An Ocean of Peace is NOT Built on Occupation: Pacific Civil questions the Pacific Forum on Israel partnership

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This media statement was issued collectively by the Pacific Regional Non-Governmental Organization (PRNGO) Alliance, including the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN), as a member of the Alliance.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

[SUVA, 23 October 2026] — The Blue Pacific is our oceanic home. It is held together by a weave of shared values passed from our forebears' hands into ours: justice, peace, self-determination and respect for

international law.

We, the members of the Pacific Regional Non-Governmental Organisations (PRNGO) Alliance, representing our diverse constituencies and mandated by them to promote and protect the interests of Pacific Island peoples, declare our deep concern at the admission of Israel as a partner of the Pacific Islands Forum.

The decision taken by our leaders at the 55th Pacific Island Leaders Forum in Palau was announced by Israel, yet the Forum Secretariat has not issued a statement and has already hosted a MASHAV development cooperation Talanoa with Israel.

We understand our communities' real needs for water, food security, agriculture, development and climate adaptation. The urgent need for resources across the region is increasing, and partnerships to secure such are important. Our concern is that the Forum family will welcome, without condition, a state in continuing breach of international law. We reject antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, and mourn every civilian life lost, Israeli and Palestinian.

Upholding International Law

In its Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024, the International Court of Justice found Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful. The ICJ stated that Israel must end it "as rapidly as possible" and evacuate all settlers, and all States must neither recognise it as lawful nor "render aid or assistance" in maintaining it. Our region championed the Court’s climate opinion of July 2025: relying on international law to work for our islands. We cannot invoke the Court for our islands and ignore it for Palestine.

The Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016) affirms that settlements have "no legal validity" and are "a flagrant violation under international law". In addition, the Council’s Resolution 478 (1980) calls on States to withdraw their diplomatic missions from Jerusalem. Yet three Forum members in Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Naoero, have opened embassies there, Samoa has announced plans to follow, and Israel's announcement cites them.

Despite the ceasefire announced on 10 October 2025, the violations continue: UN OCHA reports 1,493 Palestinians killed in Gaza and 4,300 Palestinians displaced from the occupied West Bank since then. Human Rights Watch found Israel's deliberate deprivation of Gaza's water amounts to extermination and acts of genocide. FAO reports nearly 87 percent of Gaza's cropland damaged. The war's emissions, an estimated 33 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, fall on islands like ours. Water, food and climate security cannot be offered with one hand and destroyed with the other.

Under international law, a ceasefire requires a complete halt to the attacks, and allows unimpeded entry of humanitarian relief at scale. It would end unprecedented Israeli settlement expansion and terror, guaranteeing the right of displaced Palestinians to return home, prohibit forcible transfers and end collective punishment.

Our Forum Leaders have called on all the world to uphold the UN Charter, including the sovereign equality of all states and the rights of all peoples to exist in peace and security.

Safeguarding the 'Ocean of Peace'

In September 2025, our Leaders declared the Blue Pacific as an Ocean of Peace, grounded in the UN Charter and international law. As we said in July, a genuine Ocean of Peace means security "founded on justice, sovereignty, self-determination, environmental stewardship and the wellbeing of our peoples". It rests on a strong rejection of militarisation and great power rivalry at our expense. A regional partnership with Israel would further facilitate and advance security cooperation, military technologies and infrastructures, in addition to the growing military exercises and security treaties crowding our ocean.

Pacific regionalism rests on solidarity based on shared values, not merely on shared resources. This partnership will unravel: not strengthen, that weave. It risks dividing the Forum family, tying our voice at the United Nations to bilateral favours, and making the Pacific complicit in a conflict far from our shores. Who stands to benefit from this partnership? Whose voice will it silence?

Another Perpetrating State

The Pacific remembers the cost of occupation, and our peoples continue to struggle under colonisation, nuclear testing and environmental destruction. In Kanaky New Caledonia, Ma’ohi Nui, Guahan and West Papua, the struggle for self-determination continues. West Papua is a long standing item on our Leaders' agenda. Since 2019, they have asked Indonesia, a Forum Dialogue Partner since 2001, to allow a visit by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights — a visit Jakarta offered in 2018. It has not eventuated, yet a similar partnership has brought delay: not accountability. Inviting another state that perpetrates occupation and denies self-determination repeats that mistake, and weakens the principle on which our decolonisation depends.

The PRNGO Alliance therefore calls upon:

The Forum Troika — Solomon Islands, Palau and New Zealand, as past, current and incoming Chairs — to reflect on these concerns as it shapes the new partnership arrangements, and to ensure the participation, consultation and consent of our peoples before such decisions are made in their name
Forum Leaders to review Israel's partnership and suspend all engagements until Israel complies with the International Court of Justice and relevant Security Council resolutions, and to hold every partner to that standard, including by pressing Indonesia to allow the UN High Commissioner's visit to West Papua
The Forum Secretariat to publish the basis for this decision and ensure any partnership agreement with Israel commits it to international law.
Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Naoero to return their embassies to Tel Aviv, consistent with Resolution 478, and Samoa to reconsider its plan.
All Forum members to ensure no partnership, aid, or security, cyber or surveillance cooperation helps maintain the occupation.

Our Forum family is a mat on which everyone enjoys a place to sit. We welcome every partner who joins their strands to that mat, but none who deny other people their place. At the centre of Pacific Regionalism must lie the principle that partnership is measured by justice: not by favours.

ENDS

This statement is issued by the Pacific Regional Non-Governmental Organisations (PRNGO) Alliance and, at the time of publication, is endorsed by: