Prime Minister Christopher Luxon (centre) with Foreign Minister Winston Peters (right) and Act leader David Seymour. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Cabinet will consider its options today on the question of New Zealand recognising Palestinian statehood, but there is one certainty: whatever the final decision, it will be met with strong opposition.
That is in the nature of this issue, which has divided the world for ages, but never more so than now with Israel’s war on Gaza.
After a wave of countries and friends of New Zealand gave notice of their plans to recognise Palestine at the United Nations this month, Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced a few weeks ago that he would begin a process to consider the issue as well.
The drawn-out process was helpful to the New Zealand decision-making process and the configuration of the current Government of three parties.
If there were a parliamentary vote on the issue, it would almost certainly result in recognition, but it is a Cabinet decision, and each party has an effective veto.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is said to lean more towards recognition than Act or New Zealand First. The consultation process has allowed opponents of recognition within his National Party caucus and wider membership to press their case.
And it has given Peters time to assess just how isolated New Zealand would be by not joining the new wave of recognition – and whether it would be a symbolic gesture or one with consequences.
But whatever is decided today, it is not necessarily going to be the final position.
Peters will head to the United Nations this coming weekend and then, at the start of next week, attend a conference in New York reconvened by France and Saudi Arabia on a two-state solution to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
After listening to the various viewpoints there, Peters will reassess New Zealand’s position. If he believes it needs amending, he will seek further approval from New Zealand (such as through a Cabinet committee or coalition leaders) before presenting the final position to the UN General Assembly, most likely on September 26 or 27.
There are four broad options that New Zealand could take:
The last option is the most unlikely. New Zealand has already dragged its feet over recognition and is hardly going to go further than friends such as Australia, Britain and France.
Peters’ natural inclination would be to stick with the status quo. His default position over many years has been as a defender of Israel, although that has changed with its worst excesses in Gaza.
Peters has not attempted to defend the indefensible. He has been highly critical of Israel at times and, along with other countries, has applied travel bans to its most extreme Cabinet ministers, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
But keeping with the status-quo position when so much has changed would be to ignore shifting public sentiment.
Peters is ultimately a politician first and a diplomat second and will recognise that sentiment towards Israel, globally and within New Zealand, has moved substantially since the terrorist attack by Hamas in October 2023, which killed 1200.
At the outset, Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza had wide support. It was seen as a justified retaliation against the perpetrators of the attack and a bid to prevent any future ones.
But this time last year, there was growing acceptance that Israel’s response was disproportionate and was killing too many innocent civilians, including children, hospital staff, aid workers and journalists.
By this year, sentiment had shifted again, with 60,000 deaths in Gaza. What had once seemed premature claims of genocide and other war crimes by Israel fitted, as people starved or were killed trying to get food. Since then, Israel has moved in to make much of Gaza City uninhabitable and last week undertook an extraordinary strike on a building in Qatar which had been hosting peace talks involving Hamas.
All the while, there is no clear end game by Israel about what happens once it has totally destroyed Gaza.
Recognition of Palestinian statehood could be seen as a reward for Hamas’ terrorist actions. But not to do so could also be seen as condoning Israel’s behaviour.
It is not just military actions by Israel that concern the international community, but its growing intransigence against a two-state solution.
That has been affirmed by the United Nations as the fairest outcome to address the historical plight of Palestinians. At present, five million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza, which are effectively under Israeli control.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Government are avowedly against a two-state solution. What’s more, they plan to sabotage it with a huge Israeli settlement in the Occupied West Bank, where most of the Palestinian state would exist, adding to the 140 approved settlements already there.
They believe a Palestinian state next to Israel would ultimately threaten Israeli security.
Proponents in the current wave for recognition disagree. Without a Palestinian state, they say, Israel will face conflict forever. With the right international support for a Palestinian state, it would lead to greater security for Israel.
And, they argue, recognition of Palestinian statehood is a way to preserve a two-state pathway that Israel (having previously supported it) is intent on destroying.
There are no easy options, but an alternative scenario is likely to be even more problematic in the long run. If Israel annexed the West Bank and Gaza, it is unlikely that the Jewish state would give Palestinians the same political rights as its current citizens and run the risk of a Palestinian majority. Denying them such rights would lead to pariah status for Israel’s human rights abuses and a forever war.
Israel should not be able to dictate the outcome. The historical plight of the Palestinians was caused by international agreements in 1948 and by Israel’s Six-Day War in 1967. The international community should be involved in the solution.
So which path will New Zealand take? Peters is more likely to go for option two, giving greater clarity to “when” recognition will happen. There is a remote chance of joining the wave of other countries after the French-Saudi conference if there were a convincing path towards making it happen.
But that would require a volte-face by Peters and would take some convincing to turn Act.
Recognition by New Zealand is not likely to affect the outcome of the conflict and it would be purely symbolic.
If that is the case, others will argue, what is the harm in recognition now and being on the right side of history.