Palestinian families fleeing from Gaza walk along a highway on November 9, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. (Photo: RNZ / Mahmud Hams)
Chris Tooley from Ngāti Kahungunu has spent a lot of time thinking about the concept of self-determination. He did his PhD on that kaupapa at Cambridge University in England, with specific reference to what self-determination might mean in Palestine.
Like many in Aotearoa, he’s appalled at the recent escalation of violence and brutality in the area. Here, Dr Tooley explains to Connie Buchanan why the power structures at play in Palestine are part of our history too — and why New Zealand’s foreign policy position matters.
There are two forms of power at play in Gaza at the moment. There’s the obvious binary power which is everything that we’re seeing on TV — the rockets, the bombs, the tanks, the wall, the settlements pushing beyond agreed borders. That’s binary power, which shifts backwards and forwards during conflict.
But that’s grounded in a wider power structure, one that’s embedded with values around what it means to be human and civilised. That power rests on judgments about who’s entitled to self-determination and who isn’t, and with ideas around who counts as human and who doesn’t.
That power structure is longstanding and built on processes of western hegemony, colonisation and racism. It’s that power structure which is allowing governments and settler colonies to justify the humanitarian crisis now taking place in Palestine. We’re seeing Israel being able to use words like “self-defence”, or “pre-emption”, or “collective responsibility”, to justify its intensifying and sustained exercise of binary power, because that justification comes from deeper beliefs that the west (and in particular the US) want to defend and uphold.
Those are the same underlying values and power structures that were used to appropriate land and suppress Māori tino rangatiratanga in this country. It’s the same value determinations of what is considered right and proper, who counts as a human being, and who’s acting in an appropriate way in order to be allowed to be self-determining.
As a Māori academic, I’ve always been interested in the idea of self-determination, because from an international rules point of view, it’s the mechanism by which peoples or nations can assert their sovereignty. It allows people to talk about how they organise themselves politically, about their governance and constitution, and to talk about how they may want to express ideas of autonomy or freedom. Within the international system, self-determination is the key principle which allows that to happen.
Self-determination is very much a western concept, with philosophical roots right back to Plato and the idea of nomos, which comes from the word autonomy. Part of what nomos means is to be separate from nature, from Papatūānuku. Yet most groups in the modern world who are struggling for self-determination tend to come from an Indigenous or a non-western point of view, where often the prevailing view is that human beings aren’t separated from nature at all.
So there’s a tension around how Indigenous groups achieve self-determination while retaining cultural authenticity. Is there a modus operandi where Indigenous people can use the international system to achieve a culturally authentic self-determination? That was the basis of my PhD thesis which I completed at Cambridge University in England in 2006.
As part of that work, I spent some time in Palestine, and also in Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon, as part of my thinking about how self-determination might be defined and expressed within current global examples of conflict.
The Indigenous people of Palestine are the Canaanites and the Bedouins who today are part of the Palestinian community, and part of the wider Arab community too. The Jewish people have a very long history and a very long whakapapa to that whenua as well, which goes back to the exodus from Egypt in about 1000 BC.
And so, the western and international solution to the multiple territorial claims has been a partition in 1947, orchestrated by the British and the French, and then the borders of 1967, known as the “Green Line” which is the current standing position of the UN under Security Council Resolution 242.
Palestinians today define self-determination as adhering to those 1967 borders. That’s a fairly recent generational shift, because the concept of self-determination is based on the concept of nationalism — you have to demonstrate the characteristics of a nation in order for it to apply.
Yet, within Palestine and across other Arab countries, there’s a preference for words and concepts of patriotism, which aren’t singular. Patriotism is plural with multiple loyalties, which includes the local expression of self-determination to Palestine itself, plus a broader expression of loyalty to the wider Arab community.
Post the Ottoman Empire, before the British Mandate kicked in, there was a lot of discussion around creating a pan-Arab state that would cover parts of Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan, as a way of expressing cultural unity and authenticity. So there was tension straight away between being self-determining from a national point of view, and trying to remain true to broader Arab connections. Then, as soon as the Palestinian National Authority came into being, we saw a very quick shift to self-determination in relation to Palestine only.
I went to the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon in 2004 because I was quite interested in how they were creating and maintaining consciousness among themselves to achieve self-determination, while being fragmented and separated from their whenua and ultimately their identity.
