While Ireland's President Michael D Higgins calls for Israel’s expulsion from the United Nations for what he describes as its "lies" over its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, New Zealand continues to dither over joining the 157 (out of 193) United Nations members that have already given diplomatic recognition to a Palestinian state.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters will announce New Zealand's decision in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly at the end of the week. According to him, this will allow New Zealand as much time as possible to gather and assess the latest information on the issue before reaching a definite conclusion.

Frankly, this claim is poppycock. A decision as momentous as giving diplomatic recognition to another state, especially one as contentious as the Palestinian state, would never be left to the Foreign Minister alone to make after a few conversations at the United Nations. Rather, the New Zealand government’s position would have been determined by the Cabinet some time ago. In that sense, he will be but the message boy in New York.

Winston Peters’ statement that the Palestine issue has been around for at least eighty years, so waiting a few more days to announce New Zealand’s decision is hardly a problem, further obfuscates the issue. He is hardly likely to have travelled all the way to New York to tell New Zealanders and the rest of the world, that New Zealand is not going to do as Commonwealth partners Australia, Canada and Britain, among so many other countries, have already done this week. Therefore, the question becomes why the delay?

The most obvious and easily dismissible argument is that New Zealand’s speaking slot at the United Nations does not occur until the end of the week, so it would have been churlish to announce New Zealand’s decision before then. That is true up to a point but has not applied in the case of other countries. Australia, Canada, Britain and France all felt able to indicate in advance of their General Assembly speeches that they would be announcing Palestinian recognition, leaving no credible reason why New Zealand could not have done likewise.

A second possible argument is that there was division within the Cabinet on recognition which has only been overcome in recent days. It is well known that ACT has not been comfortable with recognising a Palestinian state if Hamas is involved, so may have delayed until the last moment a Cabinet decision being reached. However, given both the Prime Minister’s and the Foreign Minister’s “when not if” support for recognising Palestine, it is most unlikely that Peters would have departed for New York without a firm government commitment to recognition in his back pocket.

Then there is the outside chance that the Cabinet’s decision was conditional, leaving open the possibility of last-minute information exchanged in the corridors at the United Nations influencing New Zealand’s final decision. Again, that seems unlikely given that the overwhelming majority of United Nations’ member states have already recognised Palestine or are about to do so.

That leaves only one credible explanation for New Zealand’s tardy response. It has nothing to do with weighing up the merits of last-minute information or respecting diplomatic niceties and not disclosing one’s position ahead of the country’s formal speaking slot. Nor has it anything to do with not wanting to offend Israel or the United States. Israel has already been critical of New Zealand’s comments about the situation in Gaza, and the United States’ position is discredited by most countries.

Rather, New Zealand’s approach to this issue has been all about bolstering the mana and ego of the Foreign Minister on the world stage and ensuring all New Zealand eyes are on him when he addresses the General Assembly. Sadly, the government appears to have decided that pandering to this is more important than letting New Zealanders, many of whom have marched in the streets in support of Palestine, in on its eventual decision.

However, given that no formal Palestinian state currently exists, recognition now is at best an in-principle decision. The real and far more difficult decision relates to the shape and form of an eventual Palestinian state, given Israel’s defiant, intransigent opposition, repeated this week by Israel’s Prime Minister, to any form of Palestinian state ever. In this regard, it was notable that Peters attended the two-state side meeting at the United Nations, a further indication of New Zealand’s likely upcoming announcement.

Given New Zealand’s support for a two-state solution since the 1990s, the tardiness of the government’s response to calls for recognition of Palestine has been appalling. The fact that it has descended from the noble aspiration of supporting the right of people to self-determination, to pandering to a Foreign Minister’s ego to look good on a world stage is unconscionable    

Meanwhile, while it plays these games, innocent people in Gaza continue to be slaughtered.