Concerns over 'serious influence' after Pacific nations vote against UN Gaza truce resolution
The General Secretary of Pacific Conference of Churches says a regional geopolitical shift is taking place and that nations feeling under US pressure to take sides is 'not the Pacific we want'.
A religious leader representing churches across the Pacific has expressed concerns about “serious influence” after a majority of the region’s 14 island nations failed to back a UN resolution calling for a truce in Gaza.
General Secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches, Reverend James Bhagwan, said the vote on October 27 reflected “a regional shift taking place, particularly in the context of the geopolitical tug of war that’s happening here in the Pacific”.
The US has been attempting to contain its peer rival China within its own regional sphere of influence.
Over the past year President Joe Biden’s administration has concluded significant arms deals with self-governing Taiwan, which China sees as an integral part of its territory, as well as building up its military alliance AUKUS, signing a US$2.3 billion (AU$3.7 billion) to supply nuclear submarines to member state Australia.
There are fears of an impending US proxy war against China, involving nations in the region being forced to choose sides.
The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted in favour of the unbinding resolution calling for an "immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce" between Israel and Palestinian armed resistance group Hamas.
The 193-member body passed the resolution by a margin of 120 to 14, with 45 countries abstaining. The US and Israel voted no, as did Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Fiji, the Marshall Islands, Nauru and Micronesia. Kiribati, Tuvalu, Palau and Vanuatu abstained from voting. Samoa was absent. Australia also abstained.
“I think this is really coming down to the fact that we're starting to see the serious influence around the geopolitical shifts that are taking place and the impacts of this geopolitical struggle between the US and China,” Bhagwan said.
“It is an unbinding resolution. It is just an affirmation of a call for peace and what is really worrying for us is the pressure that is being placed on Pacific Island countries, that if you are aligning with the United States and its allies it means that you take sides against others. That’s not the Pacific that we want.”
A number of those nations who voted against the resolution endure an economic dependency on the US and have been used to prop up US and Israeli positions in the UN General Assembly for decades.
Under Compacts of Free Association, Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands allow the US full military control of their territories in exchange for economic assistance and the right for their citizens to live and work in the US. The agreements also leave them vulnerable to pressure to back their benefactor at the UN.
The Marshall Islands, for example, gets more than $80 million in assistance every year.
Papua New Guinea signed a similar strategic pact in May that “enhances defence cooperation” and allows the US navy to patrol its vast economic zone.
However, Fiji’s vote against the resolution, as well as Vanuata’s decision to abstain, has tipped the balance further and is worrying some like Bhagwan.
Vanuatu joined the non-alignment movement in 1983 and had always enjoyed strong connections with the Global South.
Bhagwan told ABC News the Pacific states could have abstained from the vote if they felt under pressure from the US and the fact representatives didn’t contradicted what Pacific leaders had publicly stated about the importance of conflict resolution within their region.
“The challenge is that statements are trying to be made in some kind of way during the way in which we vote and we understand that that’s the pressure we start to see at the UN,” he said.
“The different types of lobbying taking place and it’s of serious concern because only just recently our prime minister of Fiji spoke in Australia about a ‘Pacific zone of peace’, taking about peace building, peacekeeping.
“How can we say we are working towards a region of peace when this humanitarian call for a ceasefire is voted against.”
The ecumenical organisation Rev Bhagwan leads consists of 42 member churches and national councils of churches. Eighty percent of the region’s population adheres to Christianity and religious faith plays a significant role in politics.
Evangelical influence strong - Ratuva
Director of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, Professor Steven Ratuva, told In Context many of the nations who voted against the resolution had backed Israeli and US positions for years. He said the Pacific’s position was related to US influence, but also a strong evangelical movement.
Religious groups within Pacific nations had been “energised” by evangelicalism’s political expression in the US, he said.
For evangelical Christians, Israel features prominently in ‘end times’ Biblical revelation, with the return of Jews to Jerusalem and the Holy Land seen as precursor to the return of Christ during an apocalyptic crisis in the world.
“They all have had their links with Israel over the years and one of the driving forces behind it is the growth of evangelical religion, exacerbated by the election of (Donald) Trump and a wave of evangelical movements in the United States,” he said.
“It has been one of the driving forces behind a lot of connections there in Israel and that has shifted into politics. It has defined politics in Fiji, for instance, with a new government coming into power,” Ratuva said.
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka wrestled power from Frank Bainimarama in December last year, ending Bainimarama’s 16 years in office.
Rabuka and his deputy Viliame Gavoka were evangelical Christians and supporters of Israel, strongly colouring their domestic politics, Ratuva said.
“Their personal, religious beliefs have been injected into geopolitical thinking as well.”
Bainimarama - vote not reflective of Fijians
Bainimarama on Monday (October 30) criticised Rabuka over the UN vote, which he said “did not reflect the view of most Fijians”, who wanted a ceasefire.
Bainimarama also expressed concern for Fijian troops in the Middle East after the vote. Ratuva agreed this was a real threat.
