The New Zealand government, like many others across the imperialist
West, has refused to recognise a Palestinian state. At first glance,this appears to be a diplomatic slight or a moral failure. In truth, it
is far deeper, it is the calculated refusal of a settler-colonial state
to recognise the legitimacy of another colonised people's struggle,
precisely because doing so would expose the contradictions at the heart
of its own existence. But while the refusal is damning, we must also
reckon with a more sobering truth that even when states do offer
recognition, it is little more than a symbolic gesture - a hollow act
that does nothing to halt the bombs, lift the siege, or stop the
machinery of genocide grinding on. Recognition without action is a cruel
theatre of humanitarian concern, designed to pacify outrage while
ensuring business as usual for empire.
Since 1988, over 140 UN member states have recognised the State of
Palestine in some form. In 2012, Palestine was granted "non-member
observer state" status at the United Nations, a symbolic victory after
decades of lobbying. Yet in 2025, Palestinians remain stateless,
occupied, and subject to one of the most violent genocides of the modern
era. Recognition has not stopped the killing. Recognition has not ended
the blockade of Gaza. Recognition has not secured the right of return
for refugees. Recognition has not dismantled Israel's apartheid laws or
halted its expansion of illegal settlements.
Instead, recognition has been reduced to a diplomatic fig leaf.
Countries such as Ireland, Spain, and Norway have made headlines by
announcing recognition of Palestine, but their governments continue to
trade with Israel and the corporations profiting from occupation. The
European Union as a whole continues to treat Israel as a key trading
partner, granting it access to markets and research funds. Even those
states who present themselves as "friends of Palestine" refuse to enact
the kinds of measures that could meaningfully challenge Israeli power:
arms embargoes, sanctions, cutting of diplomatic and economic ties, or
the expulsion of ambassadors.
The futility of recognition is that it leaves intact the very structures
of global capitalism and imperialism that uphold Israeli apartheid. By
recognising Palestine, Western states can signal virtue without
challenging their military alliances, their corporations' profits, or
their own complicity in settler-colonial violence. It is not solidarity,
it is performance.
New Zealand has consistently followed the lead of larger imperial powers
in matters of international recognition. It has recognised Kosovo, South
Sudan, and even Ukraine's sovereignty claims, yet it refuses to
recognise Palestine. The reason is not a mystery, recognition of
Palestine is not just about international diplomacy, it is about
admitting that colonised people have a right to resist and reclaim
stolen land.
New Zealand, itself a settler-colonial project built on the
dispossession of Maori, has no interest in affirming this principle. To
do so would invite uncomfortable parallels with its own history of land
theft, broken treaties, and ongoing colonial violence. A government that
relies on the fiction of legitimacy over stolen land cannot afford to
legitimise Palestinian claims to sovereignty. Recognition would shine
too bright a light on the contradictions of Aotearoa's own foundations.
Successive governments, Labour and National alike, have hidden behind
the rhetoric of "supporting a two-state solution," while refusing to
take the step of recognising Palestine as a state. This duplicity serves
two purposes. First, it allows New Zealand to maintain its loyalty to
the United States, its primary imperial ally. Second, it avoids
alienating the business and military interests tied to Israel and its
Western backers. New Zealand's military companies profit from
involvement in weapons development; its intelligence networks are linked
into the Five Eyes alliance that shields Israeli crimes. Recognition
would be a symbolic rebuke to these interests, and so it is avoided.
The refusal of recognition is obscene, but there is a further obscenity
- the idea that recognition, even if granted, could matter in the midst
of genocide. Since October 2023, Israel has unleashed unrelenting mass
killing in Gaza, bombing homes, schools, hospitals, and refugee camps.
The death toll has risen into the hundreds of thousands. Famine,
displacement, and disease are the daily reality for survivors.
International law has been shredded, and yet no state has intervened to
stop the massacre.
