Gaza peace proposal ignores the terrorism of the Zionist state
Gaza peace proposal ignores the terrorism of the Zionist state
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1:00 pm, September 30th, 2025 - 36 comments
Categories: Donald Trump, gaza, International, israel, United Nations, war, winston peters, Zionism -
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In 1947 the Palestine as an area held under mandate by the UK was divided in resolution 181. The resolution recommended the creation of independent but economically linked Arab 42.88% and Jewish 56.47% States and an extraterritorial regime for the city of Jerusalem and its surroundings. Trumps’ new ‘peace plan’ isn’t one because it doesn’t deal with the ongoing problem of Zionist terrorism. It merely creates a temporary ceasefire without looking at the problem, and that problem is the terrorism of the Israeli state against a militarily subjected population violating the terms of resolution 181.
The entire history of the Palestine region since 1947, has been a process of Zionists terrorising Palestinians and Palestinians trying to get their UN mandated state from both Israel and surrounding Arab states.
The population in Gaza is a direct result of the IDF in 1948 running a deliberate ethnic cleansing campaign through almost all of the claimed Israeli state. That campaign caused most of the 80-90% depopulation of the 45% of Arab population in that partition. Many of the refugees going to the tiny desert area of Gaza.
Both Gaza and the West Bank were initially protectorates of occupations by surrounding Arab states. But Gaza and the West Bank were put under military occupation by Israel in the aftermath of the 1967 six-day war.
The West Bank is still under a direct Israeli military occupation with very limited local civilian control by the Palestinian Authority. The military occupation has been a process of increasingly arbitrary arrest, enforcement and control of civilians of by a extra-legal military judiciary that is most notable for its disregard for any standards of justice. This hasn’t bee helped by the widespread theft and dispossession of Palestinians by the Israeli state, its military, and ‘settlers’ seizing land and performing ethic cleansing operations under the protection of the IDF and the unlawful use of Israeli civilian laws.
Gaza had been under similar situation since 1967, the only difference being that the IDF withdrew its troops and unlawful settlements in 2005 in favour of a full land, sea and air blockade on all borders instead of a direct military occupation. Which is still a 20 year military occupation of a open air prison. Especially since the IDF has maintained a policy of arbitrary assassinations and military incursions with a apparent disregard for high levels of collateral damage.
Yes, Palestinians have run liberation movements against Israeli occupation and control. These are largely terrorist organisations. Just as Palestinian nationalists and the Irgun and other Jewish terrorists as well as the Haganah did against the repressive British occupation during the Palestinian Mandate period. This is no different from the sabotage and ‘terrorism’ of resistance movement in occupied Europe during World War 2 and many other similar movements in colonial liberations. That it is still going on after more than 75 years is also not surprising. Such movements often go on for centuries.
Resistance will continue both in Gaza and the West Bank and by groups supporting those movements. Suppressing Hamas or the many similar movements present in the West Bank while the fundamental injustice is still present doesn’t stop the underlying movement, it just shifts it to different groups.
The injustices could possibly be eventually be achieved by actually enforcing full citizenship and full justice for all Palestinians inside a state over the whole of the Palestinian Mandate. But is that isn’t likely to happen simply because of the depths of Israeli bigotry that are quite legally apparent in their existing apartheid state. That level of inequity would be unsustainable. Not to mention the opening the can of worms about justice for property rights dating back to before 1947.
The two-state solution, just as inadequate as it was in 1947, is still the best solution. As with the current Gaza proposal, this can only be achieved by putting external international military and judicial forces into both Gaza and the West Bank – with the IDF and its ‘civilian’ judiciary withdrawing after its inadequate job.
Any such international forces will need to be weapons free against incursions and violence by any armed forces, including the IDF, Israeli citizens and settlers, and violently dissenting Palestinians. While rule of just law is established across a nascent Palestinian state.
The Palestinian state can then start building, something that it can never do if the state of Israel continues to run terror campaigns and undeclared warfare against Palestinians and nearby states. Since the 1980s the military and security adventurism of the Israeli state, largely done for short-term Israeli domestic political reasons, has had foreseeable consequences like the rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the two Intifada, and Hamas.
Until some kind of just outcome in Palestine is achieved after the stupidity and unlawful events of the British colonialism in Palestine with the implementation of the Balfour declaration, the conflicts will continue.
