New Foreign Minister ‘sucking up’ to Israel
Gerry Brownlee is ‘‘sucking up’’ to Israeli PM Netanyalu at a time when 1500 Palestinian prisoners are on hunger strike, risking their health and even their lives, out of desperation, pleading for the outside world to demand that Israel respect basic humanitarian norms. Disgraceful timing.
Palestinian prisoners suffer from torture, degrading treatment and medical negligence. Demonstrations are being held in many cities, especially in Europe, supporting the Palestinian calls for an end to collective punishment, administrative detention and illegal transfer of detainees from the West Bank to Israeli prisons.
Israel holds some 6300 Palestinian political prisoners, including around 300 children. An estimated 500 Palestinians are held in administrative detention which means no charge, no trial.
Shame on Gerry Brownlee, he is disgracing NZ’s reputation as a decent, humanitarian society. Lois Griffiths Strowan
Brownlee right to act
Your editorial (May 5 ) was a bit rich stating, …’’warmongering tendencies of Israel…’’ Brownlee is right to reverse the ill-considered co-sponsorship of UN Resolution 2334. McCully was currying favour with Obama, as you accuse Brownlee of with Trump.
Israel’s trouble is that she has been far too soft but she has probably given up on the two state solution and is essentially annexing the West Bank as she should have done in 1967, a much easier task then than now.
An UN paper states that in 1967 there were 850,000 people in the West Bank up from 420,000 in 1948. This 850,000 almost exactly equates to the number of Jews expelled from Muslim countries after 1948. A comparable expulsion of Muslims from the West Bank would have been relatively painless.
If the borders (read cease fire lines of 1948) were unacceptable to the Arabs in 1967, what makes them acceptable now? I have asked this question many times and have never been given an answer. Such a Palestinian state would be just another step to the annihilation of the Israelis. Paul Grainger Merivale