Govt rejects Israeli products boycott as ethnic cleansing in occupied territories increases
Mfat's statement rejects calls to follow up on a UNSC resolution condemning forced displacement and illegal settlements building, now gaining pace in the West Bank.
The New Zealand government has rejected calls to boycott goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank as land theft and violent displacement of Palestinians increases.
There have been multiple reports of forced expulsions of Palestinians across the West Bank in recent weeks as the world’s attention remains fixed on scenes of horror in Gaza, where the Israel army is carrying out what UN observers have termed a genocide.
The official death toll in Gazan since October 7 now exceeds 17,000, the victims mostly women and children.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, at least 246 Palestinians have been killed and about 2900 others injured by Israeli security forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 7.
Kiwi educationalist in the West Bank Brother Peter Bray says there are grave concerns over the Israeli army enabling armed settlers to attack and displace Palestinians and that the situation could deteriorate further.
Veteran anti-apartheid campaigner and Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa spokesman John Minto told In Context the government was now obliged to take a stand against ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by not doing business with settlements built illegally there since 1967.
Those in the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement believe boycotting goods from illegal settlements puts pressure on Israel to halt new settlement building and the displacements of Palestinians needed to facilitate them.
Minto said the moral and political thrust of a United Nations Security Council compelled the New Zealand government to act and help to create objective conditions for peace.
In December 2016, when New Zealand was on the United Nations Security Council, it co-sponsored Security Council resolution 2334, which stated Israel's settlement building was a "flagrant violation" of international law and had "no legal validity". It demanded that Israel stop building and fulfil its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
“The resolution also called on member state of the UN to differentiate in their dealings with Israel, between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories,” Minto told In Context.
“Our government should be leading the boycott of any products and services that come from illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. This is more important than ever because of Israel’s current drive to ethnically cleanse even more of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Heavily armed Israeli settlers, with the backing of the Israeli military, are now driving Palestinian rural communities off their land. This continuing ethnic cleansing is happening under the cover of the war in Gaza.”
Minto said activists wanted to see a total boycott of Israeli goods, but was urging the government to boycott settler produce as a logical corollary of the resolution.
However, a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs (Mfat) said the resolution did not require a boycott and that it was up to the Commerce Commission to make sure Israel differentiated between goods from settlements and goods from Israel coming into the country so consumers knew what they were buying. She said:
“United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 represents an important political commitment for states. New Zealand’s position is long-standing that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are a violation of international law and they imperil the prospects of two-state solution. New Zealand regularly registers its serious concerns with Israel on the issue of its illegal settlements.
‘Differentiation’ as called for in resolution 2334 does not require boycotting of Israeli products, but to distinguish between the territory of the State of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The Fair Trading Act 1986 prohibits false or misleading representations about its origin. The Commerce Commission is responsible for investigating potential breaches of the Fair Trading Act. In considering a potential breach, the Commission takes into account whether the claim is likely to be misleading to New Zealand consumers, based on a number of considerations.
Activists are also meeting with local government bodies this week to urge a boycott of illegal settlements goods.
Palestinians being forced out of rural areas
Since the current outbreak of violence, leaders across the Western hemisphere have reaffirmed support for Palestinian statehood and a two-state solution to the historic suffering and instability caused by the 75-year colonial settler project.
It follows prolonged Western indifference to the Oslo peace accords that set out interim arrangements towards that final settlement, which since the mid-1990s have ended up buried under the concrete of Israeli settlement proliferation, while the dynamics of state violence and counter violence played out in the background.
Israel’s ramping up of settlement building since Oslo has further changed the West Bank demographical make-up, undermining the territorial viability of any future Palestinian state.
After Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government came to power at the beginning of the year settlement building activity has been even more of a priority. In June the coalition approved plans for over 4500 new homes and gave sweeping powers to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich - a Zionist fanatic and leader of the settlement movement - to expedite the construction of illegal settlements.
Forced displacements since Hamas broke out of Gaza’s confines and attacked Israeli military and settlements on October 7 have been most intense around the South Hebron Hills and Jordan Valley. Palestinians have been largely forced out of rural areas in Area C, controlled by the IDF, into Area A, made up of urban centres that include Ramallah, controlled nominally by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
These areas were designated as part of interim arrangements after Oslo II was signed in 1995. Area C had been envisaged making up the core of the Palestinian state under Olso’s two-state solution.
The United Nations says at least 900 people have been displaced, mostly from herding communities like Wadi al-Seeq, 10km east of Ramallah, where an estimate 200 people were forced out at gunpoint in October. Other estimates put those displaced at between 2000 and 3000.
There are now approximately 700,000 Israelis in fortified, Jewish-only settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, built on Palestinian land.
Palestinian forced displacement goes hand-in-hand with the coalition government’s stated aim to increase settlement building all over the West Bank. Smotrich’s colleague, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, has played his role too in this respect.
Ben Gvir’s ministry announced in October it was purchasing 10,000 automatic rifles to arm Israeli civilians, including settlers in the West Bank. He was filmed shortly afterwards handing out rifles to a line of Israelis, ostensibly to defend themselves. But there have been reports of those weapons being used to terrorise Palestinians into leaving their homes.
