Winston Peters speech at the United Nations on Saturday ended decades of New Zealand positioning itself as a moral force in international politics and repositioned the country as one of President Donald Trump’s most loyal fellow travellers in the Asia-Pacific.
The decision not to recognise Palestine was not by itself unexpected or illogical.
Peters’ argument that there is no effective state to recognise is one shared by Singapore.
It was the speech that accompanied that announcement that was the surprise.
He did not announce a single censure of Israel.
Instead he focussed on what has become the standard Israel – United States talking point of the fate of the Israeli hostages in Gaza.
There was no mention of the finding of the UN Commission that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza or that it is now aggressively seeking to expand its illegal settlements on the West Bank.
Despite previous National and Labour Governments all supporting UN resolutions calling for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders there was no mention of them.
No wonder the speech was greeted with applause from the New Zealand Israel Institute and Israel’s Ambassador in Wellington.
Significantly there was also no criticism from Washington.
It would seem the tone of the speech was the product of internal coalition pressure from ACT, external pressure from the United States and Peters’ own personal sympathies for extreme right international politics as played by Trump and the British politician, Nigel Farrage.
The speech left the Prime Minister on the sidelines holding a press conference in Auckland trying to rebalance the equation.
The fact that he was not in New York himself was also questioned.
He claimed that Prime Ministers often skipped UN Leaders’ week.
But he has never been and those “skips” have usually been when the week clashed with an election campaign.
That will mean he won’t be going next year.
He will be the first New Zealand Prime Minister who has served for more than two years to have not gone to the UN since Leaders’ Week began to emerge as a major international event in the 1980s.
Yet not since the Viet Nam War of the 1960s; the Springbok tour of 1981 or the anti -nuclear movement of 1984 until now have we seen a foreign policy issue play a role in domestic politics.
The danger for National now is that the Palestine decision will further alienate the under 35 voters which the party is already in trouble with.
It was not surprising that the New Zealand Government has decided to not recognise Palestine.
Its fundamental argument that there is not currently a state to recognise is one that is also accepted by close friends like Singapore.
But in doing that, New Zealand has taken a position much closer to Trump’s America than it has to Singapore.
The island state’s Foreign Minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, in a lengthy speech to the Singapore Parliament a week ago, carefully set out Singaporean sanctions against Israel and its ongoing commitment to both Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, which require Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 state boundaries.
Speaking at the UN, Peters did not make that commitment for New Zealand
Nor did he emulate Balakrishnan and impose targeted sanctions on right-wing West Bank settlement organisers and groups who have been committing violence against Palestinians.
Speaking to media on Saturday he was also non-committal on whether New Zealand would support any finding that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza by the International Court of Justice.
Such a finding would open the door for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians and officials to be found to be war criminals.
It is hard to know whether the heavy alignment with the United States is a product of pressure from ACT or from the United States itself.
Either way, it will likely incite a strong public backlash and protests, which could match the scale and intensity of the 1981 anti-Springbok tour protests.
Since these protests will likely be predominantly young people, this decision will make it much harder for the National Party to close the poll gap with Labour among the under-40s.
The decision is also likely to increase support for the Greens, who yesterday simply said it was “cowardly”.
Peters has released the Cabinet Paper on recognition of Palestine, which proposed five options ranging from full recognition to no recognition.
Two of the rejected options proposed recognition, provided certain conditions were met.
In his speech at the UN, Peters appeared to argue that Britain, France, and Australia, through their recognition of Palestine, were somehow responsible for the recent escalation in the war in Gaza by Israel.
“Those countries that hoped their earlier signalling of Palestinian statehood recognition would protect and promote the two-state solution have instead seen the Israeli Government snap and continue its widely condemned military actions in Gaza while continuing to develop illegal settlements on the West Bank, in defiance of international law,” he said.
Instead, Peters said recognition should occur “when conditions offer greater prospects for peace and negotiation than at present.”
But the Cabinet paper discounted the chances of negotiations.
“Israel’s decision to ensure its security through military action and permanent annexation eliminates any negotiated political solution and, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has said, accepts a permanent state of occupation and conflict,” it said.
“A number of our partners have concluded the conditions for a negotiated settlement have been so eroded that recognition is required to preserve the prospect of a viable Palestinian state, and a political solution that provides for the peaceful co-existence of Israeli and Palestinian states.”
Peters, in his time as Foreign Minister, has made much of his personal relationship with Singaporean Foreign Minister Dr Vivian Balakrishnan.
While Balakrishnan, like Peters, believes the time is not ripe for recognition, his explanation to the Singaporean Parliament was very different to Peters’ UN speech.
The Minister said that extremist elements on both sides continued to actively undermine the prospects for a two-State solution.
“Hamas has consistently said no,” he said.
“At the same time, there are Israeli settlers who continue to displace Palestinians in the West Bank.
“Some Israeli politicians have spoken explicitly about annexing parts of the West Bank or Gaza.”