Hezbollah were coming into prominence in the area back then, and they come from a Shia Islamic view of the world, while the majority of Palestinians are Sunnis, with increasing influence of Shia in Gaza via Hamas. Palestinians within the camps were finding ways to manage these differences and forge unity.
Then, in Palestine itself, when I was there in 2005, it was clear that they were still struggling to control their own spaces. They’re all forcibly isolated from one another. The Gaza population can’t talk to the West Bank, who can’t talk to the refugees, who can’t talk to the internally displaced Palestinians who are within the Israeli state itself. So you’ve got these divided populations who are prevented from creating a unity of consciousness to actually mobilise themselves to find stable leadership and go forward.
The leadership of the Palestinian Authority are approaching their 90s, and they’re disengaged from the people in the West Bank. They’re not providing strong leadership. The elections that take place within the West Bank localities don’t really address national issues, and they’re infiltrated by Islamic extremists, whether it’s Muslim Brotherhood or al-Aqsa Brigade or whoever. Those groups have embedded themselves in the community and have their own agenda. They’re connected to Hezbollah in Iran through the Shia whakapapa — and they always have increased influence when people can’t see any political endgame.
When you’re thinking about self-determination, you need unity of consciousness. You need to have some kind of collective will that a leadership can mobilise and represent. And in Palestine, they don’t have the right to assemble. There’s a really limited public sphere. All these things affect the ability of Palestinians to mobilise for self-determination in the face of a huge colonising power.
The 1967 borders have been continually breached and encroached by Israeli settlements. And those settlements are miniature cities. They have roads, they have pipelines, they have electricity grids. There’s a very real permanency about them.
And no one from the international system has challenged that incursion. They’ve been built without any intervention. Even though the UN confirmed that the 1967 borders are the borders for a Palestinian state, no one has challenged the wall, the settlements, the continued application of binary power into that territory.
So, we’ve seen a state that has appropriated land in the past, continue to appropriate land, continue to imprison Palestinians, detain Palestinians, restrict their movement, limit supply chains, limit access to things like water. It’s the continuation of a systematic oppression.
The intensity of the response by Israel to the Hamas attack is very much the new aspect of what we’re seeing here. If I think of all the different intifada that happened during the 1980s to 1990s, or the previous incursions into Gaza in the West Bank by Israel, all these things have happened many times before. The difference now is that you’re seeing the intensification of asymmetrical power against Palestinians in Gaza. It’s extraordinary to watch this huge machine that is absolutely relentless in not distinguishing between Islamic terrorists and civilians on the ground.
It’s distressing that the UN is totally unable to prevent it. The main reason the UN Security Council was established was to prevent exactly this situation. And they’re just nowhere to be seen.
Palestine and Israel will not solve this by themselves. I think from a first-principle point of view, any government, including ours, which is serious about contributing to an international solution, would call for an immediate ceasefire. And then, secondly, keep reinforcing the fact that they support a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.
The two have to go hand in hand. Simply saying that you want a ceasefire confirms that you just want to go back to the status quo, which is one of oppression for Palestinian people. So, you need to go further and keep confirming the two-state solution.
Then, in terms of the UN, even though previous resolutions have been vetoed by the US, you still need to put them up. We need an international UN peacekeeping force to be on the ground managing a pathway out of this that leads to a two-state solution.
And that’ll probably take decades.
But the fact is you need an impartial and independent mechanism to bring that about — and the New Zealand government, together with other governments, needs to keep pushing up to the UN Security Council. And if the resolutions get vetoed, well, they get vetoed. But you have to keep making the stand.
In the event Israel wipes out Hamas (knowing that its leadership is based in other Arab states) a power-vacuum will be created. The Palestinian Authority has no mana in Gaza, so Israel can’t really hand that area over to them. Rather, it looks like Israel will have to occupy Gaza themselves for quite some period of time. Look at the Iraq War when the US army cleared out Mosul by going door to door. Yes, they got rid of ISIS, but thousands and thousands of civilians were killed in the process — and now that the US has withdrawn, ISIS groups have returned.
So it’s hard to understand the end game. I mean, the worst-case scenario is that you get a very long extended occupation by the Israeli forces in Gaza, and the whole population of Gaza living in refugee camps for the next generation.
