On Monday, May 5, a Forum at Columbia University will feature Jeffrey Sachs, world renowned public intellectual and Ivana Hughes, charismatic President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, in a discussion, which I am also honored to take part. I hope as many of subscribers will attend online.
Here is the link, the time is 4:45 EDT.
ttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/81521733678?pwd=IN1ItX3mclbNJi0gBIxTd2kUgszywB.1
Meeting ID: 815 2173 3678
Passcode: 424699
[Prefatory Note: The post below was originally published by the Qods News Agency in English and Farsi versions in later April 2025. It is here republished in modified form, although the initial questions are retained. The central issue considered is the primacy of geopolitics in relation to international law, global justice, and universal morality. Consideration is given to the role of international law in activating civil society by legitimating resistance in the face of severe instances of direct and indirect criminal wrongdoing—humanitarian intervention, civic solidarity initiatives, peoples tribunals]
Response: A useful starting point is the realization that despite the views of a strong majority of governments representing most peoples of the world are opposed to the post-October 7 criminality of Israel in Gaza. And despite this, the organized international community as centered in the UN has proved helpless to enforce the basic provisions of the UN Charter and international law in this situation even in the face of a humanitarian emergency that urgently needs to be stopped, not just for the sake of the Palestinian victims, but for the credibility of humanity with respect to upholding the basic elements of the right to life. These conditions making international action imperative are reinforced by near unanimous interim rulings of the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court that have been angrily rejected by Israel, and arrogantly regarded as ‘without legal merit’ by Israel’s strongest supportive, complicit governments in North America and Europe.
What has become clear in this process is that the UN was not designed to be effective whenever, as here, adherence to international law (and morality) clashes with the strategic interests and geopolitical role of one or more of the five permanent membersof the Security Council, UN’s the only organ with enforcement authority. Each of these five, known as the P5, enjoys a right of veto that legally nullifies majoritarian preferences, and introduces an anti-democratic component into the core functioning of the UN. It is instructive to realize that when it comes to peace, security, and fundamental human rights the UN was never intended to be a new framework for world order.
The UN from the start was a winners’ framework based, as earlier in what was regarded as an ‘anarchic society in which the prevalence of power in relation to law in contexts of clash was taken for granted and seen to be ingrained in international practice. To appease public opinion this underlying reality was somewhat disguised by the lofty idealistic language of the Preamble to the Charter. If this was not the intention of the founders of the UN it would make no sense to give the winners in 1945, the world’s most dangerous political actors, a path to total impunity for all that they might undertake, however destructive of a global rule of law, to promote national interests in war/peace and conflict situations. If as some have argued, the intention was to recognize inequality or civilizational diversity as architectural features of world order, then it made no sense not to give India and Brazil seats at the table or Indonesia (the most populous Islamic state) or Nigeria (for Africa) and Brazil (for Latin America). The failure to institutionalize these other criteria of inequality exhibited both ‘a winner.takes all approach to global order’ in combination with taking steps to assure the enduring dominance of global order by the Global North.
In light of this, if the peoples or governments of the world seriously seek the enforcement of international law as pronounced by the ICJ in the face of a P5 SC veto, we must turn to civil society activism. What the near unanimous interim rulings of the ICJ on 26 March 2024 and its strong Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024 establish beyond any reasonable doubt is the existence of a crippling enforcement gap with respect to the implementation of international law. Past instances, including the anti-war movement that challenged the US-initiated Vietnam War and the anti-apartheid campaign that struggle against South African racism, suggest that the mobilization of civil society in relation to law and justice can contribute to closing this gap in situation that find international institutions and governments paralyzed, or worse, are to varying degrees complicit.
There is a creative interaction present in relation to Israel’s criminal course of action in Gaza. Despite the enforcement gap judicial institutions are influential sources of legitimacy that lend credibility to a variety of global solidarity initiatives, including BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions), pressuring governments to enact arms embargoes, mass protests, declarations by organized labor and faith community, civil disobedience and self-immolation, and others. Such a mobilization on a global scale is already spontaneously happening to some extent and may have already reached a tipping point that exerts decisive pressure, especially on Israel and United States, although not yet with discernable behavioral results that bring closure to the Palestinian ordeal. The cruel repression of protest activity in the US and Israel is both a reactive demonstration of the growing effectiveness and of the shameless refusal of liberal democracies to coordinate their behavior with their self-righteous claims to be champions of international human rights norms, benevolently guiding ‘a rules-governed world’ that brings stability to international political and economic life.