In terms of New Zealand, I refer to the UN speech by our Foreign Minister as reported by Radio New Zealand. Surprising it points the right way, just does it with a complete lack of balance. The problem mostly isn’t the Palestinians, it is the Israelis.
The government said it was looking for “real actions” towards the development of a fully viable and legitimate State of Palestine, including in the areas of governance, democracy and institution-building, rather than “rhetoric in that direction”.
It was also looking for the release by Hamas of all hostages, followed by the group disbanding and disarming, and the renouncement of violence and terrorism by all Palestinian political leaders who have yet to do so.
It was also looking for the release by Hamas of all hostages, followed by the group disbanding and disarming, and the renouncement of violence and terrorism by all Palestinian political leaders who have yet to do so.
I’d suggest exactly the same criteria should apply to the state of Israel for exactly the same reasons.
New Zealand should withdraw recognition of the state of Israel and start treating it and its institutions as a terrorist organisation until it does its part towards a full implementation of resolution 181.
It should make significiant releases of the 10000+ Palestinian prisoners that it is holding as hostages for security. The disbanding of the armed militias of Israeli settlers who are routinely attacking Palestinians on the West Bank with the support of the IDF.
Announce clear plans by the IDF to withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank to be replaced by international security forces and military while the Palestinian state forms.
Renouncement of violence and terrorism by all Israeli political leaders, especially those in in the Knesset and Cabinet, who have yet to do so would be nice, but frankly is quite unlikely – just as it is for Palestinians.
Those would be “real actions” by Israel. Real actions by the nascent Palestinian state are impossible without the Israelis being forced to do the same things as Peters is wanting Hamas and Palestinians to do.
I do agree with this.
“New Zealand repeated our call for an immediate ceasefire; unfettered access for humanitarian supplies into Gaza; all sides to adhere to international law; a two-state solution as a result of a comprehensive political settlement; and an end by Israel to all illegal settlement activity and current military action.”
He said New Zealand would continue to call out actions being taken by both Israel and Hamas which prolonged the conflict, prevented a political solution and sought to extinguish the viability of a Palestinian state.
“New Zealand has long been a staunch advocate of the two-state solution and a defender of Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
“What is needed now more than ever is dialogue, diplomacy and leadership – not further conflict and extremism,” he said.
I think that New Zealand should do “real actions” as well.
Withdrawing recognition of the state of Israel as having spent at least 50 years directly impeding the required outcome of resolution 181 is such a real action. Otherwise none of the pious hopes that Peters or Trump (still chasing a Nobel Peace Prize) are sprouting will happen.
IDF military actions since Octiber 7th 2023 are highly likely to have directly caused causalities or death in well over 200,000 Gazans. Based on the currently known results by their deliberate targeting of civilians especially women, children and elderly. With an unknown number of deaths or severely injured from the the deliberate use of disease and starvation by the IDF and the Israeli state as a means of war against a civilian population. This decimation of a tenth of the Gazan population is barbaric act of terrorism.
Real action by New Zealand would be to treat Israel and Israelis as terrorists to withdraw recognition for these heinous acts. To impose exactly the constraints on Israelis and those who deal with them as we do for proscribed organisations like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Islamic State is completely justifiable. Moreover it cuts to the actual problem in the Palestine Mandate, the suppression by one of the two states in the resolution 181 of the other.
If that pisses off Trump and other Israeli allies (and ruins Peters photo-ops), then so be it. Because I can’t see Trumps proposal as bringing any peace to Palestine nor a Palestinian state. It certainly isn’t a plan that NZ should support beyond its immediate ceasefire, military disengagement and humanitarian mission. It certainly looks like a implicit program for ethnic cleansing rather than rebuilding for the existing population.
Based on how Israel has operated in the past, I also see it as the Israeli state consolidating as a precursor to another inevitable genocide or ethnic cleansing being accelerated repeated in the West Bank by the mounting terrorism of the unethical Israeli Defence Force, settlers, Zionist terrorists and the religious bigots that the Israeli state enables.
Just on different defenceless civilian population under unjust military occupation. New Zealand should start taking ‘real actions’ against that.
Please note that this post's topic is about Israeli and Zionist terrorism and what NZ should do about it. Pro or against
If you want to discuss Palestinian terrorism, then do so in Open Mike or another post. After looking at the relative casualty lists and imprisoned populations, I'm completely uninterested in supporting 'but what about' fuck wits without a sense of balance.
Similarly morons who routinely lie and produce unproductive bullshit and links about Palestine should join the echo chamber of slogan dribblers created by Bomber and Pat O'Dea at the daily blog. You really don't contribute much here.
