The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established as court of last resort for the prosecution of four international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. Whereas Australia, New Zealand and Palestine are States Parties to the Rome Statute, Israel and its close ally, the USA, choose to remain non-signatories.
In a press release on 4 October 2019, the UNHCR’s Regional Representative in Canberra, Louise Aubin, welcomed New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s formal announcement of our refugee resettlement quota increase, noting that it “sends an important message to the world that every country can make a difference in sharing responsibility for the global refugee situation”. As the UNHCR acknowledges, the majority of refugees are confined in countries neighbouring their homelands.
There were just four Palestinian Gaza ceasefire violations in September. Two of them were missile-launches across the Green Line that took place on 10 and 12 of last month. The other two, on 7 and 9 September, were Palestinian Resistance attacks on Israeli military targets, near the border at Rafah and east Khan Yunis.
On 25 September, Foreign Affairs Minister, Winston Peters, replied to our email sent to him on 25 August. Here is our response to his reply:
The universally-ratified Fourth Geneva Convention is recognised by the United Nations as constituting the foundation of international humanitarian law and its essential rules. Articles 146 and 147 include the possibility of criminal liability for gross violations by individual perpetrators. Israel has chosen not to incorporate the Convention into domestic law, even though this does not relieve it of its international obligations. Instead, the Convention’s applicability to the military Occupation of the West Bank has been, and continues to be, denied by successive Israeli governments.
On 25 August we sent an email to the NZ Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, essentially similar to those already emailed to Jacinda Ardern and Ron Mark, concerning the Ministry of Defence proposal to purchase $9 million-worth of military equipment from Israel, and asking that the order be cancelled. The responses from Jacinda Ardern’s Office and Ron Mark can be seen in previous blogs.
On the 27 August we received an email from Ron Mark in answer to our emails of 24 July and 1 August, regarding the purchase of military equipment from the Israeli company Robo-Team. We have replied to the Defence Minister expressing disappointment that he had failed to respond to deal with the particular points we had raised in our earlier emails. We asked Ron Mark to clarify the final three paragraphs of his response as follows:
Following email exchanges with the Prime Minister’s Office featured in the previous blog, which included an email sent to both Ron Mark and Jacinda Ardern, we have yet to receive any response from the Defence Minister.
On 24 July this email was sent by Marian and I to our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: “The crimes committed…
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