Written By:
- Date published:
4:01 pm, November 7th, 2025 - 10 comments
Categories: aid, Coalition NZ, gaza, International, israel, labour, uncategorized -
Tags: aid, gaza, New Zealand
There was a short segment on the 6pm TVNZ news programme (6 November), in which a BBC journalist, heavily overseen by the IDF, showed the level of destruction wrought in Gaza. It reminded me of “before and after” pictures of French villages in the First World War. In places like Verdun or the Somme, villages simply disappeared, lost in a sea of mud and debris. Such was the devastation shown in Gaza. A wasteland of rubble, unrecognisable as homes and businesses, schools and hospitals, stretching far into the distance until it met the sea.
A picture is worth a thousand words. The news segment revealed in uncompromising terms the ruthless determination of the Israeli state, not simply to destroy them as a people, but also to make uninhabitable the remnants of what territory has been left to Palestinians by Israeli state expansion.
UN estimates have reached US$70 billion as the reconstruction cost, a figure that must rise massively as the full extent of damage is understood. The financial cost pales against the human cost, broadly accepted to be over 68000 Gazans killed since 7 October 2023.
This is a manufactured catastrophe. One cannot condone the attacks that killed 1200 Israelis, even as the history since the Nakba and Deir Yassin resonates internationally. But Israel, because of the particular circumstances of its current state, its creation and support, is allowed to act as it does, garnering support, tacit and explicit, from countries and voices that simply should, and do, know better.
I well remember the UK Labour Party in 1967, imbued with the “plucky little Israel” belief, and probably, if truth be told, still smarting from Suez (duplicitous, ungrateful Arabs), supporting Israel as an effect of the Holocaust and Israel’s founding elements of Social Democracy. Many of these voices have remained trapped in a post-war memory, long since destroyed by changing demographics and politics.
What is New Zealand’s position on current events? It continues to support a “two-state” solution, has given over NZ$50 million in aid to alleviate consequences of the assault, and, most controversially, will not recognise the Palestinian state for now.
“With a war raging, Hamas remaining the de facto government of Gaza, and no clarity on next steps, too many questions remain about the future State of Palestine for it to be prudent for New Zealand to announce recognition at this time,” Mr Peters says.
“We are also concerned that a focus on recognition, in the current circumstances, could complicate efforts to secure a ceasefire by pushing Israel and Hamas into even more intransigent positions.” (MFAT 27 September 2025).
Limited and at best measured. The current government’s sympathy for the US position, on Gaza as on other issues, is evident, and must cloud the vision.
Labour has been more forceful from Opposition. It supports recognition of Palestine as an essential feature of a two-state solution. Moreover, sanctions should be imposed on Israel. Properly, Labour sees the Government’s approach as too little, too late.
Labour can provide further leadership on this issue. One thing is obvious. The Trump Peace Plan is inchoate, fragile and, if garnering grudging support, remains particularly at the mercy of Israeli government commitment and actions. Extremist Israeli elements have no time for the Plan. Israeli decisions in other areas, for example, the West Bank, are not supportive.
NZ’s influence on these matters is marginal. Where we might contribute is in the development and implementation of the rebuild process. A focus on the rebuild has numerous benefits. It is a positive intervention. It permits a distance from many of the difficult regional power plays. It allows cooperation across a wide range of countries in a similar position to NZ. It speaks to NZ’s sense of the practical. It is possible within our budgets. Of course, such a focus would have to be under an appropriate international umbrella, that is, the UN.
Labour’s position on Gaza, plus a strong commitment to practical support for the rebuild of Gaza, is a sensible NZ package.
Peaceful co-existence is only viable on a cost-benefit ratio, so what would make the Palestinians want to go for the 2-state solution? I asked Google's gizmo about their current support for the scheme. AI Overview: Recent polls show that the proportion of Palestinians who support the two-state solution is a minority, typically ranging between approximately 33% and 40%, depending on the timing and specific phrasing of the poll question. This represents a significant decline from historical levels of support.
So, when you factor in the seeming lack of peaceful co-existence in the region since the Bronze Age, you can see why they want the will of Allah instead. Aotearoans are unlikely to get excited about a bunch of people who are averse to becoming civilised. I suggest our foreign policy ought to support the right of all young male semites to compete for Darwin awards simultaneously. Swords made of bronze would make it nicely televisual. Gav ought to run it by the top honchos in Hollywood too.
