duplicitous lines ever to come out of a New Zealand politician’s mouth on an international stage.
This article was first published by Mick Hall In Context.
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