Does it matter what position New Zealand takes in all this? Yes, it matters. The idea of being independent, placing a pou in the ground, is really important. It allows people to rise above the noise and focus on the morally right thing to do.
There are parallels with our own history of power imbalance, where a colonising machine just continually appropriated land and oppressed a people. Unfortunately, the global power structures that enabled that still exist. The power dynamics that sit under these struggles have been in play for decades, and they haven’t changed.
We should be talking about Palestine from a hegemonic, colonising point of view. Because those power structures are real, and they’re part of our history too. And if we call them what they are, and speak out against them, it matters.
You can read New Zealand’s National Statement to the UN Security Council Open Debate here, made on 24 October, 2023.
Dr Chris Tooley, Ngāti Kahungunu, holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was the recipient of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship. Chris has served as vice-chair of the International Working Group of Indigenous Affairs (2015–19), senior ministerial advisor to Sir Pita Sharples, the Minister of Māori Affairs (2009–14) and member of the Interim Māori Health Authority Board (2021–22).
Chris was the recipient of the Blake Leadership Award from the Sir Peter Blake Trust in 2020, the Matariki Award, Waitī (Health & Science) in 2022 and the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Auckland earlier this year. He is the CEO of Te Puna Ora o Mataatua.
As told to Connie Buchanan and made possible by the Public Interest Journalism Fund.
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The author’s premise that the indigenous people of Palestine are Canaanites is unhelpful: Arabs and Jews originate from populations that married into the Canaanites, or were offshoots of that nation. Jews trace their origins to the Israelites, a people that emerged from within the Canaanite population to establish the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
A Jewish claim to a homeland in Israel is based on history and archeology. Archeologically, there is no doubt that the Jews (ancient Israelites) have been a distinct indigenous nation that inhabited Israel since at least the 10th century BCE. For example, the Mesha Stele, a mid-9th Century monument found in Jordan tells of a battle between Moab and Israel, led by its king. The claim has nothing to do with an exodus from Egypt, for which there is no archeological record.
The Jewish people have inhabited the land of Israel since then until the present, throughout the periods of exile and destruction of two temples in Jerusalem. They are indigenous to Israel, and they are entitled to self-determination in the land. The claim that resettlement of Jews in Israel is colonialism ignores thousands of years of history and is being used as a dangerous justification for atrocities.
Please enlighten us as to where the Jews came from, if not Israel?
The Israelites did not originate from within Canaan, their founding father ‘Abraham’ was from East of the Jordan river which was known as Ur of the Chaldees (modern day Iraq). This is where the Jewish bible states Abraham was born and where he left to travel to the land of Canaan some 3000 years ago. It also states God gifted Abraham and his descendants the land of Canaan in which the Israelites went on a murderous rampage slaughtering the native Canaanites in an attempt to erase them from history, however they didnt succeed as there are many people alive today who are decended from the Canaanite population including Lebanese,Palestinians and some Jews.
There is a misconception that the Palestinians are descendants of the Philistines for whom they are named. The Philistines were a people that arrived from Crete in Greece and peopled the Southern part of Canaan around the same time as the Israelites, however DNA studies found there is no link between the two but rather the Palestinians descend from ancient Anatolian and Natufean populations who were in the land of Canaan around 11000 years ago.
If anything, the Palestinians have more justification of being indigenous to the land than the Zionist especially given the Israelites were forced out of the land during the Asriyan reign around 720BC so they were only in the area for 300~800 years whereas the Palestinians have had a continuous occupation for over 13000 years not to mention the Zionists today are mainly European descent given their absence of over 2000 years.
You have a choice – you can believe the Bible, or you can believe archaeology.
If you believe the Bible, then God told Abraham to go to the land of Canaan and then gave it to him and his descendants. You also believe that the Palestinians (as Arabs) are likewise descended from Abraham, as sons of Ishmael. And even Muslims believe the Bible is the word of God, so they do not refute the promise of the land of Israel to the Jews. Indeed, the Koran calls Jews the Children of Israel. Not to mention the kingdom of Kings David and Solomon, who ruled over all of Israel. If this is the story you believe, then Jews clearly have a historical tie to the land of Israel, and are entitled to self-determination there. Otherwise, are you suggesting Jews go back to Ur (Iraq)? And if so, shouldn’t the descendants of Ishmael do the same?
