Where to from here?

This year, on 15 May 2023, the United Nations will, finally, recognise the Palestinian Nakba Day, commemorating the tragedy’s 75th anniversary. Ninety UN member-states voted for the recognition, with 30 voting against. New Zealand, ever aware of its loyalty to the USA and other ‘traditional allies’, calculatingly abstained from voting, along with 46 other nations. The Zionist ideology has such powerful supporters that it has taken a divided world three-quarters of a century to reach even this point of humanitarian recognition. Last year saw 144 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces – the highest number in 18 years with Israeli military Occupation and land-grabbing in what remains of Palestine set to continue.

The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 required the callously-imposed partitioning of the Palestinian people‘s homeland, with neither their agreement nor the slightest consideration. Around 15,000 Palestinians lost their lives in the process and the destruction of over 500 villages drove more than 750,000 people from their homes. In reality though there are two partitions of Palestine because Israel blockades the Gaza Strip. There, in place of Occupation settlements, the population suffers other forms of population-control that inflict colossal economic damage. There are severe fishing and trade restrictions, air strikes and constant, noisy drone surveillance-flights. Israeli propaganda attempts to justify its aggressive behaviour as being necessary to protect its borders. Yet, Israeli forces and surveillance aircraft violate those same borders whenever they wish, spending hours in waste-laying vandalism. Israeli Navy attacks on fishing boats include hijackings, and the Israeli Army exercises invasive assaults against Gaza’s agriculture. These attacks far outweigh and outnumber anything the Gaza Resistance could hope to deliver.

Israel’s 37th government‘s policy principles

On 28 December, the day before the swearing in of the new Israeli Government, the coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu submitted its guiding principles to the Knesset. The document, providing incontestable proof of the Zionist determination to seize the whole of the Palestinian West Bank, asserts that:

“The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan and Judea and Samaria.”

The term ‘Judea and Samaria’ is used by Israel to bolster its claim to possess the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem. With regard to the Syrian Golan Heights, the land-grabbing Zionist regime describes the territory as having “broad development potential” that will lead to “a wave of settlement.” To that end, the new Israeli Government declares that it will “act to increase Jewish immigration from all countries around the world.” In December last year, the UN General Assembly adopted a Resolution, demanding Israel’s withdrawal from Syria’s Golan Heights, which the Zionist regime has been occupying for more than half a century. It should also be remembered that UN Security Council Resolution 497, adopted unanimously on 17 December 1981, declared the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights as “null and void and without international legal effect.”

UNGA votes to ask for ICJ opinion on Palestine

The United Nations General Assembly has also passed a Resolution calling on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to give an opinion on the legal consequences of the Israeli military Occupation of Palestinian territories. The Resolution was voted for on 30 December by 87 UN General Assembly member-states, with 26 voting against it and 53 abstaining. Again, New Zealand abstained. A UN-appointed Commission of Inquiry has already concluded that the Occupation is unlawful under international law, not only because of its permanence but also because it clearly operates as a means of annexation and population-control. The New Zealand Foreign Affairs & Trade Ministry (MFAT), uncomfortably aware of the notice being taken of its voting at the UN, issued a statement in November attempting to justify yet another abstention. Unable to deny that Israeli settlements on militarily-Occupied Palestinian territory are in violation of international law, the statement nevertheless attempted to excuse New Zealand’s abstention from voting on UN Resolution A/77/251 47, dealing with ‘Israeli practices and settlement activities affecting the rights of the Palestinian people‘, declaring “we do not agree with the legal characterisation” of the Occupation “as an annexation under international law.”

Israel’s Annexation Wall

In 2004, the International Court of Justice established that sections of the Wall Israel has imposed inside the West Bank, along with its draconian travel restrictions, violate the Zionist regime’s obligations under international law and should be removed. At the start of 2023, the Wall remains, inflicting untold misery and strengthening population-control. Palestinian communities and farmland are cut off from the rest of the Occupied Palestinian territory, hindering access to employment and essential services, re-arranging geography, undermining the economy and ruining social life. The United Nations OCHA has published a detailed description of the Wall’s humanitarian impact.

