Christchurch, New Zealand’s third-largest city, today became the first local government in the country to sanction Israel by voting to halt business with organisations involved in illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
It passed a resolution to amend its procurement policy to exclude companies building and maintaining illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
It was a largely symbolic gesture in that Christchurch (pop. 408,000) currently has no business dealings with any of the companies listed by the United Nations as being active in the illegal settlements.
However, the vote also rules out any future business dealings by the city council with such companies.
The sanctions vote came after passionate pleas to the council by John Minto, president of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), and University of Canterbury postcolonial studies lecturer Dr Josephine Varghese.
“We’re delighted the council has taken a stand against Israel’s ongoing theft of Palestinian land,” said Minto in a statement welcoming the vote.
He had urged the council to take a stand against companies identified by the UN Human Rights Council as complicit in the construction and maintenance of the illegal settlements.
‘Failure of Western governments’
“It has been the failure of Western governments to hold Israel to account which means Israel has a 76-year history of oppression and brutal abuse of Palestinians.
“Today Israel is running riot across the Middle East because it has never been held to account for 76 years of flagrant breaches of international law,” Minto said.
“The motion passed by Christchurch City today helps to end Israeli impunity for war crimes.” (Building settlements on occupied land belonging to others is a war crime under international law)
“The motion is a small but significant step in sanctioning Israel. Many more steps must follow”.
The council’s vote to support the UN policy was met with cheers from a packed public gallery. Before the vote, gallery members displayed a “Stop the genocide” banner.
Minto described the decision as a significant step towards aligning with international law and supporting Palestinian rights.
“In relation to the council adopting a policy lined up with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, this resolution was co-sponsored by the New Zealand government back in 2016,” Minto said, referencing the UN resolution that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories “had no legal validity and constituted a flagrant violation under international law”.
‘Red herrings and obfuscations’
In his statement, Minto said: “We are particularly pleased the council rejected the red herrings and obfuscations of New Zealand Jewish Council spokesperson Ben Kepes who urged councillors to reject the motion”
“Mr Kepes presentation was a repetition of the tired, old arguments used by white South Africans to avoid accountability for their apartheid policies last century – policies which are mirrored in Israel today.”
Postcolonial studies lecturer Dr Josephine Varghese . . . boycotts “a long standing peaceful means of protest adopted by freedom fighters across the world.” Image: UOC
Dr Varghese said more than 42,000 Palestininians — at least 15,000 of them children — had been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza.
“Boycotting products and services which support and benefit from colonisation and apartheid is the long standing peaceful means of protest adopted by freedom fighters across the world, not only by black South Africans against apartheid, but also in the Indian independent struggle By the lights of Gandhi,” she said.
“This is a rare opportunity for us to follow in the footsteps of these greats and make a historic move, not only for Christchurch City, but also for Aotearoa New Zealand.
“On March 15, 2019 [the date of NZ’s mosque massacre killing 51 people], we made headlines for all the wrong reasons, and today could be an opportunity where we make headlines global globally for the right reasons,” Dr Varghese said.
“Sanctions on Israel” supporters at the Christchurch City Council for the vote today. Image: PSNA
Israel killed 20 Palestinians in an airstrike on Tulkarem refugee camp in the northern West Bank late on Thursday, October 3, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported. Several children and an entire family were among the dead, as the strike targeted a three-floor residential building in the center of the camp. The strike, conducted with an Israeli fighter jet using a heavy missile…
I was a hostage in 1970 at age 13, caught in global events that were beyond my capacity to comprehend. I was held, together with my younger sister, for a week under difficult conditions. It began when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, commandeered our aircraft, not long after we left Frankfurt, a stopover on our trip from Israel to New York City, where we lived.
Israeli occupation forces withdrew from the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, including the Jenin refugee camp, early on Friday, after a 10-day military operation that resulted in the killing of dozens of Palestinians in Jenin and left significant destruction to the city and camp’s streets and infrastructure. The invasion on Jenin was part of ‘Operation Summer Camps’…
Israel’s ongoing military onslaught on the northern West Bank cities of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas has now entered its third day. The Israeli army has made a point of describing it as the largest-scale invasion of the West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, a message largely meant for its Israeli audience, and perhaps also meant to terrorize Palestinians as a form of psychological…
Many in the international community are finally coming to accept that the earth’s ecosystem can no longer bear the weight of military occupation.
Most have reached this inevitable conclusion, clearly articulated in the environmental movement’s latest slogan “No Climate Justice on Occupied Land”, in light of the horrors we have witnessed in Gaza since October 7.
While the correlation between military occupation and climate sustainability may be a recent discovery for those living their lives in relative peace and security, people living under occupation, and thus constant threat of military violence, have always known any guided missile strike or aerial bombardment campaign by an occupying military is not only an attack on those being targeted but also their land’s ability to sustain life.
A recent hearing on “State and Environmental Violence in West Papua” under the jurisdiction of the Rome-based Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), for example, heard that Indonesia’s military occupation, spanning more than seven decades, has facilitated a “slow genocide” of the Papuan people through not only political repression and violence, but also the gradual decimation of the forest area — one of the largest and most biodiverse on the planet — that sustains them.
West Papua hosts one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, is the site of a major BP liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, and is the fastest-expanding area of palm oil and biofuel plantation in Indonesia.
All of these industries leave ecological dead zones in their wake, and every single one of them is secured by military occupation.
At the PPT hearing, prominent Papuan lawyer Yan Christian Warinussy spoke of the connection between human suffering in West Papua and the exploitation of the region’s natural resources.
Shot and wounded
Just one week later, he was shot and wounded by an unknown assailant. The PPT Secretariat noted that the attack came after the lawyer depicted “the past and current violence committed against the defenceless civil population and the environment in the region”.
What happened to Warinussy reinforced yet again the indivisibility of military occupation and environmental violence.
I’m stand in solidarity with West Papuans rising up against colonialism, racism, state violence, sexual violence, and environmental destruction.
West Papua’s “special autonomy” is another euphemism for control and exploitation pic.twitter.com/cvP7fp2Ml0
In total, militaries around the world account for almost 5.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions annually — more than the aviation and shipping industries combined.
Our colleagues at Queen Mary University of London recently concluded that emissions from the first 120 days of this latest round of slaughter in Gaza alone were greater than the annual emissions of 26 individual countries; emissions from rebuilding Gaza will be higher than the annual emissions of more than 135 countries, equating them to those of Sweden and Portugal.
But even these shocking statistics fail to shed sufficient light on the deep connection between military violence and environmental violence. War and occupation’s impact on the climate is not merely a side effect or unfortunate consequence.
We must not reduce our analysis of what is going on in Gaza, for example, to a dualism of consequences: the killing of people on one side and the effect on “the environment” on the other.
Inseparable from impact on nature
In reality, the impact on the people is inseparable from the impact on nature. The genocide in Gaza is also an ecocide — as is almost always the case with military campaigns.