Or, you can believe archeology. Archeological finds demonstrate that the Israelites were native Canaanite hill tribes who developed a common culture and monotheistic religion, and formed an independent nation there under regional kings. There is no historical evidence of an exodus or a conquest of the land (the Joshua stories, which are clearly anachronistic). This is also supported by genetic analysis showing Jews to have common DNA with other regional peoples. Archeology also supports the fact that there were the two Israelite kingdoms (Israel and Judah) in the land of Israel (circa 10th century to 6th century). Even the exile was not of all Israelites, but only their ruling class, and many of their descendants returned later to rebuild the second temple, which was later destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. And there is no record of other Canaanites tribes dominating the land during that period, as was the case in Samaria or Moab (now Transjordan). So we’re talking about a thousand years of continuous settlement. And after the Roman exile, Jews continued to live on the land in small numbers, for example, in Jerusalem and Hebron. The former city only came under Muslim rule in starting with the conquest of the city by Caliph Umar around 635.
Whichever source you choose to believe, the Jews have a right to self-determination in the land of Israel.
I do not believe the stories of the bible as there is not a lot of evidence to back them, however, whether it be religious, archeological or genetic, they only place the Israelites in the area no more than 3000 years ago when the Palestinians have been there for much, much longer, continously living on the land for over 13,000 years as descendants of the Neolithic Natufian and Anatolian people in which they get the majority of their DNA (over two thirds).
The Zionist claim to be Indigenous to the land over the Palestinians but this is incorrect, its the reason why they force the Palestinians out of their houses and off their land because they think they have more rights to it. Yes, some Jews have remained on the land alongside the ‘Palestinians’ for centuries but that population was small in comparsion and also the majority of the new Israeli settlers today are mainly of European descent as their ancestors left Canaan centuries ago and headed north.
Now when you factor that in with the constant land grabbing, Apartheid ruling and the decades of slaughtering and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians….you’ve just got to shake your head and wonder how all of this was allowed to happen. You speak of the right for Jews to self determination but what about the Palestinians? Where are their rights? All I see is a genocide of an indigenous population based on false pretence whose land has been diminishing since 1948.
The hill tribes that created the Jews and Palestinians have the same origin. How far you want to go back isn’t important because the 13000 yr old group of progenitor people were neither Muslim, Jewish, Arab or Israeli.
This discussion isn’t about Palestinian rights to land (agreed) it’s about a false colonial narrative about the lack of Jewish rights.
The modern Israelis are majority Middle Eastern (having been expelled from the surrounding Arab countries) and not majority European (having been decimated in WWII). With the additional ethnic mixture of Ethiopian and Indian Jews.
Agreed about not believing in the biblical stories, so we can throw out the Abraham and Ur business. However, you seem quick to dismiss a claim to be in the land for at least the past 3,000 years. There were no Austrians 3,000 years ago, but nobody is saying they shouldn’t have a country. Lebanese were not distinct from Syrians 3,000 years ago, but nobody is arguing for dissolution of those countries. The fact is, Israelites were the predominant group in the land for at least the 1,000 years leading up to the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. This is a legitimate claim.
The fact that some of them were forcibly resettled in Europe by the Romans doesn’t deprive them of their claim to the homeland, particularly as they were not considered Europeans by those countries, and serially evicted from England, Spain, Portugal, and Germany, and suffered abuse in countries such as Poland and Russia.
This isn’t a zero-sum contest. None of this is to dispute that the Palestinians should have their own country (the Oslo Accords stated as much). The author himself writes that “Palestinians today define self-determination as adhering to those 1967 borders” (i.e., the West Bank and Gaza). In other words, Israeli self-determination extends to the parts of Israel excluding those parts where Palestinians claim self-determination. Why is this even up for dispute?
[Kiri]
Of course the Neolithic Natufian and Anatolian people weren’t Jewish, Muslim or Israeli because they pre-date them by 10,000 odd years. Those religions only came into being no more than 3000 years ago.