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/9/29/trumps-gaza-peace-plan-welcomed-by-arab-and-islamic-countries-the-west
Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye UAE
The foreign ministers of the above countries released a joint statement welcoming Trump’s “sincere efforts to end the war in Gaza, and assert their confidence in his ability to find a path to peace”.
It's a start and seems to be supported by major players in the area.
Sure, but if it works fully, it only gives what is effectively a ceasefire in Gaza, possibly allows aid in.
Verbal support is cheap. Actual support is expensive.
Does absolutely nothing about the aquifers that the IDF has filled with salt water, the herbicides and deliberate destruction of 90% of the farmland that used to do most of the food for the 2.1 million population.
Perhaps you should read this piece from Monbiot that runs through the IDF strategies to permanently depopulate Gaza.
“Israel’s ecocide in Gaza sends this message: even if we stopped dropping bombs, you couldn’t live here”
Of course they did! Probably with gritted teeth and rolled eyes as yet another American president tries to ride into the rescue of a region their meddling has already thoroughly messed up.
What else do you think they were going to do?
Issue a statement saying, "Sorry Mr. Trump, but your peace plan is bullshit and will just lead to a continuation of Israel's genocide"?
Or "Actually we want this conflict to continue because we like the idea of Israel being diplomatically isolated and having them kill all the Palestinians saves us the hassle and expense of having to deal with all of the refugees we now have and really don't want"?
It’s diplomacy: no one means what they actually say.
Putin = Netanyahu.
Bibi will treat any ceasefire the same way Putin does.
Do most Palestinians support Jews owning land in the blue areas of that map?
The blue areas on the map was the intended Jewish state of Israel when Palestine was to be partitioned into two separate states. The state of Israel now encompasses a much larger area, made up of land intended for the Arab Palestinian state. I guess depending on which Palestinians you ask you may get differing answers. Ideally there should be a rebalancing of the land towards the original borders, though I’d say that it is unlikely to happen.
Not without the IDF being displaced out of those areas.
I'd guess that largely depends how Israelis got the land, doesn’t it?
To date it isn't like they have paid for it. Are you supporting people with guns (settlers and IDF) kicking people of their lands, then getting a compliant military court in occupied territories declaring the land to be unoccupied?
I' am guessing that you are the kind of stupid dipshit that is completely in favour of theft eh? Act supporter perhaps? A lack of respect for the property rights of others, legal theft, and convenient reinterpretation of ‘principles’ with selective reinterpretations seems to be part of their traits as well.(Treaty of Waitangi rewrite bill being the obvious example).
BTW if you con’t want a pigfucker answer, don’t try using a pig-fucker comment in the first place. And please don’t whine like a child about it.
But I'm talking about the blue areas of the map that you showed us, which are labelled as "Jewish State". Does "people with guns (settlers and IDF) kicking people of their lands, then getting a compliant military court in occupied territories declaring the land to be unoccupied" apply to those areas too?
Yes.That is almost exactly what happened in 1947/8. Perhaps you should read my post and dig into this section
The link is to Project Dalet, an IDF operation that ran a military and para- military ethnic cleansing with a significant Palestinian civilian casualty rate. It started in December 1947 and continued throughout 1948 until well after the ceasefires. It was encouraged by some well-publicised deliberate massacres ..
The plan was the main cause of removal of an estimated 80-90% of the Arab population in the Blue areas – who were about 45% of the population of that area at the time.
Where populations did not move in advance of the murderous Israeli forces, typically the IDF would issue expulsion notices for local 'tactical' reasons and force the removal of everyone.
Subseuently , because it wasn't military courts who declared the areas unoccupied. It was Israeli government who seized the land, properties, and businesses of the Arab Palestinians as being abandoned and gave or sold those properties to the Jewish neighbours.
That was legalised sate theft, in exactly the same manner that the Nazis had seized Jewish property in Germany and subsequently in occupied territories. In particular, because the owners of those properties sitting in refugee camps were subsequently actively prevented from returning to claim their properties even when they wanted to.
How could you not know this, and be reading this post. Are you totally ignorant? Or just is it just a wilful amnesia. In either case, I'd strongly suggest that you need to read some actual history of the the birth of the Israeli state and its heritage of and continued use of terrorism
OK, but if the blue areas are no more legitimate than anywhere else, what was the point of including that map?
