McCully's cautious response to Palestinian appeal

The speech by Mahmoud Abbas at the United Nations on 23 September received rounds of applause from most of the assembled representatives and there is a majority at the world forum in favour of Palestinian liberation. So why is our Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully so afraid to ally New Zealand with the majority of world opinion? McCully's Palestinian counterpart, Riyad al-Maliki, sought support for Palestine's bid for membership of the United Nations at a meeting with Mr McCully early this month. After the meeting our Foreign Affairs Minister would say only that New Zealand would wait to see the wording of any resolution before making a decision. There was no need for him to prevaricate because Mr Maliki had offered to let him read a text of the draft resolution before it was submitted to the General Assembly.

Israel's feeble argument that the bid by the Palestinians is 'unilateral' ignores decades of Israeli unilateralism, such as the unilateral transfer of over half a million Israeli settlers to belligerently-occupied Palestinian territory. That is just one of many offences committed by Israel against the Fourth Geneva Convention. No nation recognises the legitimacy of the settlements and yet the world community continually avoids taking the steps needed to require Israel to withdraw its occupation colonies.

A failure by New Zealand to stand by the provisions of international law would quite justifiably be judged unfavourably by the majority of world opinion. It would also bring the value of our proclaimed commitment to the democratic process and international law into question. The Palestinian Authority President's appeal to the UN General Assembly is a reminder to the organisation that authored the partition of the Palestinian homeland that it bears the responsibility for peacefully resolving the injustices it set in motion over sixty years ago.

The role of the United Nations and the world community is vital; the Israeli Prime Minister has declared unequivocally that he regards Israel's illegal settlements as permanent. In fact, Netanyahu goes further, emphasising the fact that he regards the settlements as proof of ownership of increasing areas of Palestinian land. In May this year, speaking after a meeting with President Obama at the White House, Netanyahu said, “I think for there to be peace, the Palestinians will have to accept some basic realities. The first is that while Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines.” And the reason for this, as stated by the Israeli Prime Minister, was because the pre-1967 line didn't include the settlements or, as he put it, didn't “take into account certain changes that have taken place on the ground, demographic changes that have taken place over the last 44 years.” To put it bluntly, Netanyahu is demanding that the Palestinian people and the world community accept this process of ethnic cleansing that Israel calls “demographic changes” as an irreversible fait accompli. You can't get much more unilateral and uncompromising than that.

In spite of all this, Mr McCully continues to support a policy that requires the Palestinians to negotiate with an occupying power that, endowed with US-sponsored impunity, deals with the Palestinians from a position of overwhelming military superiority.
Leslie Bravery
Palestine Human Rights Campaign/Aotearoa New Zealand
www.palestine.org.nz

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