After World War II, many Palestinians opened their homes to Jewish refugees. But, in a few short years, Zionist militias expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Nakba, or ‘Catastrophe’. Since then, the United States has used its Security Council veto to shield Israel from accountability for its brutal occupation, its continued annexation of Palestinian lands, and the routine killing of Palestinian civilians. Since October 2023 alone, Washington has blocked six attempts to stop the bombardment of Gaza, and even launched a political war against the International Criminal Court for daring to investigate the ethnic cleansing of a land continously inhabited for nearly 6,000 years. Gazans are Canaanites, and genetically more jewish than Israelis. But that has not saved them, because last week, the international system crossed a line. The UN Security Council passed a resolution that did not restrain Israel’s campaign. It ratified it.
A resolution drafted in Washington, modelled on the Trump–Kushner “plan,” (admitted by Steve Witkoff on 60 Minutes to have been planned for over two years) has now become international policy.
This was not diplomacy.
It was the formal recognition that international law no longer restrains empire.
The mask is gone.
The velvet glove is gone.
What remains is power.
What the Resolution Actually Does
The measure lays the foundations for a long-term foreign administration of Gaza:
An externally controlled “stabilisation force”
Governance outsourced to a foreign-appointed board
Reconstruction funds withheld from areas deemed politically disobedient
Annexation and settlement expansion left intact.
This is not a peace plan.
It is a property and security blueprint designed for investors, not for the people who live there.
Russia and China allowed it to pass. They abstained, despite having veto power. Their reasons seem transparent Realpolitik
Millions of Russian citizens are Israelis. Russia has strong trading relations with Israel, and Russia seeks leverage over the US in Ukraine and the Caucasus.
China is under US economic and military pressure in the Pacific.
The rights of Palestinians were thus sacrificed to larger deals, presumably.
And the United States made the threat explicit: alternative proposals would come with “real human costs.” Only a world where suffering is a bargaining chip makes such a warning meaningful.
The Return of an Old Crime
Even now, during the so-called ceasefire, Palestinians continue to die from bombardment, starvation, exposure and disease. Israeli ministers say openly:
“There will be no Palestinian state.”
“The solution is voluntary emigration.”
When a population is bombed, starved, denied shelter, raped, murdered, and told to leave, this has a name: ethnic cleansing. The Security Council did not stop it.
It gave it a management structure.
This is the most serious collapse of international law since the Iraq invasion. But unlike Iraq, this time every major power is complicit:
The Geneva Conventions have become optional.
Humanitarian law applies only where geopolitics permit it.
The ICC is threatened when it investigates the powerful.
The “rules-based order” has become a deals-based order.
And this is where New Zealand should feel the chill. Because we have lost our sovereignty and strength. We have been chumped, but havent noticed much
Why This Matters for New Zealand
Small nations rely on law.
When law collapses, only power remains. And New Zealand has spent forty years surrendering the tools of power that protect sovereignty:
- We no longer control our own credit or investment capacity.
Treasury has chosen private debt dependence over sovereign development, ensuring foreign creditors decide our economic future. - Our political system has become porous to foreign capital and lobbying.
Through consultants, private equity, think tanks, and “strategic partnerships,” influence now flows directly into policymaking. - Our foreign policy still treats the US-led order as lawful and stable—even as that order openly discards law when it becomes inconvenient.
- Our institutions have been hollowed by 40 years of neoliberal capture, leaving us exposed, indebted, and strategically naïve.
The lesson of Palestine is not only moral.
It is structural:
A nation without sovereignty is meat on the table of empire.
This is not melodrama.
It is the logic now openly governing the world.
New Zealand at the Crossroads
We once had the courage to stand for nuclear disarmament, against apartheid, and for an independent foreign policy. We were respected because we respected law—even when powerful states did not.
But today:
ethnic cleansing is tolerated, private wealth writes foreign policy, human rights are bargaining chips, and corruption is the operating system of global power.
If we want to survive with dignity:
1. We must restore our economic sovereignty.
This begins with reforming the Public Finance Act so New Zealand can again use public credit to build its own future.
2. We must reclaim moral clarity.
The Magna Carta is still black letter law in New Zealand. Section 29 of the Magna Carta remains in our law for a reason: the powerful may not destroy the weak without lawful cause.
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3. We must speak truth internationally.
Not because it is fashionable, but because small nations survive only when law survives.
When law dies abroad, corruption grows at home.
And when the weak are abandoned abroad, it is always the small nations who learn, too late, that they have been preparing their own destruction.
Palestine will not be free.
That much is now clear.
But New Zealand still can be, if we reclaim our sovereignty before we are enslaved.
If we do not wake from our slumber, conquest and destruction may be our destiny too.
Tadhg Stopford is a historian and teacher. Support change by purchasing your CBD hemp CBG at www.tigerdrops.co.nz