Why Should Hamas Listen to PNG?

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“Yu harim tok blo me, em bai mi harim tok blo yu.”

In Tok Pisin, this saying means: if you listen to me, I will listen to you. Respect is mutual. It is a principle that applies not only in daily life but also in diplomacy. Yet PNG’s current posture toward Hamas reveals a contradiction. We ignored them in 2023, and now in 2025, we expect them to heed us.

Timeline of PNG’s engagement with Israel and Hamas: Embassy opened in Jerusalem (Sept 2023), Hamas attack on Israel (Oct 2023), Prime Minister Marape’s statement to Hamas (Aug 2025), and Australia’s recognition of Palestine (Sept 2025).

Credit: Source: AI-generated

When PNG opened its embassy in Jerusalem on 5 September 2023, Hamas publicly warned us not to proceed. They cautioned that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would be seen as provocation. PNG did not listen. We went ahead, acting on our sovereign right to align with Israel. That choice reflected our interests and our foreign policy tradition, not Hamas’s wishes.

Barely a month later, on 7 October 2023, Hamas carried out its infamous attack on Israel. This atrocity changed the global context. Hamas ceased to be merely a political irritant in PNG’s embassy decision and became the symbol of international terrorism. From that day, PNG could never credibly treat Hamas as a legitimate counterpart in diplomacy.

Fast forward to 15 August 2025. Prime Minister James Marape publicly urged Hamas to end hostilities, release hostages, apologize for the October 7 massacre, and commit to peace. But here lies the contradiction: if we refused Hamas’s request in 2023, why should they now respect ours? By their logic, the Tok Pisin principle applies — they do not need to listen to a country that ignored them.

Prime Minister James Marape urged Hamas to end hostilities and commit to peace in August 2025, nearly two years after PNG opened its embassy in Jerusalem.

Credit: Source: Post-Courier

The problem is not with the embassy decision itself. PNG made a sovereign choice, consistent with its foreign policy doctrine. The problem is with inconsistent messaging. We cannot claim selectivity in choosing Israel, then speak as if we hold sway over Hamas. Words directed at actors we dismissed from the outset will always fall flat.

This contradiction becomes clearer when we revisit our doctrinal history. At Independence, PNG followed “Friends to All, Enemies to None.” But in 1982, after review, we shifted to “Active and Selective Engagement.” That doctrine, still in place today, demands deliberate choices of partners, based on interest and strategy. Importantly, since 1982 there has been no new foreign policy white paper approved by Parliament. For more than four decades, our international conduct has been guided by this single doctrine, without an updated national consensus on how to handle today’s global complexities.

The embassy in Jerusalem was a textbook act of Active and Selective Engagement. PNG chose Israel deliberately, knowing it would anger Hamas and align us with countries recognizing Jerusalem. That was consistency. But Prime Minister Marape’s call on Hamas in 2025 risks inconsistency — we cannot reject them as illegitimate, then act as if our words will matter to them.

Complicating the matter is Australia’s recent announcement that it will recognize a Palestinian state at the UN in September 2025. Canberra’s recognition, conditional on excluding Hamas from governance, introduces divergence between PNG and its closest strategic partner. This will complicate PNG’s position in the Pacific Islands Forum and at the United Nations, where peers may press for more “balanced” positions. PNG cannot afford to appear reactive or contradictory in this environment.

What PNG needs is deeper research into Middle Eastern affairs. Too often, statements from Waigani appear rushed, ungrounded in serious analysis. If PNG is to operate credibly under Active and Selective Engagement, then our selectivity must be informed by evidence, not impulse. Without solid analysis, we risk making baseless declarations that weaken our credibility abroad.

The embassy decision was deliberate, selective, and consistent with our doctrine. Our messaging since then must match that standard. If we did not listen to Hamas in 2023, we should not expect them to listen to us in 2025. For PNG to speak with credibility, we must align our words with our doctrine and ground our foreign policy in serious research. The media, too, has a duty to explain these complexities without bias, so that the public understands both our commitments and our contradictions. Only then can PNG debate its foreign policy with maturity, guided by principles set more than forty years ago but still in force today.

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