In the Vietnam War, the use of toxic chemicals, including Agent Orange, was part of a deliberate strategy to eliminate any capacity for agricultural production, and thus force the people off their land and into “strategic hamlets”.
Forests, used by the Vietcong as cover, were also cut by the US military to reduce the population’s capacity for resistance. The anti-war activist and international lawyer Richard Falk coined the phrase “ecocide” to describe this.
In different ways, this is what all military operations do: they tactically reduce or completely eliminate the capacity of the “enemy” population to live sustainably and to retain autonomy over its own water and food supplies.
Since 2014, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes and other essential infrastructure by the Israeli occupation forces has been complemented by chemical warfare, with herbicides aerially sprayed by the Israeli military destroying entire swaths of arable land in Gaza.
In other words, Gaza has been subjected to an “ecocide” strategy almost identical to the one used in Vietnam since long before October 7.
The occupying military force has been working to reduce, and eventually completely eliminate, the Palestinian population’s capacity to live sustainably in Gaza for many years. Since October 7, it has been waging a war to make Gaza completely unliveable.
50% of Gaza farms wiped out
As researchers at Forensic Architecture have concluded, at least 50 percent of farmland and orchards in Gaza are now completely wiped out. Many ancient olive groves have also been destroyed. Fields of crops have been uprooted using tanks, tractors and other vehicles.
Widespread aerial bombardment reduced the Gaza Strip’s greenhouse production facilities to rubble. All this was done not by mistake, but in a deliberate effort to leave the land unable to sustain life.
The wholesale destruction of the water supply and sanitation facilities and the ongoing threat of starvation across the Gaza Strip are also not unwanted consequences, but deliberate tactics of war. The Israeli military has weaponised food and water access in its unrelenting assault on the population of Gaza.
Of course, none of this is new to Palestinians there, or indeed in the West Bank. Israel has been using these same tactics to sustain its occupation, pressure Palestinians into leaving their lands, and expand its illegal settlement enterprise for many years.
Since October 7, it has merely intensified its efforts. It is now working with unprecedented urgency to eradicate the little capacity the occupied Palestinian territory has left in it to sustain Palestinian life.
Just as is the case with the occupation of Papua, environmental destruction is not an unintended side effect but a primary objective of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The immediate damage military occupation inflicts on the affected population is never separate from the long-term damage it inflicts on the planet.
For this reason, it would be a mistake to try and separate the genocide from the ecocide in Gaza, or anywhere else for that matter.
Anyone interested in putting an end to human suffering now, and preventing climate catastrophe in the future, should oppose all wars of occupation, and all forms of militarism that help fuel them.
David Whyte is professor of climate justice at Queen Mary University of London and director of the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice. Samira Homerang Saunders is research officer at the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, Queen Mary University.
Former New Zealand attorney-general David Parker spoke on day 295 of Israel’ genocidal war on Gaza in Auckland today, condemning the National-led government’s inaction over the ongoing crisis.
Responding to the recent International Court of Justice’s landmark advisory ruling that Israel’s occupation of Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem — Occupied Palestine — was illegal and must end as soon as possible, Parker said he was disappointed in New Zealand’s “equivocal” response.
He also called on the government to recognise the state of Palestine, along with some 145 countries around the world that have already done so.
A large banner at the rally illustrated the massive global support for Palestine statehood, with a map showing the main countries that have not supported recognition to be the white English-speaking settler colonial nations such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States.
The map banner at today’s Auckland rally showing NZ among a minority of US-led countries that have failed so far to recognise Palestinian statehood. At least 145 countries – an overwhelming majority of United Nations members – have already recognised Palestine. Image: David Robie/APR
Among the speakers were two Palestinian teenagers, Lujain Al-Badry, who spoke of the litany of the latest Israeli massacres in Gaza — but she also highlighted the “forgotten” atrocities by illegal settlers and the military in the West Bank — and the other a poet who spoke passionately of the constant evictions of Palestinians from their own homes and land.
More than 700 Israelis have illegally settled on Palestinian land since the territory was occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war in defiance of repeated UN resolutions declaring the settlements unlawful.
Lujain Al-Badry, 14, spoke of the latest Israeli massacres in Gaza and of the “forgotten” atrocities by illegal settlers in the West Bank at today’s rally. Image: David Robie/APR
Irish activist and trade unionist Joe Carolan, just back from a visit to Ireland, spoke of the political drift to the right in France and other European Union countries and reminded the crowd that support for the Palestinian cause and against colonialism was “liberation for all”.
The crowd marched around the block to protest outside the US consulate in Auckland, calling on Washington to end its support and funding for the Israeli genocide.
At least 39,324 Palestinians have been killed and 90,830 others wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Protesters at today’s Auckland rally calling for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s nine-month war on Gaza. Image: David Robie/APR
The Surafend massacre
Meanwhile, an RNZ podcast released at the weekend has revealed new insights into what has been described as the worst New Zealand military atrocity — the Surafend massacre during the First World War in Palestine in 1918.
According to the new season RNZ’s Black Sheep podcast, New Zealand and Australian soldiers “murdered upwards of 40 Arab civilians in a Palestinian village” in December 2018.
“But,” continued the podcast report, “more than 100 years later, we still don’t know exactly who did it, or why.
“We investigate what one military historian describes as ‘by far the worst war crime ever committed by New Zealand military personnel’ — The Surafend massacre — and other allegations of war crimes against Anzacs in the Middle East and North Africa.”
Dr David Robie is editor and publisher of Asia Pacific Report.
Watermelon protest placards at today’s pro-Palestinian rally in downtown Auckland. Image: David Robie/APR
Speaking before a joint session of Congress this week in an attempt to justify the mass destruction and death wrought by Israel’s war on Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu preached about his country’s “powerful and vibrant democracy” to applause from an audience dominated by Republicans as protests raged outside the Capitol. Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist living under Israeli…
It feels like we are living at a turning point for humanity. We are watching live as Israel carries out the most brutal offensive on the Palestinian people imaginable. Palestinian resistance has spread across the world, and world public opinion overwhelmingly wants Israel to stop its assault, but Israel and its powerful allies are using censorship, force, and slander to crush dissent.
May 15, 1948, is a date forever etched in the collective memory of every Palestinian. We can’t forget what happened in the leadup to that fateful day. During that time, the world witnessed one of the largest forced migrations in modern history. Palestinians call this day “al-Nakba” — the catastrophe that resulted in the ethnic cleansing of nearly 750,000 natives and the destruction of more than…
The United Nations General Assembly is expected to vote later today on a resolution that would grant new “rights and privileges” to Palestine and that — again — calls on the UN Security Council to favourably reconsider Palestine’s request for full UN membership, reports Al Jazeera.
The US vetoed a widely backed resolution on April 18 that would have paved the way for full UN membership for Palestine, a goal that Israel has worked strenuously to prevent and Washington has been instrumental in blocking on behalf of its key ally.