The bloody reality

In the militarily-Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel has planted 250 settlements, along with their ever-expanding outposts. Together, they already house 700,000 settlers who, supported by the Israeli military, regard their Palestinian neighbours with contempt. At the end of December 2022, the UN Human Rights Council reported “armed and masked Israeli settlers are attacking Palestinians in their homes, attacking children on their way to school, destroying property and burning olive groves, and terrorising entire communities with complete impunity”. The report also noted Israeli Army complicity in the violence, concluding that “Disturbing evidence of Israeli forces frequently facilitating, supporting and participating in settler attacks, makes it difficult to discern between Israeli settler and State violence” so that “The impunity of one is reinforced by the impunity of the other.” The result of that, is growing Palestinian protest and armed Resistance.

Israeli propaganda would have the world believe that armed Palestinian Resistance is the cause, not the result, of its invasion of Palestine and that only Israeli forces have the right to bear arms there. While Israel’s allies in the Security Council and elsewhere weaken outright condemnation and opposition to the Zionist enterprise, a broader range of view can be expressed in the UN General Assembly. Every member-country‘s voice has equal recognition. In 1982, UN General Assembly Resolution 37/43, “reaffirming the importance of the universal realisation of the right of peoples to self-determination” also confirmed the “legitimacy of struggle” against foreign domination and foreign occupation “by all available means, including armed struggle.” The sad reality is, that it should never have come to this, the world has a responsibility to stop Israel’s ideologically-driven racism in its tracks.

By far the greatest number of attacks on Palestinian homes are committed, not by settlers but by Israeli forces. Daily reports reveal the scale. The raids often take place at night, with children awakened and, on occasion, even abducted from their families. Imagine what it must be like, living in an atmosphere where your home cannot guarantee shelter or privacy! While home-invasions themselves are dystopian, they are often just the first step in acts of total demolition. Even worse, Israeli Occupation forces sometimes order people either to destroy their own homes themselves or pay an extortionate sum to the Israeli Occupation demolition squads, who would be sent in to do it.

Far-reaching population-control

The Zionist Occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem operates a racially-divided system of government. Although, for the settlers, it is both civil and democratic, for native Palestinians, Israel’s self-serving military dictatorship issues orders that, for varying periods, ban people from entering mosques as well as towns and villages, and even their own homes. The regime also orders a halt to building new homes.

Israel, having acquired ownership of most of the West Bank’s water, forces Palestinians to buy their water from its Mekorot company, while also preventing Palestinians from accessing their own oil and gas supplies. Both control-mechanisms undermine any possibility of Palestinian independence. There is no freedom of movement, either for Palestinians living, as they do, under a regime that maintains over 98 permanent road checkpoints and hundreds more so-called ‘flying checkpoints’ that appear, without warning, day and night. In addition, any travel outside of Palestine requires Israel’s permission and all movement abroad must be through Israeli-controlled border crossings.

The economy is also controlled through acts of economic and agricultural sabotage. Palestine is allowed no currency of its own and the population is forced to use the Israeli Shekel. Israel also controls the Palestinian population registry. Any changes, including the registration of births, marriages, divorces, deaths or address changes, require Israel’s approval.

Israel benefits from a degree of impunity that singles it out for special favour. Over decades, New Zealand’s traditional allies, the UK and the US, have extolled the so-called two-state solution, without actually doing anything to bring Israel to account for its violations of humanitarian law that have rendered such a solution impossible. The new Israeli Government‘s guiding principles now reveal the Zionist enterprise’s innermost goals. Israel has no intention of giving up the land it has stolen and dominates.

Following almost 75 years of Zionist hegemony over historic Palestine, can it be wrong to call for the establishment of a single state, free from ideology, in which as a matter of normality, goodwill shall prevail and equality for all citizens be recognised as a permanent human right? With such a founding of justice, UN Resolution 194, recognising the Palestinian Right of Return would at last be realisable.

New Zealand should stop abstaining from voting for human rights at the UN. Never mind upsetting traditional allies, we should vote for justice and set them an example! Remember our vote for Security Council Resolution 2334. We should build on that and join the world to bring Zionism to account.