Who pissed in your cornflakes?
Well if the dipshit pig-fucker doesn't take time to read the basic history in the links that I carefully put into the post, why shouldn't I take sadistic pleasure in jamming the lesson in.
Chill out dude, at your age stress and anger aren't doing you good
It's unfortunate that the internet allows people who have nothing of substance to say, to say something. And usually the something would have been barely funny when uttered by a 13 year old, an age when you can at least forgive their immaturity.
The peace plan you have when you are not having a peace plan:
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/one-news-at-6pm/live
[first item.]
What a one sided peace plan that is! Hamas must lay down its arms but I see no reciprocal demand for Israel to do the same. They will concoct fictitious violations if necessary and recommence their total destruction of Gaza in a matter of weeks.
Lets be clear, the slaughter they are inflicting on a whole population is the price to be paid for keeping Netanyahu out of prison.
Ironic isn't it. The man who is going to be chief cook and bottle washer of this Peace Plan is also destined for a term in prison once he is no longer US President. Two fraudster leaders plot a plan to keep themselves out of jail?
You could laugh if it wasn't so tragic. Hamas will never agree.
"This is no different from the sabotage and ‘terrorism’ of resistance movement in occupied Europe during World War 2 and many other similar movements in colonial liberations."
I don't recall any of those resistance operations manually throttling babies with their bare hands. Pretty disgusting that you seem to think that is an okay form of resistance.
[lprent: If you want to comment of my posts, it pays to add links. ]
A typical response by a idiot who only reads propaganda. No link to a report or record of the alleged events. Not to mention the allegations of staging if it is the ones that I am thinkingof.
I could equally point hundreds or thousands of reports of suspicious deaths, alleged tortures, alleged rapes, and strange deaths of minors over the 50 odd years of a terrorist military occupation in times of relative peace in the occupied territories of Gaza and West Bank.
Palestinians in Israel's Occupied Territories are the proximal threat to be eliminated, but "manually throttling babies" would be relatively inefficient. The 'brave heroes' of this long-running asymmetric conflict are IDF personnel who use advanced munitions and kill babies on a (military-)industrial(-complex) scale – it's merely collateral damage, of course, and the IDF are just following orders – simply "incredibly brave soldiers".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_bombing_of_the_Gaza_Strip
And if, like Bibi, you're too heroic to get your hands dirty, then starve the little critters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip_famine
Antisemitic propaganda? Perhaps. Point is, there appears to be a wealth of disgusting atrocities to go around. Still, if the disgusting Palestinian combatants 'delivered' 2000lb Mk84 bombs, then maybe they could be incredibly brave heroes too?
It's a relief that most cowardly-custard players don't have ‘advanced’ MICs at their disposal, as this keeps them in their places – #NotTheirPlaces – imagine if the 'playing field' had been level, for example in Aotearoa NZ.
thebiggestfish telling the biggest lies
Yup, Zionist militia thugs kept their hands clean.
They shot and bayoneted kids and new-borns in Deir Yassin.
https://www.972mag.com/photos-publicly-remembering-the-deir-yassin-massacre/
Money…..vast amounts of money. (and he is also a scumbag, so a natural fit)
Good ol' Collateral Hound – wonder if he's finally got the WMD scent out of his nostrils.
https://www.theguardian.com/cartoons/stevebell/0,,922876,00.html
I agree with you that the IDF’s conduct in Gaza amounts to egregious war crimes, and that Israel bears enormous responsibility for perpetuating injustice. But I disagree with the idea of New Zealand de-recognising Israel.
I simply don’t think that is a useful or productive policy choice, for a few reasons.
First, Israel’s enduring reality.
Irrespective of what we think, Israel exists and will continue to exist. It has both the military power and political will to enforce its sovereignty through brute force. De-recognition doesn’t change that reality: it only weakens our ability to influence it.
Second, keeping Israel inside the tent.
One of the drivers of the current situation is Netanyahu’s domestic political weakness and legal jeopardy. Isolating Israel risks entrenching hardline politics and deepening its siege mentality. Keeping Israel within the international order at least holds open the possibility that a future government could be more willing to engage constructively. Exclusion would almost certainly close that door.
Third, the risks of pariah status.
Israel is already institutionally paranoid, proud, and aggressive. Stripping recognition could push it further into the mindset of a pariah state; one no longer bound (even nominally) by international law, the rules of war, or diplomacy.