The US Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, said yesterday that the Biden administration remained opposed to Palestinian membership.
During the April 18 vote, Palestine’s application received strong support with a vote of 12 in favour, the UK and Switzerland abstaining, and the US alone in voting no.
The State of Palestine appealed for support on Thursday, saying a vote for UN membership comes at “a critical moment for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State … [and] rightful place among the community of nations”.
The State of #Palestine renews its appeal to all States for their support of the draft resolution when it is voted on by the General Assembly tomorrow morning, (#NYT) Friday, 10 May. A letter which clarifies our position & appeal @UNpic.twitter.com/llABBZX3l0
Palestinians are facing a critical shortage of clean water as Israel continues air strikes on eastern Rafah and blocks humanitarian aid from entering the besieged enclave.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths has said that the Israeli military has not allowed anything or anyone to go in or get out of Gaza since its takeover of the Rafah crossing on Tuesday.
“The closure of the crossings means no fuel. It means no trucks, no generators, no water, no electricity and no movement of people or goods. It means no aid,” he said.
Hamas says ‘ball in Israel’s hands’
French news agency AFP is reporting that Hamas announced early Friday that its delegation attending Gaza ceasefire talks in Cairo had left the city for Qatar and stated that the “ball is now completely” in Israel’s hands.
“The negotiating delegation left Cairo heading to Doha. In practice, the occupation [Israel] rejected the proposal submitted by the mediators and raised objections to it on several central issues,” the group said in a statement, adding it stood by the ceasefire proposal.
“Accordingly, the ball is now completely in the hands of the occupation,” the group said.
According to Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting on the US President Joe Biden’s exclusive interview with Erin Burnett this week with CNN, “We saw President Biden come out and say, ‘look, if they do this large-scale invasion of Rafah — there will be no bombs, no artillery shells, perhaps none of the technologies that turn dumb bombs into smart bombs’.
“And he is not just saying that it is going to happen. He is showing that it is already sort of happening.”
A shipment of bombs — 1800 900kg bombs that cause massive destruction and 1700 230kg bombs — due for delivery to Israel have been “paused”.
As student protests calling for an immediate ceasefire and divestment from universities in Israel spread around the globe, academics at two universities in New Zealand have condemned administrations for not standing up for their role as a “critic and conscience of society”.
Following an open letter by Auckland University academics speaking out in support of their students’ right to protest against the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza, a group of academics at Otago University have today also called on New Zealand academic institutions to “repair colonial violence” and end divestment from any economic ties with Israel.
1. Endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and disclose and divest from any economic ties to the apartheid state of Israel,
2. Condemn those universities [that] have called on police to violently remove protesters from their campuses, and
3. Call for the protection of students’ rights to protest and assemble and endorse the aims of those protests — the immediate demand of ceasefire and longer term demands to end the apartheid, violence, and illegal occupations under which Palestinians continue to suffer.
“Over 35,000 Palestinians have been killed—of those deaths, it is estimated that more than 13,000 of them have been children. Israel has destroyed all 12 universities in Gaza and targeted staff and students at those universities.
“The recent discovery of mass graves in Gaza, the hands and feet of many victims bound, has shocked the conscience of the world.
“In keeping with a long tradition of campus protest, students and staff are demanding their universities stop contributing to genocidal violence.
Student bodies brutalised
“In return, their bodies have been brutalised, their own universities endorsing their arrests. Universities should, at the very least, offer crucial spaces for protest, debate, and working through collective responses to urgent social issues. Instead, administrators have called in militarised police forces, fully decked out in anti-riot regalia to repress student protests.
“The results have been predictable: Professors and students have been arrested en masse and physically assaulted (beaten, pepper-sprayed, shot with rubber bullets, knocked unconscious, choked, and dragged limp across university lawns, their hands cuffed behind them).
“We at the University of Otago, an institution committed to acknowledging, confronting, and seeking to repair colonial violence, are part of a society that extends far beyond the borders of Aotearoa New Zealand.
“Acknowledging our history, including that history within its students’ experiences and working practices, compels us as a collective to call out and condemn colonial violence as and when we see it. It is not at all surprising that many of the protests in Aotearoa New Zealand calling for a ceasefire in Gaza have been organised and led by Māori alongside Palestinian activists.
“Most recently, the Ngāti Kahungunu iwi have come out against the genocide, with one of the rally organisers, Te Ōtane Huata, stating “Tino rangatiratanga to me isn’t only self-determination of our people, it is also collective liberation.”
“If it is to mean anything to be a te Tiriti-led university here in Aotearoa New Zealand, we must include acknowledgment that the history of Aotearoa New Zealand has been marked by consistent and egregious violations of that very treaty, and that such violations are indelibly part of settler colonialism.
“Violent expropriation, cultural annihilation, and suppression of resistance have been the hallmarks of this project.
Decolonisation and human rights
“In order to honour commitments to decolonisation and human rights, universities must act now. We thus call for the University of Otago to immediately:
“1. Endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and disclose and divest from any economic ties to the apartheid state of Israel, “2. Condemn those universities who have called on police to violently remove protesters from their campuses, “3. Call for the protection of students’ rights to protest and assemble and endorse the aims of those protests – the immediate demand of ceasefire and longer term demands to end the apartheid, violence, and illegal occupations under which Palestinians continue to suffer.
“In other words, the University must call for a liberated Palestinian state if it is to conceptualise itself as a university that seeks to confront its own settler-colonial foundations.
“The above position aligns with the named values of our universities here in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is our duty that we make these demands, particularly as Palestinians have seen the systematic destruction of their universities and educational infrastructure while Palestinian students of our universities have witnessed their families and friends targeted by the Israeli government.
“If the University of Otago wants to authentically position itself as an institution that takes seriously its role as a critic and conscience of society and acknowledges the importance of coming to grips with ongoing settler-colonial violence, it should take these demands seriously.
“We further support the Open Letter to Vice-Chancellor Dawn Freshwater from Auckland University Staff in Solidarity with Students Protesting for Palestine.”