A ‘repeat of the 1948 Nakba’
Bethlehem University vice-chancellor Peter Bray told In Context there were multiple reports of settler violence and threats of pogroms forcing Palestinian families off their land southeast of Bethlehem. He said Palestinians had reported settler gangs armed with Ben Gvir’s weapons had descended on villages to warn residents they had 24 hours to leave.
“The Palestinians had heard of how the settlers use such guns and so many of them have left their homes. This is a repeat of the 1948 Nakba,” Bray said, referring to the 750,000 Palestinians displaced when the state of Israel was created.
The Taranaki-born Christian Brother has spent the past several weeks trying to get online classes established, as well as planning to welcome students back to class if the Gaza ceasefire was extended and the Israel security force checkpoints reopened.
With the Gazan bombing campaign back with renewed intensity, those checkpoints stay closed. Bethlehem, like other cities, towns and villages in the West Bank, remains isolated, blocked off by soldiers and settlers.
Many of the students of the co-religious educational institution are resigned to staying at home in Jerusalem and in Hebron, where 37,000 residents have been put under curfew while armed settlers roam free.
“I think there is a pervading fear across many Palestinians in the West Bank about the anarchy among the settlers,” Bray said.
“Not only are the military unable to control the settlers, they are in fact enabling the settlers to carry out their attacks on Palestinians.”
The United Nations Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says settler attacks have risen from an average of three a day to seven a day since October 7 and that soldiers in many cases are taking part.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week announced visa bans to the US for those behind the West Bank attacks, a punitive measure that will have little to no affect. Palestinians are painfully aware of it.
Bray points to a sense of impending doom and uncertainty.
“As one Palestinian told me, some people are frightened that when Israel has finished with Gaza, they will turn their attention to the West Bank,” he said.
“I am not sure that will happen in the same way, but it is very clear that the military and the settlers are taking advantage of the attack on Gaza to further their goal of taking more Palestinians land.”
Two-state solution a fiction - Albanese
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese told In Context what was happening in the West Bank amounted to “mass forced displacement”.
“It has been going on for a long time, owing to the continuous confiscation of occupied Palestinian land, evictions, home demolitions, residency permit revocations, lack of building permits imposed by the Israeli military, expulsions, deportations and the general coercive environment that Israel created for Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” she said.
Albanese said this as well as Israel’s destruction of Gaza had made the two-state solution “a fiction”.
“To make it possible massive political efforts and concrete démarches need to be taken, including the withdrawal of Israel’s military presence from the occupied territories and ensuring the protection of the people there,” Albanese said.
Bray remains pessimistic about those prospects, only too familiar with the facts on the ground, including the West’s lack of intervention to effectively stop Gazans being slaughtered and corralled into the strip’s southern corner at Egypt’s border, as Israel officials hold out hope they can be ultimately expelled into the Sinai, despite Egyptian objections.
He talks solemnly about how West Bank residents he knows watch livestreams of Masses/liturgies taking place twice daily at a Catholic compound in Gaza so they can look out for relatives - their only way of knowing whether they are still alive.
Several of his students had been arrested recently, one on October 8 who is still being held by the army. Repression is palpable on the West Bank’s streets and nowhere is safe.
“There are Palestinians being arrested for ‘liking’ a Facebook page or a Twitter posting that is supportive of Palestinians,” he said. “This has created a fearful atmosphere among many young people who are not prepared to say anything.”
Even before October 7, violence against Palestinians stood at a historic high. Israeli security forces killed more Palestinians in the West Bank between January 1 and October 6 this year than in any year since records of fatalities began in 2005, which included fatal raids on Jenin refugee camp.
Thirty-eight Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli forces between January 1 and October 6 alone.
“There’s a sense of helplessness pervading many Palestinians, not only with regard to what is happening with violent attacks, but also about what the future will be. It is not possible to go back to how things were on 6 October,” Bray said.
“The alternative is far from clear and a peaceful solution characterised by justice and equality would require huge shifts by all concerned and I can't see that happening.”
Government fails to call for immediate ceasefire
On Thursday, December 7 Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters forwarded a motion in Parliament calling on parties to the conflict to “take urgent steps towards establishing a ceasefire”, a formula of words designed to both assuage growing public disquiet and avoid confronting Israel’s US-backed genocide of Palestinians.
MPs debated the issue, with Labour MP and former Trade Minister Damien O’Connor belatedly and against his party’s policy calling the onslaught in Gaza a genocide, while the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori said what was needed was an unequivocal demand for a permanent ceasefire and peace negotiations.
"Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters forwarded a motion in Parliament calling on parties to the conflict to “take urgent steps towards establishing a ceasefire”, a formula of words designed to both assuage growing public disquiet and avoid confronting Israel’s US-backed genocide of Palestinians.". That hits the nail on the head. The New Zealand Parliament is being very duplicitous. It is falsely implying that it does not condone genocide while assuring Israel and the US that it fully backs the expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza by any means necessary, including their actual extermination.