“They're everywhere in the Middle East. They were in Lebanon and still are, as well as in the Golan Heights, also in Iraq. So, it's a risk of endangering their lives. Fijian citizens will also potentially become targets.”
The US has been keen to increase diplomatic ties to the Pacific, particularly after the Solomon Islands signed a security pact with China last year, alarming Australia and other Five Eyes Western intelligence partners.
The Solomon Islands voted in favour of the UN resolution.
In September, Pacific leaders attended a summit in Washington, where President Joe Biden promised US$200 million (NZ$335m) in aid for the region.
Ratuva agreed the US was influencing the geopolitical stance of Pacific nations, but said the extent to which that was possible still depended on who was in power.
The defeat of Bainimarama by Rabuka last year and Fiji’s subsequent foreign policy changes demonstrated the significance of religious-ideological positions of those leading the government of the day, he said.
“In the case of Fiji, things have changed significantly since the last election. In 2010 under the last government, they voted to support the Resolution 65/179 on the rights of Palestinian people for self-determination, but now they have changed again.”
Israel in the Pacific
An opinion piece in The Jerusalem Post in July acknowledged Christianity accounted for Pacific nations’ political leanings, but that the deciding fact in their UN votes was Washington.
Giving an insight into Israeli thinking, it warned of a risk in China seeking to win these islands away from US influence, doing so largely because of their diplomatic positions on Taiwan, but also because of the strategic importance some offered in the event of military hostilities with the US.
The piece urged Israel to help counter Chinese influence by bringing important resources to the table, “from surveillance and financial intelligence, to cyber and maritime security”.
Much of the piece focused on Palau, a hotly contested island 1855km northeast of Papua New Guinea and approximately a three-and-a-half-hour flight from Taiwan.
“Should China pull Palau, or any of the other Indo-Pacific allies, out of the American orbit, it will be a severe diplomatic loss for Israel,” it warned.
Palau window to US control and Chinese competition
Palau offers a window into how this soft power tug of war between China, the US and its allies is being conducted.
Palau fought long and hard to assert self-determination and emerge from a Pacific region Trusteeship administered by the US following a UN Security Council agreement in 1947, alongside neighbours Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.
In July 1980, Palau voted overwhelmingly to adopt a ‘nuclear free’ constitution, banning nuclear weapons entering the territory as well as the power of government to take private property - called the power of eminent domain - to benefit foreign states.
There was a constitutional requirement that any compact with the US needed a 75 percent majority of the electorate backing it. These provisions were eroded after protracted legal battles as the US pushed for military bases on the island and local politicians fiercely attempted to defend their constitution.
A US Congressional General Accounting Office probe unearthed a $2 million US-derived fund, which financed political violence during this period.
In 1985, the island’s first elected President Haruo Remeliik was shot dead, with those arrested having their charges dropped. Two years later Pacific pacifists were attacked with firebombs and guns and Palau’s congress was put under siege. In 1988, the man who was elected to replace Remeliik, US-stooge Lazarus Salii, was also shot dead.
Possibly most damagingly for the island was a US$32 million debt incurred for a power plant it didn’t need, which it was unable to pay back.
The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) later discovered IPSECO paid US$1 million in “questionable payments” to Palauan officials to sign the deal and that Palau may been billed twice what the power plant cost to build.
It forced the island nation to sign another compact to bail itself out of trouble, at the expense of its constitution and ultimately its national interests.
The island now, like its West Pacific neighbours, negotiates compacts with the US while attempting to pursue political and economic programs acceptable to the US.
In July the nation’s Prime Minister Surangel Whipps Jr confirmed the US would have full access to ports and airports under a newly-agreed compact, an agreement that would further entrench the island’s economic dependence.
The island stood to receive $US890 million in US aid over the next 20 years as part of the agreement - double what was originally proposed. Whipps also revealed three runways used by Japan in World War II were being “reactivated”, with US Marines extending one of them to accommodate C-130 Hercules aircraft.
A public road built by the US circling the entire main island would be used for military purposes. The island has long been considered the most logical location for a forward base of Trident submarines and a fallback position if the US military were ever to pull out of bases in the Philippines.
In comments that revealed just how exploitative the compact agreement was, Whipps said radar equipment being installed, allowing the US to track Chinese naval assets, was not being built using local labour in order to avoid paying taxes.
There are also less overt forms of exploitation by external interests seeking to appropriate public assets, including the West’s partner Japan. The revamp of Palau International Airport was completed last year in partnership with Japanese business, the nation’s first Public-Private Partnership (PPP) project. Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that “the project is becoming a catalyst for promoting the privatisation of key infrastructure in the country”, with renewable energy power stations next on the list.
China for its part has responded by injecting money into the local economy, while promising more tourists to the island if diplomatic relationships can be improved, according to Whipps. Palau is only one of a small number of nations that recognise Taiwan in contravention of the One-China Principle. China has also installed Huawei telecommunications equipment across the island.
It is an open question whether these counter moves are working, but it is notable that Palau abstained from the UN resolution and did not vote against.