In solidarity, Dr Peyton Bond (Teaching Fellow, Sociology, Gender Studies and Criminology) Dr Simon Barber (Lecturer in Sociology) Rachel Anna Billington (PhD candidate, Politics) Dr Neil Vallelly (Lecturer in Sociology) Erin Silver (PhD candidate, Sociology) Professor Richard Jackson (Leading Thinker Chair in Peace and Conflict Studies) Dr Lynley Edmeades (Lecturer in English) Dr Olivier Jutel (Lecturer in Media, Film and Communication) Lydia Le Gros (PhD candidate & Assistant Research Fellow, Public Health) Dr Abbi Virens (Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Sustainability) Sonja Bohn (PhD candidate, Sociology) Joshua James (PhD Candidate, Gender Studies) Sophie van der Linden (Postgrad Student, Bioethics) Dr Fairleigh Evelyn Gilmour (Lecturer in Gender Studies, Criminology) Brandon Johnstone (Administrator, TEU Otago Branch Committee Member) Dr David Jenkins (Lecturer in Politics) Jordan Dougherty (Masters student, Sociology) Rosemary Overell (Senior Lecturer in Media, Film and Communication) Dr Sebastiaan Bierema – (Research Fellow, Public Health) Dr Sabrina Moro (Lecturer in Media, Film and Communication studies) Rauhina Scott-Fyfe (Māori Archivist, Hocken Collections) Dr Lena Tan (Senior Lecturer, International Relations & Politics) Cassie Withey-Rila (Assistant Research Fellow, Otago Medical School) Duncan Newman (Postgrad student, Management)
A score of Palestine solidarity protesters draped themselves in white shrouds with mock blood in a sombre “die-in” demonstration at Te Komitanga Square — the heart of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city — today as speakers urged people to take a stronger boycott against Israeli products.
The rally by hundreds of protesters marked Israel’s killing of more than 34,000 Palestinians — mostly women and children — and wounding more than 77,000 in its genocidal war on Gaza.
The war has lasted 205 days so far with no let-up in the deadly assault on the besieged enclave and protesters staged 35 events around New Zealand this week as global demonstrations continue to grow.
Opposition MPs took part in the rally, including Labour’s Shanan Halbert and Green Party’s Steve Abel and Ricardo Menéndez March.
Activist and educator Maryam Perreira called on Palestine supporters to step up their boycott and divestments pressure — “it’s working, sanctions brought down apartheid South Africa and this will bring down the Israeli genocidal regime”.
“Food not bombs for Gaza”. Video: Café Pacific
She said the courage and commitment of the Palestinian resistance had become an inspiration to the world.
Send Israeli ambassador home
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott called for sanctions action by the New Zealand government.
He urged Palestine supporters to call on the government to:
• Send the Israeli ambassador home, and
• End the working holiday visa for 200 Israelis who come to New Zealand to rest and relax “after committing genocide in Gaza”.
Scott called on New Zealanders to email Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Immigration Minister Erica Stanford to take action.
“Try just one email and see how it goes. Then another on another topic. Then another. That’s how I started a while ago,” Scott said.
“We need a tide of emails to get them to understand that Kiwis don’t want the Israeli ambassador here.
“Neither do we want the young Israelis committing genocide today and to walk among us tomorrow.”
More than 13,000 people have signed a petition calling for the closure of the Israeli embassy in Welington.
“They can’t demonise an entire nation.” Video: Café Pacific
He spoke about the NZ government’s Superfund which has investments all over the world.
“A few years ago, they invested in Israeli banks which were investing in the building of illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestine Territories. They were involved in investing and enabling crimes against humanity,” Scott said.
He called on people with KiwiSaver fund accounts to check them out for investments in “Israeli companies who are in any way involved in the occupation”.
“We’re now calling for everyone to boycott Israeli products — or those companies which are complicit in Israeli crimes against humanity or the illegal occupation, land theft, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and now genocide.”
Scott cited the boycott target list of the global BDS movement — Ahava (“Dead Sea mineral skin care products”), BP and Caltex, Hewlett-Packard, McDonalds, Obela Hummus and SodaStream.
“The key is for all of us to take action today. Remember — boycott, divest, sanction.”
Palestinian flags in Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square today. Image: APR
Meanwhile, 1News reports that three New Zealand doctors planning to sail with an independent flotilla carrying aid to Gaza have had their mission “scuppered at the last minute”. They blame Israel for the delay.
The doctors — Dr Ali Al-Kenani, Dr Wasfi Shahin and Dr Faiez Idais — left for Istanbul 10 days ago where they joined other international volunteers in the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, said 1News.
The peace coalition No Tech for Apartheid accused Google of a “flagrant act of retaliation” late Wednesday night as the Silicon Valley giant announced it had fired 28 workers over protests against its cloud services contract with the Israeli government. The firings came after Google organizers held two 10-hour sit-ins at the company’s offices in Sunnyvale, California and New York City…
The number of people affected by the sudden visa cancellations was unclear, however there were at least 12 individuals who had had visas cancelled while in transit.
The stories of those affected have been shared over social media. They included the 23-year-old nephew of a Palestinian-Australian, stranded in Istanbul airport for four nights after having his visa cancelled mid-transit, unable to return to Gaza and unable to legally stay in Istanbul.
A mother and her four young children were turned around in Egypt, when their visas were cancelled, meaning they were unable to board an onwards flight to Australia.
A family of six were separated, with three of the children allowed to board flights, while the mother and youngest child were left behind.
2200 temporary visas
The Department of Home Affairs said the government had issued around 2200 temporary subclass 600 visas for Palestinians fleeing Gaza since October 2023.
Subclass 600 visas are temporary and do not permit the person work or education rights, or access to Medicare-funded health services.
Israelis have been granted 2400 visitor visas during the same time period.
The visa cancellations for Palestinians have been condemned by the Palestinian community, Palestinian organisations and rights’ supporters.
Nasser Mashni, president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), called on Labor to “follow through on its moral obligation to offer safety and certainty” to those fleeing, pointing to Australia’s more humane treatment of Ukrainian refugees.
The Refugee Action Collective Victoria (RAC Vic) called a snap action on March 15, supported by Socialist Alliance and PARA.
‘Shame on Labor’
David Glanz, on behalf of RAC Vic, said the cancellations had effectively marooned Palestinians in transit countries to the “shame of the Labor government which has supported Israel in its genocide”.
Samah Sabawi, co-founder of PARA, is currently in Cairo assisting families trying to leave Gaza.
She told ABC Radio National on March 14 about the obstacles Palestinians face trying to leave via the Rafah crossing, including the lack of travel documents for those living under Israeli occupation, family separations and heavy-handed vetting by the Israeli and Egyptian authorities.
Sabawi said the extreme difficulties faced by Palestinians fleeing Rafah were compounded by Australia’s visa cancellations and its withdrawal of consular support.
She also said Opposition leader Peter Dutton had “demonised” Palestinians and pressured Labor into rescinding the visas on the basis of “security concerns”.
Labor said there were no security concerns with the individuals whose visas had been cancelled. It has since been suggested by those working closely with the affected Palestinians that their visas were cancelled due to the legitimacy of their crossing through Rafah.
PARA said the government had said it had “extremely limited” capacity to assist.
Some visas reinstated
It is believed that some 1.5 million Palestinians are increasingly desperate to escape the genocide and are waiting in Rafah. Many have no choice but to pay brokers to help them leave.
Some of those whose visas had been cancelled received news on March 18 that their visas had been reinstated.
A Palestinian journalist and his family were among those whose visas were reinstated and are currently on route to Australia.
