The United Nations has described hunger in Gaza as "catastrophic", with a third of the population going days at a time without food. Photo: AFP
As Palestinians in Gaza increasingly bear the brunt of conflict and international support for Israel wanes, there are questions over New Zealand's continued low-key approach.
Nearly two years after the Hamas-led 7 October attack on Israel and the beginning of Israel's military response in Gaza, reaction from both inside and outside Israel suggests public opinion may be shifting.
"I think the images of emaciated children, the accounts that we've had from families of what they've been going through in terms of the near-famine that is affecting parts of Gaza... I think has had a very, very strong effect," says BBC Middle East regional editor Sebastian Usher.
"I think it's had a big effect on public opinion in the West and we talk about the West, because it's the West that essentially is seen as closest to Israel."
This has come to a head in the past few weeks, with leaders of France, the UK and Canada announcing they will recognise a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
The shift also seems to be happening within Israel itself, where media has reported on polls showing more than 74 percent of Israelis would favour ending the war in exchange for the return of the hostages.
In an open letter earlier this week, some 600 former Israeli security officials asked US President Donald Trump to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war.
Overnight, Netanyahu was scheduled to meet with his security cabinet to discuss a plan to scale up the military invasion of Gaza.
"What we've been seeing is a sense from people who've had the highest positions in the Israeli military, in Mossad, the security agencies, an ex-prime minister, ex-ministers - people who've been major players in Israel politically as part of the elite of the establishment for decades - coming out and saying that the war should end, because there's no point to it anymore," says Usher.
"It's not achieving anything anymore.".
Here in New Zealand, Auckland University law professor Treasa Dunworth says picking apart where our government stands is a bit harder.
"I think it's actually difficult to discern a clear policy, and I think, for a long time, it has tried to stay out of it and not make any comments critical of Israel," she said.
"In the early statements after the original Hamas attack in October 2023, New Zealand was rightly quick to condemn Hamas' actions, but also called for peace, sent humanitarian aid to the agencies that were then still working and able to work in Gaza.
"From that moment on, New Zealand took very much a 'softly softly' approach, although if you trace through the statements and the voting patterns across the general assembly for New Zealand, we did call for peace, we did lament the humanitarian situation."
Last week, New Zealand, along with 27 other countries, issued a humanitarian statement calling for an immediate end to the war, which Dunworth said was the first time we'd seen something like this from the 'global north'.
This week, Newsroom reported that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade dispatched close to $8 million in aid to Gaza at the end of June - the first funding for the crisis in six months.
The government didn't announce the aid formally, unlike in the past six rounds of funding to the region.
This came after reports of what the United Nations was called 'catastrophic hunger' in Gaza, with a third of the population going days at a time without food. Since May, the UN said more than 1000 people had been killed by Israeli forces while seeking aid and, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, 63 people starved to death last month alone.
In today's episode of The Detail, Usher gives explanation and analysis of the current situation in Gaza, and Dunworth describes the steps New Zealand could take in response.
Dunworth said New Zealand could impose a trade embargo on Israel, change our immigration regulations to mirror the 'fast track' we have for Ukrainians and look at the way we share intelligence through the Five Eyes system, "because it is well understood that the United States is sharing intelligence with Israel... and through our involvement with the Five Eyes, all of the intelligence that we gather up from this region is shared automatically with the United States authorities".
She said, while she didn't think recognising a Palestinian state would, in itself, going to make a big difference, she does "think it's an important symbolic move".
"Next month, the General Assembly is going to meet and the Gaza situation is on its agenda, and there is still time for New Zealand to start to engage proactively and ambitiously.
"We could not just arrive in the General Assembly and go along with whatever's happening, but we could proactively shape the contours of that debate."
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