He pointed to the recent Israeli Government decision to proceed with the E1 settlement project in the West Bank, which he said would fragment the West Bank.
“Singapore has consistently held that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law,” he said.
“We have voted in support of UN resolutions that reject Israeli settlement activities and have called on Israel to rescind all unilateral measures seeking to change the status of Jerusalem.
“We call on the Israeli Government to cease settlement construction and expansion.
We oppose ongoing attempts to create new facts on the ground which undermine the prospects for a two-State solution.
“Consequently, Singapore will impose targeted sanctions on the leaders of radical right-wing settler groups or organisations that have been responsible for acts of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Peters mentioned the West Bank only twice in his speech and made no effort to criticise the Israeli Government beyond noting that it was continuing to develop illegal settlements on the West Bank, in defiance of international law.
In many ways, the West Bank is crucial to any consideration of a future Palestinian state.
That is why Israel’s critics are so strong in their condemnations of what it is doing now.
Canada has imposed sanctions against anybody involved in extremist settler violence against Palestinians.
Australia has imposed similar sanctions on a number of named individuals.
In May, Britain imposed sanctions on three individuals, two illegal settler outposts and two organisations supporting violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
New Zealand has imposed sanctions on two right-wing Israeli Cabinet Ministers and prevented some settlers from travelling here.
But New Zealand’s actions so far place it among the countries least critical of Israel.
It was little wonder then that the Israel Institute of New Zealand enthused over Peters’ UN Statement.
“This prudent approach strengthens New Zealand’s international reputation as an independent and thoughtful voice on the world stage,” its director, Dr David Cumin, said.
The Israeli Ambassador to New Zealand, Alon Roth-Snir, said: “I welcome New Zealand’s decision not to recognise a Palestinian state. This sends a clear message to Hamas terrorism: violence will not be rewarded, and the Israeli hostages should be immediately released”
The Prime Minister was slightly more critical of Israel than Peters.
“We have extreme factions within Israel wanting to continue with West Bank settlements, which we continue to call out as illegal, which we have done for many, many years and will continue to do so,” he told journalists on Saturday.
He may not have realised it, but in saying that, he simply underlined the difference between the position of successive National and Labour Governments and his own.
New Zealand’s Foreign Minister during Sir John Key’s Government, Murray McCully, put a priority on trying to get a settlement to the Palestine-Israel conflict while New Zealand was on the Security Council between 2015 and 2016.
That culminated in New Zealand successfully sponsoring a resolution which called for an immediate end to West Bank settlement and required Israel to return to its pre-1967 boundaries.
Peters made no reference to this resolution in his UN speech.
He had been critical of it at the time and had a clause inserted in the 2017 New Zealand First coalition agreement with Labour, requiring a review of the process that had led to New Zealand playing the role it did.
He also failed to mention New Zealand’s vote in favour of a 2024 General Assembly resolution which called for Israel to comply with international law, “and withdraw its military forces, immediately cease all new settlement activity, evacuate all settlers from occupied land, and dismantle parts of the separation wall it constructed inside the occupied West Bank.”
For a Government which lives and breathes by its polling, the decision not to recognise Palestine was surprising.
A recent RNZ poll showed that 42.5 per cent supported recognition but only 22.1 per cent opposed it. The remainder were undecided.
Roy Morgan polling shows that National is behind Labour among both men and women aged between 18 and 49.
It is that age group who have been most prominent in the pro-Palestine street protests.
The political danger for National and Luxon is that the Palestine issue will now break out from the foreign policy activists and become a mainstream protest against the Government, as Vietnam did in the 1960s, the Springbok Tour in 1981, and the anti-nuclear movement in 1981 – 85.
At the same time, the usual bipartisan consensus on foreign policy has been broken.
Labour’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Peeni Henare, was quick to condemn Peters’s speech, and his comments suggested that Labour was going to take up the question of sanctions.
“We also need meaningful sanctions on Israel through cutting trade and economic ties, freezing assets, and implementing travel bans on named individuals as we have with Russia in response to the illegal invasion of Ukraine,” he said.
Henare also criticised the apparent hands-off stance taken by the Prime Minister.
“Christopher Luxon has dragged his heels on this while his coalition partners squabbled and has ultimately made the wrong call,” he said.
The Greens were predictably scathing in their reaction.
Their co-leader Marama Davidson said the decision not to recognise Palestinian statehood was “cowardly, and a stain on Aotearoa’s reputation as a voice for peace and justice internationally.”
There has been no official US comment on Peters’ speech so far, but last weekend, in an open letter, 25 Republicans – including former GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz– warned Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that any recognition of Palestinian statehood could prompt “punitive measures” against Australia.
It can only be assumed that Peter was aware of that threat.
But though New Zealand may have stayed on side with the United States, it is not on side with its other traditional allies, Britain, Canada and Australia and within the Asia-Pacific region, it cannot even say it has a similar position to Singapore.
On the face of it, Peters’ speech would suggest we risk becoming isolated in our own region and that the Government as a whole may well face a political backlash.