Graham Thom, Amnesty International’s national refugee coordinator, told The Guardian that urgent circumstances needed to be taken into account.
“The issue is getting across the border . . . The government needs to deal with people using their own initiative to get across any way they can.”
He said other Palestinians with Australian visas leaving Gaza needed more information about the process.
Twenty-four weeks of city marches and a five-week vigil outside the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s electoral office in Marrickville have taken pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war on Gaza to an unprecedented level.
In a new development, hundreds of protesters joined in a street theatre performance outside Albanese’s electorate office on Friday evening to highlight their horror at massacres of Palestinian citizens by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in Gaza.
Over 31,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, including many shot by the IDF while seeking care in hospitals, food from aid trucks or fleeing IDF bombing.
Senator Mehreen Faruqi (right) at the protest . . . Image: Wendy Bacon
The street theatre protest was part of an ongoing 24-hour-a-day peaceful vigil that has been going now for five weeks. There is no shortage of volunteers. A minimum of 6 people are present at any one time with around 200 people visiting each day.
When City Hub attended twice last week, frequent toots from passing cars indicated plenty of public support.
At 6.30 pm on Friday, sirens and rumblings could be heard along Marrickville Road sending a signal to scores of protesters dressed in white to lie down on the pavement. They were then sprinkled with red liquid.
As the sirens quietened, a woman’s voice rang out: “War criminals, that is what our government is. They are not representing the people . . . We will not stop until our government ends every single tie with Israeli apartheid.
‘We’ll not stop . . .’
“We will not stop until the ethnic cleansing has ended. Palestinian voices need to be heard. Palestinian voices must be amplified.”
Greens Deputy Leader Senator Mehreen Faruqi attended the action. Before the “die-in”, she responded to Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s announcement earlier in the day that Australia will resume funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Last week, Senator Faruqi called on Wong urgently to restore the funding. “It has been 43 days since the morally corrupt government made the inexcusable decision to suspend aid funding to UNRWA despite the minister admitting she hadn’t seen a shred of evidence,” she tweeted.
Along with some other Western governments, the Albanese government suspended UNRWA funding when Israel circulated a reportedly “explosive” but secret dossier outlining alleged links between Hamas and UNRWA staff. This happened shortly after the International Court of Justice found that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide.
The dossier alleged that UNRWA members were involved in the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023. After analysing the documents, Britain’s Channel 4 concluded that the dossier provided “no evidence to support the explosive claim that UN staff were involved in terror attacks”.
Recently, UNRWA accused Israel of torturing UNRWA staff to get admissions. On Friday, the European Union’s top humanitarian official Janez Lenarcic said that neither he nor anyone at the EU had been shown any evidence.
In “unpausing” the aid, Wong provided no evidence about what the government knew when it suspended aid and what it now claims to know about the allegations. Speaking at Friday’s protest, Senator Faruqi said she welcomed the restoration of funding but, “just as they restored the funding, they paused the visas of Palestinians en route to Australia while they were mid-air. How cruel and how inhumane can this Labor government get? Just as you think that there are no further depths that they can get to, they show us that they can.” (Late on Sunday, there were reports that the visa decision may be reversed.)
Unprecedented protest
While protests outside Prime Minister’s offices are not unusual, a 24-hour protest for more than a month has never happened before.
Given the length of the protest, it is remarkable that there has been almost no media mainstream coverage. City Hub conducted a Dow Jones Factiva search which revealed one report on SBS and a mention in The Guardian. (The search engine does not cover commercial radio.)
The weeks long, 24 x 7 protest in the heart of the Prime Minister’s own electorate has remained hidden from most of the Australian public and international audiences.
Prime Minister Albanese has not responded to requests for meetings with organisers who include Palestinian families who have been his constituents for many years. City Hub has spoken to protest organisers who say that despite repeated requests, they have received no response from the Prime Minister. The office is now closed to the public which means people are unable to deliver letters or make inquiries.
Protesters sit down in Market Street
The ongoing 24-hour sit-down Marrickville protest. Image: Wendy Bacon
The ongoing 24-hour sit-down Marrickville protest is an extension of the broader protest movement in which thousands of protesters marched on Sunday for the 24th week in a row. Similar protests have been happening in Melbourne and other cities. Again, although there have been bigger protests at times, the regularity of protests attended by thousands each week is unprecedented in Australian history.
Protests on this scale did not happen even during the Vietnam War era in the 1970s.
Last week, protesters marched from Hyde Park down Market Street completely filling several blocks of Sydney’s busiest shopping area. Their chant “Ceasefire Now’ reverberated around the streets. It was accompanied by drummers, some of them children.
Some protesters briefly took their demonstration to a new level by staging a brief sit-down in Market Street. The area was filled with Sunday shoppers who watched as protesters chanted, “While you’re shopping, bombs are dropping.”
The Prime Minister’s office has been contacted for comment. When a response is received, this article will be updated.
Wendy Bacon was previously professor of journalism at the University of Technology (UTS). She spoke at the rally about the lack of media coverage of pro Palestinian protests. She will write about this in a future article.
We mark the 21st anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old U.S. peace activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli soldier driving a military bulldozer on March 16, 2003. Corrie was in Rafah with the International Solidarity Movement to monitor human rights abuses and protect Palestinian homes from destruction when she was killed. To this day, nobody has been held accountable…
Speakers at a Palestine solidarity rally in Auckland’s Takutai Square today hailed the strong stance of Ireland over Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza – in contrast to a weak New Zealand position – while two blocks away in Te Komititanga Square (Britomart) hundreds of revellers were celebrating St Patrick’s Day.
“The Irish have been strong supporters of Palestine because of their experience of British settler colonialism,” Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott told the cheering protest crowd.
“The Great Potato Famine starting in 1845 killed a million Irish and caused two million more to flee and become refugees around the world.
“They celebrate today like Palestinians will celebrate here in Aotearoa and in Palestine once the vicious murderous yoke of Zionist domination is taken from their necks.”
The Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach), Leo Varadkar, has been in the United States for the past week and had a direct message for US President Joe Biden when they met yesterday.
While he was complimentary about Biden and his administration, Varadkar also told the US president about Dublin’s wish for an immediate ceasefire.
“You know my view that we need to have a ceasefire as soon as possible to get food and medicine in and the hostages out,” he told reporters after the meeting.
Permanent ceasefire call
While Varadkar has called for a permanent ceasefire, Biden wants a temporary one of at least six weeks as part of a hostage deal.
“Back in the day, NZ voted for the Apartheid Convention, so we have obligations under that law. But to date – nothing.
“So who has written reports and documented Israeli apartheid? Here are some of the reports overtime,” he said, citing at least seven global reports damning Israeli apartheid.
The most recent reports have come in 2022 from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Council report of the special rapporteur.
“Report after report. Report after report . . .”, said Scott.
“To date, our successive [NZ] governments have refused to condemn Israeli apartheid – a crime against humanity.”