The Jews and Palestinians have different genetic makeup. A breakdown of the Bronze-aged Jews have them being majority European 57% (Southern and Northern Europe) 19% Mesopotamian (Iraq/Iran) and only share 19% Levant with the Palestinians due to mixing when they moved into the area. This was the bronze aged Israeli’s, todays Israeli’s will have a lot more European ancestry given the centuries they have spent living in the European Countries and away from the Middle East.
Its strange you mention Jewish rights when the Israeli’s have repeatedly broken international humanitarian laws, occupied Palstinian land for decades among the many other atrocities they have committed. Its modern day colonialism hidding behind religion given the majority of the Israeli’s are secular. So the question remains, why do the Zionist think they have more rights to the land over Palestinians when the Palestinians have a much longer and continous history to the land. This should never have been allowed to happen in the first place.
I’m not sure where your percentages come from because the analysis of ancient DNA involves sequencing very small regions (due to destruction of the DNA over time). The most that can be said from the extremely limited specimens is that DNA had some regions in common with Basques, Tunisian Arabs, Iranians, Anatolians and Iraqis. Percentage make up isn’t possible with ancient (Bronze Age) samples.
My point is that it’s possible for two groups of people to have legitimate rights. That the call of colonial oppression is false and demonizes Israelis.
The use of the word genocide is sad. It ignores the significant population growth of the Palestinian people in all areas of the Middle East, including Israel. It ignores the reality of a complex and painful situation. Israel also happens to be a place where Arab Israelis get free fertility treatment along side Jewish Israelis. It’s also where Palestinian children receive organ transplants from Jewish donors. It’s where an Israeli Arab Judge presided over the indictment of Netanyahu.
I realize that the information sources you have may not necessarily give you these perspectives and I’m sorry for that. I wish you well.
[Greg]
You have completely overlooked the continuous presences the Palestinians have had to the land. Yes it has been conquered by many differing people including the Israelites, the Babylonians,the Ottomans etc…. but the one thing that has remained constant are the Palestinians and their ancestors who have been there since at least the Neolithic period. So why should their rights to the land be overlooked by the latter arriving Israelites in particular today’s Zionist settlers who descend mainly from European ancestry?
The real travesty today is its almost entirely Israeli land, they’ve managed to swipe 90% of the land from the Palestinians since 1946 whilst the Palestinians are prisoners in their own land having their lives ruled by an Apartheid Israeli State. Nobody should be expected to put up with that so I dont know why people think the Palestinians should.
[Kiri]
Wow….just wow, so we should just overlook the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths at the hands of the Israeli’s because of some free fertility treatment and organ donations? way to downplay the atrocities, btw, the IDF have destroyed 39 health facilities inside Gaza since Oct 7th. You’ve also glossed over the way the Palestinians are discriminated against not only in Palestine but inside Israel aswell, they literally have laws allowing it to happen.
Anyway, I agree with one thing though about information and sources giving you a lop sided perspective.
Also, there is extensive genetic research of 73 individuals from 5 archaeological sites in Palestine from the bronze aged Levant period.
For a supposed academic, this piece contains some extremely biased and incorrect assertions. Imposing a modern ‘anti-colonialist’ worldview on a millennia-old issue is not at all helpful. Whilst I am sure it is well-intentioned, it is also overly simplistic. For example, decrying Israeli ‘settlements’ as ‘illegal under international law’ completely ignores a huge body of legal experts and expertise that state that Israel is quite entitled to settle in those areas. Countries including the United States do not accept the determination of the UN-convened – and very obviously prejudiced by selection – legal panel assembled at the Hague. Similar legal experts have met over the same issue and confirmed the opposite of the UN’s mouthpiece. Further to that, basic legal statue does not give the UN General Assembly any ability to make a binding resolution that automatically becomes ‘international law’. Resolution 181, for example, that is the document most often quoted when accusing Israel of breaches, was a UN General Assembly resolution, accepted by ISrael but blankly rejected by the Arabs. Under no jurisdiction would such a document ever become a binding contract, let alone ‘international law’. The increasingly Arab and Muslim controlled UN has become obsessed with Israel – successive UN General Secretaries have clearly stated this – to the point where Israel quite rightly has no confidence in the UN machinery whatsoever. Then of course, there are the basic historical inaccuracies stated in this piece. All up, not really that helpful in its current form.
In launching the original attack, what were Hamas thinking?! And was this done at the behest of their Iranian backers?