Have you any knowledge of European history? Or even of more recent times – Balkan Wars, World Wars in Europe, Yugoslavia break-up, Abkhazia-Georgia, Armenia-Azerbaijan and Ukraine.
That's pretty dark Dennis, but at least you're having a go.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/palestinian-american-comedian-uses-humor-to-process-the-war-in-gaza
What rebuild?
At the moment Trump is trying to bully the UN to accept his plan.
Trump USA will only back his plan.
Yet, if Israel vetos any concessions, as per the WB, the Gulf states will not fund anything in Gaza.
Gaza is set to become a refugee camp, where people live in tents or containers in areas without rubble, or in buildings that still stand surrounded by it – and for years with little being done.
Israel wants to control the border – and looks intent on blocking the entry of equipment to remove the rubble.
Why? To force the people to leave, and make a Palestinian state in WB and Gaza impossible.
Once upon a time Hamas in Gaza was used as a cover for WB settlement expansion.
Then removing Hamas from Gaza as excuse to ruin Gaza as a place where people can live.
And the ultimate goal looks likely to be to use that to end any chance of a separate Palestinian state.
Likud and partners see that as winning.
We remain committed to the UN position of two separate states.
Israel thinks preventing that from being possible is their 1967 victory made permanent.
Ultimately Palestinians and then Gulf states will double down on the right of return – the refugees in Gaza allowed into the state of Israel.
Which means back to the 1947 position of a unitary state.
Then people will reprise the discussion about wisdom.
If there was two states and two peoples living side by side, they would eventually come to have economic co-operation and partnership – as equals.
But if there was ambition for one state and its rule over both areas in the interest of only one people, eventually the other one confined into smaller and smaller areas would leave.
The UN world wanted the first option.
We are now arriving at the second.
Does the world tolerate this and what is the alternative?
That is the real question, what happens in Gaza will depend on that.
You can’t have it both ways.
It makes little sense to condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocidal, then ask New Zealanders to fund the reconstruction of the very territory that’s been destroyed. That’s not coherent foreign policy, just token moralising.
The Gaza war may have begun as a legitimate response to a terror attack, but it has long since descended into a humanitarian disaster and a moral quagmire. Pouring millions from our limited aid budget into rebuilding Gaza won’t change the underlying politics or end the cycle of destruction.
Nor will it serve our broader foreign-policy aims.
Yes. Gaza matters. And Israel’s conduct has been unconscionable.
But as a small state, New Zealand has to be ruthlessly pragmatic in how we deploy foreign aid and conduct foreign policy. We simply don’t have the luxury of being driven by moral impulse, however noble or popular it may be.
That doesn’t mean turning our back on humanitarian crises.
It means recognising that our resources and influence are finite, and ensuring that what we do contribute is consistent, strategic, and likely to make a tangible difference. Supporting our Pacific neighbours, whose wellbeing directly affects our own, and to whom we have both a historical and moral obligation, meets that test far better than symbolic gestures in far-off wars.
In short, our policy should be to do what matters. not what's popular.
We agree the Gaza matters. We agree that NZ foreign engagements should be on issues which matter. QED?
Hamas consistently has the support of the majority of Palestinians, and its leaders have stated repeatedly and explicitly that they plan to repeat this war as soon as they've rebuilt their ability to fight. Any NZ government that participates in that rebuild or expresses an intent to participate should be rejected by voters at the earliest opportunity, for acting against the national interest.
I assume that, like me, you've looked at the range of analysis of who supports whom in Gaza, which shows shifting data over time, affiliation and location (if the West Bank is included). Putting to one side the obvious question of methodologies that might produce reliable data in contemporary Gaza, analyses tend to suggest declining support for Hamas since the 2023 attacks, with continuing poor performance by the Palestinian Authority. Equally, trying to fathom what data mean when they are taken from a people under two years of constant bombing and shellfire, death and privation, is beyond most capacities. Imagine trying to poll opinion in Dresden in February 1945.
True, more recent polling has them no longer supported by a majority, more like 40%. However, that's more support than any other contender, and there's the fact that Hamas have no intention of disarming and are using the ceasefire to re-establish control of the strip. For a NZ government to commit to funding anything there would be insane. It's bad enough that we're still funding UNRWA.
We could have done the absolute bare minimum and joined with Australia and South Africa and most of our friends by writng Israel a sternly worded letter.
But that empty suit Winston couldn't even do that, instead choosing the fuckknuckle option of kissing America's fat ass