He condemned officials at the Auckland office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) for refusing on Friday to accept a Palestinian solidarity deputation and statement for Chief Executive Chris Seed and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters.
Terror business network
Another speaker, Billy Hania, an Aotearoa Palestinian advocate, talked about the importance of supporting the BDS movement and boycotts, which had been vitally important in ending apartheid in South Africa, and he cited several Israeli companies and affiliates operating in New Zealand.
“The list goes on. When the government acts on behalf of business that causes death and harm to our people in Palestine,” he said.
“It’s a terror network of politics and business and that must be opposed.
“You must be vocal and it’s okay to say that we live here on a land that has been colonised and we support with our money and taxes a government that condones terrorism.
“And that’s how it is. You should not be ashamed of saying that or scared of saying that because these are the facts.
“When we invest in an Israeli company in our Super Fund that rains white phosphorus up to the minute it burns our children to the bone, that is terror.”
12 killed in attack
Al Jazeera reports that Israeli attacks on Deir el-Balah in central Gaza have killed at least 12 people and wounded many more, including children, according to videos and witnesses.
Meanwhile, 13 aid trucks have arrived safely in Jabaliya and Gaza City, the first convoys carrying food and supplies to have travelled from the south to the north of the enclave without incident in four months.
At least 31,645 Palestinians have been killed and 73,676 wounded by Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 7, the Palestinian Health Ministry has reported.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed this figure on Telegram channel. Some rights groups put the death toll number closer to 40,000 when accounting for those presumed dead. ** The death toll in West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. This is the latest figure according to PA’s Ministry of Health as of March 6. *** This figure is released by the Israeli military…
The al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which lies in the heart of occupied East Jerusalem and is one of Islam’s holiest sites, is typically bustling with worshippers from Palestine and around the world. In Ramadan and the days leading up to the Muslim holy month, the compound practically spills over with people. But this year, the Muslim Holy site, also known as al-Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary…
For six days, more than 50 countries, the League of Arab States, the African Union and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation presented testimony to the International Court of Justice (ICJ, or World Court) about the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. The overwhelming majority of them, largely from the Global South, told the court that the occupation was illegal.
As the humanitarian crisis deepens and starvation and famine threaten the Gaza Strip, the U.S. has vetoed yet another UN Security Council resolution — with the United Kingdom abstaining — blocking a demand for an immediate ceasefire favored by 13 of the 15 member countries, including the vast majority of the nations of the world. The draft resolution was put forward nearly two weeks ago by Algeria…
More than 50 countries are set to participate in next week’s hearings at the International Court of Justice focusing on Israel’s illegal 57-year occupation of Palestine, a forum that follows the Hague tribunal’s finding last month that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide in occupied Gaza. The ICJ — also known as the World Court — will hold a week of hearings on the legal consequences of…
Unfortunately there was no discussion of foreign policy during Aotearoa New Zealand’s general election last year. Aside from the odd obligatory question in a TV debate it barely got a mention.
Our international relations tend to be glossed over because most policy is shared by Labour and National at least.
It wasn’t always this way. Back in the 1970s there was a palpable feeling of pride across the country as the Norman Kirk Labour government sent a New Zealand frigate to protest against French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
A similar community pride surrounded developing our anti-nuclear policy in the 1980s and relief as well when New Zealand did not buckle to US pressure and stayed out of the infamous invasion of Iraq in 2003 while the rest of the Western world fell for the huge propaganda blitz about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction”.
It has been an awful surprise to see New Zealand give up that independence so easily in the last two years.
We rightly joined the condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because while there were clear reasons for Russia’s action there was no justification.
But then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her successor Chris Hipkins just gave up even the pretence of independence.
Fast downhill ride
Both attended belligerent NATO meetings and it’s been a fast downhill ride since. Our new National-led coalition government is continuing the same political momentum.
Nevertheless, it still came as a shock last month when Prime Minister Christopher Luxon — flanked by Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins — announced we were sending military personnel to join the US-led bombing of Yemen.
There was no United Nations mandate for war and it was supported only by the tiniest minority of Western countries.
The Houthi group in Yemen have attacked Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea to pressure Israel to end its slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
Yemeni groups have done this because the Western world has turned its back on the people of Gaza and refuses to condemn Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinians.
Shouldn’t we be speaking strongly for an immediate permanent ceasefire in Gaza like most of the world rather than joining in bombing one of the world’s poorest countries?
A ceasefire in Gaza would end the attacks on Red Sea shipping and dramatically reduce tensions across the Middle East.
That’s what an independent New Zealand would have done.
A protesting Palestinian family at the ceasefire solidarity rally in Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square today. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Shame, instead of pride
Instead of pride, most of us feel shame as the world now looks on us as a small, obsequious appendage to the US empire — an empire which has blocked three UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The killing of civilians and the taking of civilian hostages is a war crime under the fourth Geneva convention and must always be condemned, no matter who the perpetrator.
We were right to condemn the killing of Israeli civilians, but our government’s refusal to condemn the killing of more than 28,000 Palestinians, including more than 12,000 children, or even call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — until it belatedly did so this week — leaves an indelible stain on our reputation.
Our lack of independence was on display again last month when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found a plausible case exists that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Instead of backing up the court ruling with demands Israel end the killing of Palestinians New Zealand has been all but silent with the Prime Minister blundering his way through question time in Parliament without a clue about our international responsibilities.
While all but ignoring the genocide ruling by the ICJ, Luxon was quick to halt New Zealand funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency over Israeli allegations that 12 of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees had been implicated in terrorism. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
While all but ignoring the genocide ruling by the ICJ, Luxon was quick to halt New Zealand funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency over Israeli allegations that 12 of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees had been implicated in terrorism.
A classic diversion by Israel to avoid the dreadful truth of their killing of Palestinians in Gaza. New Zealand happily joined the diversion.
Why are Israeli attacks on UNRWA so much more important for the Prime Minister than genocide committed against the Palestinian people?
The simple truth is we are swimming against the great tide of humanity which stands with Palestinians.
Our government has pushed us into the dark shadow of US/Israeli policies of oppression and domination. We need to be back out in the sun.
John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).Republished with permission from The Daily Blog.
“He’s the snake’s head,” Fakhri Abu Diab could hear the Israeli police officer mumble to a municipal clerk. Moments earlier, someone was throwing hard hand blows against the metal door. Fakhry understood who it was; no one knocks with such a coarse manner except the Israeli police. As he opened the door, half a dozen men, some in police uniform, entered the Abu Diab residence in the Bustan…
A Palestinian advocate has appealed to the New Zealand government to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to back the South African genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
“A sovereign state like New Zealand that has historically stood for what is morally correct must not bend to foreign pressure, and must reject policies aligned with the United Kingdom of Israel and the United States of Israel which blindly endorse and support the apartheid regime,” said Billy Hania of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
He was speaking at the pro-Palestinian rally and march in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau yesterday as the Gaza death toll rose above 25,000 dead, mostly women and children.