Given the destructiveness of the IDF when it still has international relationships to manage, the risk of what it might do outside those constraints is too high.
And we have to remember, regional powers like Iran, and even Saudi Arabia, are always watching. If they sense Israel is isolated and cornered, they may decide that their bitter rivalry can be set aside for a few months while they strike at the Zionist project.
Add in the fact that the Saudis have real leverage over Trump, and it’s not impossible to imagine a MAGA White House deciding that Israel isn’t worth the effort anymore. Why spend American money defending a bunch of Jews when the Saudis have oil and cash to offer instead?
That’s a nightmare scenario, but one we can’t dismiss.
Fourth, existing diplomatic tools.
There are already more conventional measures available for New Zealand to express disapproval: expelling Israel’s ambassador, withdrawing our own from Tel Aviv, supporting sanctions or travel bans on Israeli leaders responsible for war crimes, and backing international legal processes. These steps show clear opposition without burning the last channels of accountability.
Of course, there’s every chance that none of this will restrain Israel. As long as Netanyahu feels he has unconditional US backing, he will continue to thumb his nose at international law. And yes, there’s a horrifying possibility that Israel will try to “solve” the Palestinian problem through mass violence, at the cost of millions of lives. But unless the US and Europe are prepared to intervene directly, the options for resolution are extremely limited.
That’s why, grim as it is, the least bad path is to keep holding Israel to account while leaving open the possibility, however slim, that sanity returns to its leadership.
Given the choice between condemning Israel as a war criminal inside the international system or casting it out as a pariah with no incentive to respect law or diplomacy, I would choose the former.
Cutting Israel loose risks accelerating catastrophe; keeping it tethered to the international order at least lowers the chance of a wider regional war.
That's the brutal reality of foreign policy: when all of our options are shit, we can only choose the least bad one.
Actually I would agree with most of that. But it is essentially the same set of arguments that has been used since 1947-9 with varying emphasis.
In fact if you go back and look at the history of why the first Labour government under Peter Frazer (albeit pretty reluctantly) voted for partition, I think you will find all of those arguments being the same one used then at one level of another.
About the only one that you've missed is the argument used then was the one about letting the UN to have time to get its act together in the diplomatic arena.
The problem is that none of the previous 75+ years where these strategies have been operating have not stopped Israel from getting more and more aggressive or resorting more and more to pure terrorism based techniques.
These days they appear to be happy to kill or maim tens to hundreds of civilians to kill one person resisting them. The only thing that they haven't done to date is to open death camps.
Instead they have done a decimation of Gaza's population as a starter. At least 66k deaths. More than 200k total casualties (deaths maiming, and severe injuries) out of a population about 2100k – is the current figure that the IDF insiders seem to be using.
The eventual death count will be higher than that again because neither figure includes deaths from starvation and disease, nor the bodies in the rubble of buildings. If a census is done when a eventual ceasefire happens, I'd expect a total abnormal deaths to be in the range of 150+k.
Especially after the last 5 months when Israel has been running a very explicit famine campaign both through their blockade and with the under supply for accessible food and water by their GHF.
The IDF routinely drop guided iron bombs with a effective blast radius on 70 metres into populated areas with buildings to kill a handful of targets. The number of bodies that are under the rubble probably dwarfs the Gazan health probably dwarfs the casualties collected and taking to the shrinking number of medical facilities or otherwise counted as buried or burnt.
The IDF scatter bombs in phones into households with children in the hopes that when they set them off, that they will get a specific target.
The casualty count in the West Bank is also rising fast along with the deliberate state ordered
Quite simply all Israelis appear to be mad dogs only worthy of pariah state not only because of their actions, because the vast majority of the population appear to support it. Just reading the Israeli press makes me feel sick, there is virtually no reporting of what the IDF actually does in either the West Bank or Gaza, or Lebanon, or Syria.
Israel and the barbarians that they call soldiers don't give a fuck about international constraints. Try finding any report about a court-martial for the obvious excesses in Gaza of the West Bank in the last 20 years. At best, they act like the catholic church of old, they will dismiss people fro m their positions for the most egregious offences, then then employ them elsewhere.
But you can see the lack of constraints easily when you look at their social media. For instance this Guardian article about a sniper group and their operations in Gaza where they are actively targeting members of family trying to get the bodies of their slain family.
You can find similar tactics being used whenever you look at any resistance anywhere. The same thing shows up through all of the West Bank when people are protecting properties against settler with guns typically the IDF stands by – then arrests the property owners. The settlers can literally shoot and kill, and seldom even get to trial.
