It was perhaps inevitable that the shock Hamas attack on Israel would become a minor election sideshow in New Zealand. Less than a week from the polls, a crisis in the Middle East offered opposition parties a brief chance to criticise the foreign minister’s initial reaction.
But if it was a fleeting and fairly trivial moment in the heat of a campaign, the crisis itself is far from it – and it will test the foreign policy positions of whichever parties manage to form a government after Saturday.
It can be tempting to see the latest eruption of violence in Gaza and Israel as somehow “normal”, given the history of the region. But this is far from normal.