Palestinian advocate Billy Hania speaking in Aotea Square yesterday . . . “The Zionist project is failing in Palestine.” Image: David Robie/APR
Belgium is among the latest of 61 countries — and the first European nation — to support the genocide case and a growing number of other lawsuits are also being brought against Israel.
Swiss prosecutors have also confirmed that a “crimes against humanity” case has been filed against Israeli President Isaac Herzog during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. No further details were given.
“The Zionist project is failing in Palestine — the apartheid entity with 75 years of colonial terror has achieved nothing for the Jewish people, oppressing and killing Palestinians through a violent settler colonial approach,” Hania said.
“Mass killing of Palestinians will achieve nothing for the Jewish people. Without respect for Palestinian rights and respect for life in Palestine, there will be no peace period.”
‘One holocaust not enough?’
Constrasting the shrinking support for Israel with massive citizen protests “in their millions” taking place around the world, Hania criticised Germany’s intervention in the genocide case supporting Tel Aviv while also planning to provide 10,000 tank munitions to “the apartheid regime with which to massacre Palestinians — as if one holocaust was not enough”.
“We are calling on the New Zealand government to support the South African ICJ case in addition to supporting the recent Chile-Mexico ICC war crimes initiative. This initiative is technically important with Israel being a signatory to the ICC,” Hania said.
He also thanked Indonesia for its legal initiative.
“Stop the genocide now” placard in yesterday’s Auckland rally calling for a ceasefire in the war in Gaza. Image: David Robie/APR
“More than 100 days of targeting Palestinian civilians and civilian infrastructure to exterminate Palestinian life is committing genocide, the crime of all crimes and with total impunity,” Hania said.
“More than 60,000 tons of explosives dropped over Gaza in 100 days equals three nuclear bombs, more than the infamous nuclear tragedy on Japan that led to its immediate surrender. It’s fundamentally different for Gaza as surrendering does not exist in Palestine vocabulary.”
He said the more than 100 Israel hostages would remain in Gaza until the “thousands of Palestinian hostages are freed”.
“The Gaza siege must end, West Bank Israeli settler extremist violence must end, there must be respect for worshippers and Muslim religious sites attacks by Israeli extremists is well documented and must end.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters march down Auckland’s Queen Street yesterday calling for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the killing of children in the Israeli war on Gaza. Image: David Robie/APR
24 massacres cited
Hania stressed that the current war did not start on October 7 with the deadly Hamas resistance movement attack on southern Israel as claimed by the Israeli government.
He cited a list of 24 massacres of Palestinians by Zionist militia that began at Haifa in 1937 and Jerusalem the same year, including the Nakba – “the Catastrophe” — in 1948 when 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes and lands with the destruction of towns and villages.
Hania also referred to a recent New York Times article that warned Israel was in a strategic bind over its failed military policies, saying Israel’s objectives were “mutually incompatible”.
The cited New York Times article saying Israel’s two main goals in its war on Gaza are “mutually incompatible”. Image: NYT screenshot APR
“Israel’s limited progress in dismantling Hamas has raised doubts within the military’s high command about the near-term feasibility of achieving the country’s principal wartime objectives: eradicating Hamas and also liberating the Israeli hostages still in Gaza,” wrote the authors Ronen Bergman and Patrick Kingsley.
Israel had established control over a smaller part of Gaza at this stage of the war than originally envisaged in battle plans from the start of the invasion, which were reviewed by The Times.
Citing Dr Andreas Krieg, a war analyst at King’s College London, from the article, Hania quoted:
“It’s not an environment where you can free hostages.
“It is an unwinnable war.
“Most of the time when you are in an unwinnable war, you realise that at some point — and you withdraw.
“And they didn’t.”
“Adolf and his zombie” poster at the rally in Auckland yesterday calling for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. Image: David Robie/APR
For two months now, the United States and other Western countries backing Israel have been talking about “the day after” in Gaza. They have rejected Israeli assertions that the Israeli army will remain in control of the Strip and pointed to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as their preferred political actor to take over governance once the war is over.
In so doing, the US and its allies have paid little regard to what the Palestinian people want. The current leadership of the PA lost the last democratic elections held in the occupied Palestinian territory in 2006 to Hamas and since then, it has steadily lost popularity.
In a recent public opinion poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), some 90 percent of respondents were in favour of the resignation of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, and 60 percent called for the dismantling of the PA itself.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas . . . low public trust in the PA, but there is a reason why the US insists on supporting its takeover of Gaza. Image: Al Jazeera
Washington is undoubtedly aware of the low public trust in the PA, but there is a reason why it insists on supporting its takeover of Gaza: its leadership has been a reliable partner for decades in maintaining a status quo in the interests of Israel.
The US would like that arrangement to continue, so its backing for the PA may be accompanied by an attempt to revamp it in order to solve its legitimacy problem. But even if this effort succeeds, it is unlikely the new iteration of the PA would be sustainable.
A reliable partner Perhaps one of the main factors that has convinced the US that the PA is a “good choice” for post-war governance in Gaza is its anti-Hamas stance and willingness to conduct security coordination with Israel.
Since the Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, the PA and its leadership have not issued an official statement offering explicit political support for the Palestinian resistance. Their rhetoric has predominantly focused on condemning and disapproving of attacks on civilians on both sides, while also rejecting the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland.
In a political address on the ninth day of the war, Abbas criticised Hamas, asserting that their actions did not represent the Palestinian people. He emphasised that the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and underscored the importance of peaceful resistance as the only legitimate means to oppose Israeli occupation.
This statement was later retracted by his office.
In December, Hussein al-Sheikh, a PA official and secretary-general of the executive committee of the PLO, also criticised Hamas in an interview with Reuters. He suggested its armed resistance “method and approach” has failed and led to many casualties among the civilian population.
The stance of the PA is consistent with its own narrow political and economic interests which have come at the expense of the Palestinian national cause. It has systematically and brutally stamped out any opposition and any support for other factions, including Hamas, in order to maintain its rule over West Bank cities while Israel continues with its brutal occupation and dispossession of the Palestinian people.
In Israel’s war on Gaza in 2008–2009, the PA leadership hoped to regain administrative control of Gaza with assistance from Israel. During that conflict, the PA prohibited any activities in the West Bank in support of Gaza and threatened to arrest participants.
I, myself, faced harassment and the threat of arrest for attempting to join a demonstration against the war. Similar positions were adopted by the PA, albeit with less aggressive measures, in subsequent Israeli assaults on Gaza, as its leadership came to recognise that Hamas was unlikely to relinquish its control over the Strip.
Since October 7, the PA has taken a bolder stance, marked by more aggressive actions. Its security forces have suppressed demonstrations and marches held in support of Gaza, resorting to shooting live ammunition at participants. Additionally, the PA has recently detained individuals expressing support for the Palestinian resistance.