What would recognition mean in this context? Would a proclamation from
New Zealand or any other government bring back the dead, rebuild the
rubble, or open the borders for aid? Clearly not. Recognition during
genocide is not liberation, rather it is a sickly moral gesture that
allows governments to pretend they have done "something" while the
killing continues unchecked.
If recognition had any weight, the dozens of states that have recognised
Palestine since 1988 would have already transformed the material
conditions of occupation. Instead, recognition has been powerless
precisely because it was never intended to be power. It is designed to
look like solidarity while ensuring nothing fundamental changes.
Recognition without action is worse than nothing, because it obscures
the machinery of complicity. States that recognise Palestine while
continuing to fund, arm, and trade with Israel are enablers of genocide.
The United States sends billions in military aid every year. Germany
exports weapons that are used to bomb Palestinian civilians. Britain
provides diplomatic cover at the UN. Australia trains alongside Israeli
forces. New Zealand, though smaller, is tied into this web through its
alliances and intelligence networks.
Every state that claims to support a "peace process" while maintaining
ties to Israel is complicit. Every state that recognises Palestine
without imposing sanctions or embargoes is complicit. Recognition is not
solidarity; solidarity would mean dismantling the political and economic
systems that enable occupation. Recognition is not resistance;
resistance would mean arming boycott movements, cutting trade, and
isolating Israel as a pariah state. Recognition is not liberation;
liberation can only come from below, from the struggles of Palestinians
themselves, supported by international movements of workers, students,
and communities.
The question of recognition cannot be separated from the realities of
Aotearoa. This country was built on the dispossession of Maori land, the
imposition of foreign law, and the suppression of Indigenous resistance.
To this day, Maori face structural violence in housing, health,
education, and the justice system. The state that refuses to recognise
Palestine is the same state that refuses to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi
in substance.
Solidarity with Palestine in Aotearoa cannot be limited to calls for
governmental recognition. It must mean confronting the settler-colonial
structures here at home. It must mean standing with Maori struggles for
tino rangatiratanga, land back, and sovereignty. The refusal to
recognise Palestine is not an aberration, it is consistent with a
settler state that denies Indigenous rights everywhere.
If recognition is futile, what then is the path forward? For
anarcho-communists, the answer is clear: liberation will not come from
the recognition of states but from the destruction of states, empires,
and the capitalist system they defend. Palestine will not be free
because Ireland or Spain or New Zealand declares it so. Palestine will
be free when the people of Palestine, supported by global solidarity
movements, dismantle the systems of occupation and apartheid that
oppress them.
This requires building movements of boycott, divestment, and sanctions
from below. It requires disrupting the flow of weapons, money, and
political legitimacy to Israel. It requires solidarity strikes by dock
workers refusing to load arms, by students occupying campuses to demand
divestment, by communities blockading military shipments. It requires
connecting the struggle in Palestine to all struggles against
colonialism, racism, and exploitation.
Recognition is empty; direct action is power. Recognition is symbolic;
material solidarity is transformative. Recognition keeps faith in
governments; liberation requires their overthrow.
The New Zealand government's refusal to recognise Palestine is a mark of
cowardice and complicity. Yet even if it were to grant recognition
tomorrow, the futility of such a gesture would remain. Recognition does
not stop bombs, lift sieges, or return land. It is a hollow act,
designed to placate outrage while preserving empire.
The path to Palestinian liberation does not run through parliaments or
ministries. It runs through the streets, the workplaces, the
universities, and the fields where ordinary people confront the
machinery of imperialism. It runs through the linking of struggles -
Maori sovereignty in Aotearoa, Black liberation in the United States,
Indigenous resistance in Latin America, and anti-imperialist movements
worldwide.
Palestine will not be free when governments say it is a state. Palestine
will be free when the people overthrow apartheid, and when the global
system that sustains it is brought down. Recognition is not liberation.
Liberation is struggle. And it is only through that struggle,
everywhere, that the chains of empire can be broken.
https://awsm.nz/symbolic-states-real-genocide-the-empty-politics-of-palestine-recognition
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