That in itself is part of the problem. Iran and Saudi Arabia are long way from the borders with Israel, so they haven't had as much attention from Israeli security. But both nations are acutely aware of the damage that Israeli intelligence routinely does in most nations that they have contact with – US (spying) and NZ (passports) included.
Look at what the attention has done in closer neighbours Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, etc.
All of those nations are in disarray, at least in part due to direct interventions of Israel. Could be military as in the 1982 intervention into the Lebanse civil war, when the intelligence side failed to get an immediately useful outcome.
Most of the false intelligence that put active WMD programmes in Iraq after 2001 came from Israel intelligence. Same with their intelligence in the 2010s of the state of Iranian uranium enrichment. Nothing could have induced the Iranian rush towards nuclear weapons more than what Israel caused with the sanctions that they caused.
Not to mention Egypt or Jordan or even Turkey whose citizens probably also eliminate a piss-poor excuse for a neighbour if they was an opportunity. It really is hard to find anyone who does count Israel as a reliable member of the international community these days.
That isn't primarily because of religion. That is because Israel is a complete arsehole as a nation – a nation of terrorists too hungry for land and too 'proud' to seriously pursue peaceful coexistence.
At least if they were a pariah nation with the sanctions and diminished diplomatic links, their ability to wage war, overt or covert, against remote threats would diminish with the breaking of transport, technical and trade links. I suspect that Israel would also lose a lot of capability to cause damage when many of their dual citizens leave.
NZ is a good nation to start the ball rolling. We don't have many links with Israel. We voted for the partition initially. And we have now had 75+ years to reconsider our mistake in giving barbarians like the Israelis a state and a community to victimise.
The US can have NZ, and probably ultimately Aussie and large chunks of Europe as allies – or Israel. Not both
The reality is that Israel is an anomaly in human history: a state created from a traumatised, long-oppressed minority emerging out of the ruins of industrial death camps,and dropped into a region that rejected its very existence from the first day.
That is an experiment with an n-value of one. There is no (and I pray there never will be) control group.
It’s hardly surprising that the Israeli political culture is survivalist to its core, and that overwhelming force has become the reflex whenever it feels cornered. That doesn’t excuse war crimes or apartheid, but it does explain why Israel acts as it does.
The state has one, and only one, imperative: survive. Everything else: law, morality, diplomacy, even alliances; comes second.
Eight decades of feeling besieged has wired their national psyche, despite the overwhelming militray balance in their favour, to equate any restraint with risk.
Which is why condemnation, de-recognition, or symbolic gestures won’t change their behaviour. Instead, the only mechanism for meaningful change is to to make being a good international neighbour, respecting international law, and showing restraint more reliable ways to survive than war crimes and unrestrained violence.
That requires a mix of levers. U.S. conditionality, enforceable multilateral sanctions paired with real security guarantees, credible monitoring with real penalties, and stepwise regional normalisation tied to Palestinian progress.
Without that, Israel will always default to the lesson it thinks history taught it: strike first, strike hard, survive at all costs. Sort out the human toll later.
From a geopolitical perspective, this makes Israel both a destabiliser and a convenient prop. Its existence gives Arab states and Iran something to hate more than each other: a useful external enemy that distracts from Turkish irredentism, Iranian–Saudi sectarian rivalry, or the spectre of a revived Ba’athist project or an unmoored Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
What's more the uncomfortable truth is that most surrounding Arab states have never really wanted the Palestinians either. If they did, they would have resettled them decades ago. Instead, keeping millions stateless provides them a sympathy card, a lever against Israel when convenient, and a way to avoid the cost of integrating a refugee population.
The Jordanians, at least, were pragmatic. After 1967 they decided they could live with Israel – So long as the IDF confined its violence to the other side of the border and left them alone.
Everyone else has preferred to keep the conflict simmering, because for them it’s more useful unresolved than solved.
That’s the brutal double bind for Palestinians: crushed under Israel’s occupation, yet also instrumentalised by their supposed allies. And it’s why, however much I share the outrage, I think New Zealand’s best path is still to hold Israel to account within the international order.
Diplomacy in this case isn’t about handwringing. It’s about rewiring the calculus of survival.
Until that happens, Israel will continue to embrace force with relish.
History
After the UN agreed on a partition of the Palestine mandate, both the Jewish majority state and Arab majority state were supposed to come into existence together.