While cracking down on Palestinian protests, the PA has done nothing to protect its people from attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian communities, which have resulted in deaths, injuries and the displacement of hundreds of people in the occupied West Bank.
Additionally, the Israeli army has intensified its raids in the PA-administered areas, leading to the arrest of thousands and the killing of hundreds of Palestinians, with no reaction from the PA.
The PA’s inability to offer basic protection has added to the deterioration of its legitimacy among Palestinians. Furthermore, by taking a stance against the Palestinian resistance and aligning itself with Israel and the US, the PA is only further undermining its own legitimacy.
Palestine Authority – PA 1.0
Washington is aware of the growing unpopularity of the PA and its leadership among Palestinians but it is not giving up on it because it seems to believe that that can be fixed. That is because the US has tried to revamp the authority before as it has always faced problems with legitimacy due to the way it was set up.
As a governing institution, the PA was established to bring an end to the first Intifada.
Conceived under the interim peace agreements in Oslo, it was envisioned as an administrative body to oversee civil affairs for Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip and certain parts of the West Bank, excluding occupied East Jerusalem.
It effectively took on a role as an Israeli security contractor in exchange for certain benefits related to administering Palestinian population centres. The PA faithfully fulfilled its mandate, carrying out routine arrests and surveillance of Palestinian individuals, whether they were involved in actions against Israel or were activists opposing its corrupt practices.
Thus, Israel strategically benefitted from the establishment of the PA, but the same cannot be said for the Palestinian people, as they continued to experience the ravages of a military occupation.
Expected independent state
“Despite this, the PA under Yasser Arafat — or what we can call PA 1.0 — leveraged patronage and corruption to maintain some level of support. Notably, Arafat viewed the Oslo process as an interim measure, expecting a fully independent Palestinian state by 2000.
He pragmatically engaged in security collaboration with Israel, hoping to build trust and ultimately achieve peaceful coexistence. In 1996, responding to ongoing Palestinian resistance, he even declared a “war on terror” and convened a security summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, involving Israel, Egypt and the US.
In 2000, the civil and security arrangements overseen by the PA became increasingly fragile and eventually collapsed, triggering the eruption of the second Intifada. This uprising was a response to Israel’s policies of settlement expansion, its firm refusal to accept any form of Palestinian sovereignty between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and broader social and economic grievances.
In 2002, the Bush administration conceived the idea of refurbishing the PA as part of the Road map for peace. While Arafat’s leadership was perceived as a hindering factor, he had already collaborated with the US by implementing structural reforms, including the creation of a prime minister’s position.
Seeking to reshape the Palestinian leadership, the US engaged with potential alternative leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas, who eventually assumed the presidency of the PA in 2005 after the suspicious death of Arafat.
The PA took its first blow when Hamas won the elections in 2006 and was able to form a government. The US and EU rejected the results, boycotted the government and suspended financial assistance to the PA, while Israel halted the transfer of tax revenues.
Meanwhile, the PA security apparatus leadership refused to deal with the Hamas government and continued their work as usual, claiming they reported to the PA president’s office.
For several months, Hamas struggled to maintain its PA government, while Abbas and his supporters made significant efforts to isolate it.
In 2007, Hamas took over the PA security apparatus in the Gaza Strip and assumed control of all PA institutions. Abbas declared Hamas an unwanted entity in the West Bank and ordered the expulsion of the Hamas government and the imprisonment of many Hamas operatives.
After splitting the PA into two entities, one in the Gaza Strip and another in the West Bank, Abbas, along with allies Mohammed Dahlan and Salam Fayyad, led efforts to restructure the PA in the West Bank with full support from the US and the EU.
Restructuring PA 2.0
Under what we can call PA 2.0, two major restructuring efforts took place. First, it consolidated the Palestinian security apparatus under a united command. Led by US Army General Keith Dayton, the revamping of the Palestinian security forces aimed at deepening their partnership with the Israeli state and army.
Additionally, it sought to cultivate a vested interest among PA personnel in maintaining the role of the PA. Second, the restructuring of the PA consolidated its budget, placing all its resources under the Ministry of Finance.
This restructuring did not result in a “better” PA. It remained a dysfunctional entity, which mismanaged resources and service provision, leading to a severe deterioration in living standards for the majority of Palestinians.
Its leadership enjoyed certain privileges due to its security coordination with Israel and engaged in widespread corruption practices that have raised concerns even among PA supporters.
Meanwhile, Israel’s settlement enterprises continued expanding without limits and the violence employed by the Israeli army and settlers against ordinary Palestinians only worsened.
Restructuring PA 3.0? The lack of support for the PA leadership and its dysfunction have raised concerns about whether it can play a role in the upcoming post-Gaza war arrangements that the US administration is trying to put together.
That is why Washington has signalled it will seek to revamp the PA once again — into PA 3.0 — with the aim of addressing the needs of various parties. The US administration and its allies seek an authority that can provide security to Israel and engage in a peace process without altering the status quo.
Since the start of the war, several US envoys have visited Ramallah carrying the same message: that the PA needs to be revamped. In December US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Abbas and al-Sheikh (the PLO secretary-general) urging them to “bring new blood” into the government. Al-Sheikh is considered a possible successor to Abbas, who could be part of these efforts to restructure the PA.
However, after more than 100 days since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, it looks like Washington does not have a concrete plan and only has some general ideas which the PA has declared a readiness to discuss. More importantly, the US vision does not seem to take into account the will of the Palestinian people.
The Palestinian public clearly demands a leadership that can head a democratic, national entity capable of fulfilling the Palestinian national aspirations, including creating an independent state and realising the Palestinians’ right of return to their homelands.
Revamping the PA implies intensifying cooperation with Israel and providing Israeli settlers with more security, which effectively means more insecurity and dispossession for the Palestinians.
As a result, the Palestinian people will continue to perceive the PA as illegitimate and public anger, upheaval and resistance will continue to grow.
In this sense, the US vision for revamping the PA would fail because it would not address the core issues of Israeli occupation and apartheid, which successive American administrations have systematically and purposefully ignored.
Samer Jaber is a political activist and PhD researcher specialising in political economy at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is also a fellow with the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA). He focuses on the Arab world and the Middle East region. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
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“No one knows apartheid like those who fought it before,” said one Palestinian rights advocate on Friday in response to the news that South Africa has taken a “historic” new step to hold Israel accountable for its relentless bombardment and violent yearslong occupation of Gaza — calling on the International Court of Justice to declare that Israel has breached its obligations under the Genocide…
The reproductive justice movement’s call for bodily autonomy extends beyond walls and borders. As a framework that was coined by Black and Indigenous women and other women of color, the inherent need to place the most marginalized at the epicenter of reproductive freedom speaks to the many intersections of this cause. One cannot recognize the right to reproductive safety without acknowledging the…
