What sort of relationship does New Zealand want with Israel?
What sort of relationship does New Zealand want with Israel?
Both Prime Minister Bill English and new
Foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee have said they want to
repair the relationship with Israel in the wake of New Zealand co-sponsoring anti-Israel UNSC Resolution 2334. However, they seem
to disagree on what that relationship might look like and
how to go about it.
Brownlee, in his first days as Foreign Minister,
called Resolution 2334 “premature” and said that New Zealand should not
“pronounce” how either party involved in Middle Eastern
policy should behave, beyond condemning terrorism. It was
clearly a priority for him to start getting the relationship
with Israel back on track without further
delay.
Brownlee’s statements could be seen as
recognition that New Zealand was out of step with liberal
Western values and other democracies and a genuine
effort to return to the longstanding, more balanced, foreign
policy of supporting a two-state solution based on
negotiations between the two parties and condemning
terror.
His words are consistent with UK Prime Minister
Theresa May’s comment that “negotiations will only
succeed when they are conducted between the two
parties...”, who also noted she was “blindsided” by the
resolution. Brownlee’s statements are also more aligned
with the US House of Representatives, which voted
overwhelmingly for Resolution 2334 to be “repealed or
fundamentally altered” and with the Australian position
that the resolution is “one-sided“ and “unlikely to engender a negotiated
solution”.
However, Brownlee has now said he made a mistake and will be
listening to his “friends at MFAT” about “appropriate
diplomatic language”. Brownlee’s mea culpa came
after questions were asked in Parliament by
the Green Party. Prime Minister English rebuked the new
minister for his comments, saying "[Brownlee] is getting
familiar with the language the Government has been using
around it, and in this world of diplomacy, each word
matters,"
It took English several months before he made a public statement about Resolution 2334. His words acknowledged
“the extent to which the resolution upset Israel” and
sought a “positive relationship” moving forward without
addressing any of thesubstantive issues with the text,
expressing any regret for the insult that New Zealand knew it was
inflicting or suggesting what steps the country might
take to repair the relationship.
By now reaffirming
support for the resolution English has deepened the insult,
possibly making any reconciliation with Israel more unlikely
and calling into question how committed is to
re-establishing a positive relationship.
This all occurs
in the year that is the centenary of the decisive battle against the Turks at Tel
Beer Sheva, when ANZAC soldiers were instrumental in freeing the land from the Ottoman Empire
in World War I.
The attitude of the New Zealand
government towards Israel seems to have changed significantly over the past few
years. There is a growing chasm between New Zealand and
its traditional Western allies and it is becoming more
aligned with non-democratic nations with inbuilt biases
against the Jewish state.
Perhaps, given the praise heaped on McCully by Arab nations
for his efforts in securing trade, the more recent actions
of New Zealand are an example of former Prime Minister Robert Muldoon’s
observation that “our foreign policy is trade”.
There is certainly little morality in chastising the only
democracy in the Middle East while ignoring the
transgressions of others.
There was an agreement signed between Israel and New
Zealand in March, 2016, to encourage collaboration
between the countries’ film industries. One month before
New Zealand co-sponsored the biased
anti-Israel resolution it was reported that a bilateral R&D innovation
deal was close to being signed between the governments.
New Zealand seems keen to utilise Israeli technology and learn from
its innovation success while, at the same time,
undermining Israel in the political arena.
So, what does
this mean? It is hard to know, given the mixed messages
coming from a government whose foreign minister sponsors a
UN resolution that represents a major policy change without consulting cabinet, and whose
successor then tries to make amends but is chastised by the
Prime Minister. It is a case of taking one step forward, two
steps back.
Brownlee offered some hope that New
Zealand was working to rectify the mistake of co-sponsoring
the Palestinian-Egyptian drafted resolution,
but now all we have is a reaffirmation of the resolution,
amid some amorphous avowals of friendship. There is no
indication that the New Zealand government will address any questions about the substance of the
resolution or express any remorse. Can our government
have it both ways?
It looks like the New Zealand
government is more intent on cosying up with Saudi Arabia,
not renowned as a bastion of human rights and liberal
values, and less with Australia, with whom New Zealand’s
relationship is increasingly fragile. That might be good for
sheep sales in the short term but one can only speculate
about the longer-term impact of aligning with non-democratic
nations.