Implementation of the Partition Plan (Resolution 181):
Israel agreed to implement the provisions of the 1947 partition plan, which outlined the division of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states, with a special status for Jerusalem
Instead there was a war after the state of Israel was declared in May 1948. After the war, Israel had expanded its territory.
*The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, adopted on December 11, 1948, is a pivotal resolution concerning Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, stipulating that those wishing to return to their homes and live in peace should be allowed to do so, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those who choose not to return.
**In General Assembly Resolution 273 in 1949 it required compliance with 181 and 194 and also Commitment to UN Charter Principles and Safeguarding Rights of Palestinian Arabs on Israel's admission to the UN.
In 1949 it also accepted the borders of that time, thus the 1949-1967 ones are those officially recognised.
The 181 obligations would fall on Israel once the recognised Palestine State body – PLO – recognised the Israeli state and was established.
This has to date been negated by the failure of the Oslo Accord^^^ peace process.
(which did not require a Palestine state be the outcome, so was not a secure way to realise UNSC Res 181^^^).
Present
Thus the importance of the recognition that there should be a Palestinian state.
We can note the way the UNSC Res 2334 (re West Bank settlement) has been ignored by Israel (despite its terms for membership to heed UNSC Resolutions).
This year
1.the Knesset has claimed sovereignty over the West Bank
2.the Israeli government approved a development that would divide north and south West Bank.
(placing West Bank contiguity at risk).
In 2011 the PA President and PLO leader said that not agreeing with the UNSC Res 181 in 1947 was a mistake.
He has this year indicated the PLO would accept a demilitarised state.
Future
It might be time to raise the issue of the UN setting requirements for Israel to meet to remain a member in good standing.
1.That it must allow UN aid to Gaza civilians or leave its occupation there.
2.It has a plan as to meeting 181 (1949 borders).
3.It has a plan for meeting 194.
4.It shows how it is meeting its UN Charter principles.
5.It proposes steps by which it fulfils requirements to Safeguard the Rights of Palestinian Arabs.
Yes, and have you ever looked at the numbers who returned or the amount of compensation that was paid? I'm sure I could find the UNHCR links to reports again, but I'm more interested in what you think actually happened.
How likely do you think that Israel is likely to do any of these things. I don't think that they are likely to even try to do any.
Not even number 1. Regardless of any international force in Gaza (or the West Bank), they will want to maintain a blockade and control on all materials and people going into both areas.
I think that cutting the bullshit and recognising Israel is actually a terrorist state is the best idea. They have been using the Palestinians and their potential state as a diplomatic hostages for far too long.
The only realistic step that the Israelis could take to convince me at this point would be to start implementing a plan to start actually demolishing West Bank settlements.
Otherwise we may as well treat them in exactly the same way that we treat associations with Islamic State.
One cannot end the UNSC veto of the USA.
One can call on Israel to meet UN expectations.
What happened is best left to historians.
Primer.
There are others on You Tube, up the current era.
It's not a peace plan. It's an ultimatum delivered by one side to the other. It contains impossible conditions that compel the other side to reject it. Once that rejection occurs, the ethnic cleansing continues as planned. Only now, there is this new excuse for it: "we offered peace and they declined".
Once the ethnic cleansing is completed, Israel gets the territory that they are (apparently) ordained by God to occupy. And more importantly, Trump gets his real estate and Tony Blair gets his money.
The goal is to remove Hamas from Gaza – one way, or another.
The plan is a rebuild, state finance and private profit under carpetbagger (unelected international group) administration (sans the UN).
International support for a Palestinian state probably means the Gaza population will stay and end up with local autonomous self-government
Likud will want a new Gaza distraction – given they seek to limit the PA to titular oversight of the various parts of Area A on the WB – 18% of the land 55% of the people (many Pale'stan's).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_A
Gaza has an offshore gas field. Israel is partnering with the PLO PA (and an Egyptian company) with the gas being piped to Egypt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_in_the_Gaza_Strip
Exactly. I made a similar comment @ 5 but yours is more succinct. Thanks.
Tony Blair, at least, has some experience of making a lasting peace agreement between two virulently opposing sides – the Good Friday agreement.
But as Rory Stewart says that agreement took years and years to thrash out (and now me) and Trump is too wedded to getting his Nobel Peace Prize as soon as possible and he can't hold the details in his head anyway to do the level of work needed.
Thank you for that link. Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell are two of the best commentators around.