History of bullying and dependence
The US has a history of bullying nations dependent on it for aid if they don’t back US positions at the UN President Donald Trump in 2017 threatened to cut off aid to countries that “vote against us” during the UN General Assembly’s motion to reject the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Four of the nine countries that voted in 2017 against the motion, unsurprising were Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.
An expectation to vote in line with the is US is implicit in agreements with those islands. In the Marshall Islands’ case, a fact sheet on the US State Department website, reads: “The United States has full authority and responsibility for security and defence of the Marshall Islands, and the government of the Marshall Islands is obligated to refrain from taking actions that would be incompatible with these security and defence responsibilities.”
University of Canterbury’s Dr Josephine Varghese, a political analyst, believes at the core of the UN voting issue lies the problem of nations’ disempowerment brought about by foreign powers and their corporate entities.
“These Pacific nations had subsistence economies based upon their natural resources, and many of their natural resources and assets have become sort of assimilated into the global neoliberal capitalist economy, which really disempowers the local communities,” she told In Context.
“It is this power imbalance that is coming through in the UN votes, in my view.”
Dr Arama Rata, a member of Te Kuaka - a group pushing for “an independent, values-driven foreign policy” for New Zealand, agreed.
“The economies of many Pacific nations are flatlining, reliant on remittances and international aid that flows only if these nations vote ‘correctly’ at the UN, and support the ‘right’ military efforts overseas,” she said.
Christian Zionism a factor
There is no doubt the influence of Christian Zionism among the region’s population is also coming into play.
It was underlined by a visit of over 300 people from Fiji, Samoa, Cook Islands and Tonga to the Feast of the Tabernacle Christian festival in Israel shortly before the October 7 attack by Hamas.
A joint delegation from Fiji and Samoa made the trip to Israel on a chartered plane and visited the Gaza security wall days before it was breached by fighters launching their attack on military installations and settlements that Israel says killed approximately 1400.
Fiji’s plans to open an embassy to Israel, possibly in Jerusalem, has been delayed following the outbreak of genocidal violence in Gaza. It follows Papua New Guinea opening its embassy in West Jerusalem in September.
Christian Zionism also has a presence in New Zealand, but represents a small minority, on display at recent pro-Israel rallies.
“There's a bizarre commitment to Zionism within Christian evangelicalism globally,” Rata said.
“Through their ahistorical, literal interpretation of the Bible, they equate the Israel described in the Bible 2000 years ago with the modern state of Israel, which has only existed for 75 years. '
“Evangelists believe Jewish people will return to Israel, and that during the rapture all Christians will be taken to Heaven, while non-Christians, including Jewish people, will be left to suffer the great tribulation - a period of famine, disaster and war. Christian Zionism is therefore an extreme form of antisemitism.
“In the New Zealand context, among Māori, there is a strong tradition of our resistance leaders standing in solidarity with Palestine. However, there exists a very small but vocal group of Zionists, which includes the so-called Indigenous Coalition for Israel - comprising six people, only two of whom are Māori - and the evangelical Destiny Church, many of whom are Māori. These groups are aligned politically with the far-right.”
New Zealand’s position
New Zealand voted in favour of the non-binding motion, although when addressing the Assembly its Permanent Representative to the UN Carolyn Schwalger criticised the resolution’s lack of condemnation of the Hamas attack.
Caretaker Prime Minister Chris Hipkins believes a ceasefire, a complete cessation of violence in Gaza, is “unrealistic”.
Asking on 1News Breakfast show if New Zealand should call for a ceasefire, Hipkins said: “At this point I don't think that's a realistic prospect but what we have asked for is a pause on hostilities.”
The stance is coming under increasing pressure. Responding to Hipkins’ remarks, Te Pāti Māori said: “By refusing to call an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the NZ government is turning a blind eye to genocide,” it said.
“Calling for safe zones is not enough when safe zones are being deliberately targeted.”
The party, which now has four MPs in Parliament after last month’s General Election, said the government could “no longer provide political cover for US-funded imperialism and remain complicit in the deaths of innocent people”.
It is now calling for the expulsion of the US ambassador, as well as the Israel ambassador, until a ceasefire is called.
Prime Minister elect and National Party leader Christopher Luxon has sounded even more indifferent than centrist Hipkins on the issue.
Asked by media, on November 1, if he thought Israel was meeting its humanitarian obligations, he claimed: “I haven’t seen any advice to say they are not, but what I have seen is obviously a concern, of what we see on the TV and the images we all see.”
The director of the New York office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights who resigned on October 28, Craig Mokhiber, has said the Gaza onslaught by Israel, which has now killed nearly 9000 people, was “textbook genocide”. He accused the UN of again failing to act.
An Israeli government “concept” paper reported by media this week proposes to ethnically cleanse Gaza, pushing its 2.3 million residents into Egypt’s Sinai desert. It has also been reported that officials have lobbied the EU to persuade Egypt to allow it and establish tent cities, offering financial incentives to do so.