Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continuous pledges of” total success” make it seem unlikely that the killing of Hamas head Yahya Sinwar would have opened a door for the fight in Gaza.
The concept of” complete victory”, however, is incredibly dangerous. Hamas, which carried out the horrifying assault on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, has swiftly reestablished power every moment Israel declares an area free of Hamas and therefore withdraws.
As a result, there has been a noticeable Jewish increase in northeastern Gaza in recent days, and little discussion about a so-called “general’s strategy” being pushed by some right-wing people of Netanyahu’s state.
Concocted by a former Israeli standard, Giora Eiland, the strategy is, in fact, to abandon negotiations, bisect the area and provide northern Gaza’s 400, 000 inhabitants the grim choice between leaving and dying.
Netanyahu’s official backing of the strategy is unknown. Apparently, Israeli officials told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week that they were not putting it into practice. But, it nevertheless has wide support among Israel’s political and military wealthy.
The Israeli army has previously ejected residents of northern Gaza. Anyone who is still alive will be a goal for the military, according to the government, and they will be denied access to food and water.
The World Food Program stated that no food aid entered north Gaza for two weeks in early October despite Israel’s claim that it had stopped obstructing charitable assistance. Although some support has been coming in since that time, thousands of people are still at risk of malnutrition and spreads of avoidable diseases.
Also, many Palestinians, including the tired, older and wounded, are unable to walk and have nowhere to go. The idea of the crowded and exposed camp locations of the north is not particularly alluring.
Israeli human rights organizations claim that the government had purposefully stifled aid to force north Gaza’s population to flee. Israel may now be turning around under the pressure of the United States, which has given Netanyahu’s authorities a 30-day date to boost aid to Gaza or run the risk of losing US weapons financing.
Defaming global conventions and laws
Israel’s warfare against Gaza, and presently Lebanon, has frequently challenged the foundations of the progressive global rules-based get set up after the Second World War, as well as the tenets of international law, international diplomacy, democracy and humanitarianism.
The standards of the democratic world purchase are expressed in various institutions, such as:
- the UN Charter
- the UN Security Council, with its notionally officially bound proposals
- the International Court of Justice ( ICJ) in The Hague
- the Geneva Conventions governing the laws of war
- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- among others, the International Criminal Court’s ( ICC ) Rome Statute, among others.
Lately, the ICJ ruled Israel’s activity of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem is illegal and ordered it to retreat. In reply, Netanyahu said the prosecutor had made a “decision of lies”.
South Africa brought a charge against Israel to the Judge in a different case, alleging that it has done so for the Palestinians over the past year. The nation’s top prosecutor has tentatively ruled there is a “plausible” event for a finding of murder, and said Israel may take measures to ensure its protection.
However, human rights organizations and others have argued that Israel has broken this law, undermining one of the most important institutions of the liberal world order at this time.
Few major democratic nations have been willing to vehemently denounce Israel’s breach of international law in Gaza, or have done so belatedly, let alone intervened in any specific way.
Additionally, the UN Security Council has failed to implement any concrete steps in order to impose both the ICJ’s decisions and its own resolutions, primarily as a result of the US’s veto power.
In contrast to other nations that do n’t have great power patrons, this is causing widespread perceptions of hypocrisy in relation to the accountability of notionally democratic states for alleged violations of humanitarian law.
For instance, the UN Security Council passed a number of resolutions demanding that Saddam Hussein’s regime comply with mandates for weapons inspection in the early 1990s.
These resolutions served as the legal justification for the US and its allies ‘ invasion of Iraq. Ultimately, no weapons of mass destruction were found. Later, Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, claimed that the invasion of Iraq was unlawful and unlawful.
However, numerous UN Security Council resolutions regarding Israel have been passed and are still in effect. The US has vetoed numerous other laws.
In addition to several Hamas leaders who are now dead, the ICC’s prosecutor’s have requested arrest warrants for both Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity.
Some Western politicians were outraged by the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. However, the ICC’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin was widely praised by the West.
Additionally, the US Congress made another attempt to acquiesce to the arrest warrant for Netanyahu, again highlighting the frequently flimsy way in which nation-states apply international law.
A global order experiencing a crisis of legitimacy
Democratic states like to present themselves as the protectors, and sometimes enforcers, of the liberal world order, ensuring continued international peace and security.
Indeed, Israel and its supporters frequently refer to its military actions as the forward defense of the democratic world against tyrannical larger powers as a means of defending itself from adversaries who want to destroy it. The issue is that Israel frequently directly contradicts the liberal world order it claims to support, undermining its legitimacy.
Failure to rein in Israel’s actions has led to accusations of “double standards” regarding international law. 99 % of Israel’s arms imports and diplomatic cover are provided by the US and Germany. Both nations have more power to stop the carnage in Gaza if they wish, despite Germany’s decision to stop importing new weapons into Israel.
The West’s self-abrogated moral superiority is arguably in disarray as it continues to violate the principles of the liberal world order. What will the new world order look like if this one is broken?
Tristan Dunning is sessional academic, School of Social Sciences, Macquarie University, Martin Kear is sessional lecturer, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney, and Shannon Brincat is senior lecturer in politics and international relations, University of the Sunshine Coast
This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.