Greg Bouwer
IINZ
The joint statement released on 29 July 2025 by 16 foreign ministers – including New Zealand’s – claims to chart a path to peace in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. In reality, it does the opposite. By laying near-exclusive blame on Israel, while excusing or whitewashing the actors truly responsible for this war, the signatories have made peace harder to achieve, not easier.
For decades, the so-called international consensus has been that a two-state solution was the only path to peace. That vision was always premised on direct negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders – not unilateral recognitions or externally imposed dictates. But the world changed on 7 October 2023. The brutal Hamas-led massacre of over 1,200 Israelis (including infants, Holocaust survivors, and entire families) did more than expose the terror group’s barbarity. It shattered the illusion that peace could be built on a foundation of denial, incitement and hatred. The two-state paradigm did not just falter – it failed catastrophically.
And yet, instead of acknowledging that reality, the July 29 declaration clings to illusion while sidestepping the hard truths that peace demands. It calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, denounces Israeli actions in Gaza and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), and demands recognition of a Palestinian state. But nowhere does it mention Hamas’ genocide charter. Nowhere does it acknowledge that Hamas seized power by murdering its political rivals after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza – then transformed the territory into a fortified terrorist enclave. There is no reckoning with the fact that the Palestinian Authority is too weak, too corrupt and too complicit to serve as a viable alternative. And nowhere does the declaration accept the fundamental truth: peace cannot be imposed by pressuring only one side while ignoring the unrelenting violence, extremism and rejectionism of the other.
The Peril of Misplaced Pressure
Israel has always been willing to negotiate. It has done so in good faith time and again – offering land, autonomy, and even statehood. The Arabs, on the other hand, have walked away from every serious offer. They rejected the Peel plan in 1936, the UN partition plan in 1947, and rejected peace at Camp David in 2000, for example, and have rejected normalization at every turn. October 7 was not a rupture – it was a culmination.
Yet the international community continues to place the onus for peace almost exclusively on Israel. This does not advance the cause of peace – it rewards rejectionism. By letting the Palestinian leadership off the hook for promoting terror, rejecting compromise, and glorifying violence, world powers send a clear message: You do not need to change, you will not be held accountable, and terror pays.
The July 29 declaration even goes so far as to express support for recognizing a Palestinian state in the coming UN General Assembly session. What message does that send? That murdering civilians, taking hostages, and hiding behind children brings international legitimacy. That Israel – the victim of aggression – must justify its every move, while the aggressors get a diplomatic promotion.
UNRWA and the Manufactured Crisis
These distortions are compounded by the continued credibility granted to UN agencies like UNRWA, which has not only failed in its humanitarian mission but has actively prolonged the conflict. It has maintained the fiction of inherited refugee status, filled Gaza’s schools with antisemitic incitement, and embedded terrorists in its ranks. Even now, with aid flowing into Gaza through multiple crossings daily, UNRWA and other NGOs obstruct delivery, misreport shortages, and feed the global narrative of a humanitarian siege – not because Israel is blocking aid, but because these agencies have become political actors, not neutral providers.
The Palestinian Authority is Not the Answer
Those calling for Gaza to be handed over to the Palestinian Authority once the war ends ignore two decades of failure. The PA does not control Gaza, barely governs Judea and Samaria, and routinely rewards terrorism with salaries and public praise. Its so-called “commitments” to reform, hold elections, and disarm militants are empty words – recycled every few years to satisfy Western donors but never implemented. To present the PA as a ready and willing partner is not just naïve – it is wilfully blind.
If Peace is the Goal, Responsibility Must Be Shared
The only path to lasting peace is negotiation. But negotiation cannot succeed if only one side is expected to compromise. Until the Palestinian leadership is held to some standards – until it is expected to end incitement, dismantle terror infrastructure, and accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state – no agreement can hold.
Diplomatic declarations that ignore these truths don’t bring peace closer. They push it further away.
If countries like New Zealand genuinely seek to advance peace, they must stop appeasing Palestinian rejectionism and start demanding accountability. That means ceasing funding to UNRWA until it is fundamentally reformed or dismantled. It means opposing premature recognition of a state that does not yet exist, and that has done nothing to demonstrate its readiness for statehood. And it means standing with Israel not only as a matter of fairness, but as a matter of principle.
Because peace does not come through rewarding violence. It comes through shared responsibility – and truth.
This article was originally published by the Israel Institute of New Zealand.