I am personally associated with the Gaza Tribunal Project that seeks to encourage civil society nonviolent action to be undertaken in a spirit of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for basic rights, above all the inalienable right of self-determination. The GTP does not seek to be a substitute for the ICJ when it comes to identifying authoritative legal guidelines for the peoples of the world. This civil society tribunal was formed and dedicated to overcoming the enforcement gap. It is also committed to delimiting the accountability, complicity, and information gaps as well as to the establishment and maintenance of a permanent archive and permanent record of the Gaza Genocide, including its spillover effects in the West Bank and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Response: Ansarullah (‘helpers of God’ in Arabic; a reference to Houthis in Yemen; an ongoing party in the long unresolved civil war for unified control of Yemeni governance) assertions declarative of the Houthi commitment to solidarity with the Palestinian liberation is an admirable example of an ethnic group acting in a self-sacrificing, brotherly manner in the face of continuing genocide victimizing a kindred long repressed ethnicity. It strikes both substantive and symbolic blows against the criminal actions of Israel and the complicity of the US and other supporters of this transparent genocide enacted in real time, consummated by the commission of daily atrocities brought to the eyes and ears of the world’s peoples in the digital age.
It is a sad commentary on contemporary world order that so few governments and ethnicities, express by their words and even more by their deeds, a comparable passion to that of Yemeni Houthis. It is further revealing that those few governments that do exhibit some visible degree of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle are all situated in the Global South. It suggests that even after the formal collapse of colonialism, the US Government continues to project western imperial power through its political and economic leverage, and militarism. These domineering characteristics of post-Cold War global order are sustained by a worldwide network of military bases, regime-changing interventions, and navies in every ocean.
The result since the end of the Cold War is a new unified form of geopolitical governance of the planet. This US-led dominance is an alternative to either the moderate decentralism of sovereign states or a more centralized world order system administered by democratic regional and global institutions. A third possibility, not yet tested or legitimated, although glimpsed in the warnings of Samuel Huntington, first set forth in 1992, that the sequel to the Cold War would not be a peaceful world order, but a clash of civilizations. This would amount to some sort of hybrid arrangement bonding regional or civilizational political orders with global institutions on one side and sovereign states on the other. At this time, such a form of hybridity is dramatized by the fate of the Palestinian people, with several white western states aligned with Israel while diverse Islamic political forces actively support the Palestinian struggle by forcible resistance..
Response: I think it is true that this last post-ceasefire resumption of the genocidal assault on the people of Gaza, cruelly implemented by Israel’s weaponization of food shortages, polluted water, and medical supplies, facilities, and personnel has isolated Israel as a toxic rogue state among the peoples of the world. It has also posed the greatest moral/political/legal challenge of the 21st Century to the entire world of states, institutions, and peoples.
The ICJ in its authoritative Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024 as overwhelmingly endorsed by the UN General Assembly in one of the most important acts of the long existence of the GA expressed by a vote of 124 in favor, 14 opposed, and 43 abstentions. This judicial action put a reasoned end to the lawfulness of the further administration of Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) by Israel during the 1967 War. [A/RES/ES-1024; revealingly, the original request with the closer vote came on 11 November 2022, that is before October 7, 2023 while the latter vote in September 2024 (or 11 months after the attack on Gaza) by the GA to the ICJ for an AO on the OPT enjoyed only a narrow margin of support with a vote of 87-26(opposed)-53(abstentions)] The resolution in the GA after ICJ’s judgment ordering Israel to end its ‘unlawful presence’ in OPT, including East Jerusalem no later than 12 months from the date of the GA Resolution on 19 September 2024. This was a clear sign that even among governments, Israel had a lower reputational standing in view of carry out its Gaza policy in the interval between the two GA actions. Equally significant was the ICJ pronouncement that the UN as an organization as well as member states in their individual capacity had a legal obligation to implement the legal findings in the Advisory Opinion. In effect, it was not just ‘advice’ from the ICJ but ‘mandatory guidance’ as interpreted and pronounced by the ICJ. Of course, it remains doubtful that either the ICJ or GA possesses the political traction to overcome the enforcement gap even in the face of this strong appeal by the most respected international institution, confirming even in relation to transparent and prolonged genocide that geopolitics retains its primacy in international relations..
Whether this isolation of Israel will be facilitated by militant civil society initiatives is a currently unanswerable question. The legal and moral foundations for such militancy exist. It is now a matter of whether a sufficient political will exists to prompt sufficient action along these solidarity lines. Also relevant is whether governments in the non-West are prepared to take a greater role in sheltering such civic action and activists from various forms of backlash organized by Israel and implemented by the formidable Zionist network of support that exerts considerable direct and indirect influence, especially in the US and parts of Europe, not only as a junior partner to the US effort to be a regional hegemon in the Middle East, but through reviving memories of Jewish victimization during the Holocaust and a more wide ranging ‘weaponization of antisemitism.’.
[Prefatory Note: Over time, the role of the Special Rapporteur as established by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate and report upon Israel violations of human rights in Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967, has gradually assumed increasing importance as a source of reliable information and enlightening analysis. The position of SR is both unpaid and demanding, and is aggravated recently by often harmful and always hurtful defamatory attacks from pro-Israeli NGOs, most notably UN Watch based in Geneva and NGO Monitor with headquarters in New York City. It is a fact that the SR influence has grown over time as have the intensity of these attacks on the SR truth-bearing messengers. The mean spirited attacks seem to have as their main purpose a diversion of attention away from the message. Ms. Albanese’s experience was preceded by that of the SR signatories of the support letter below. Our milder although similar experience of defamation is set forth in the course of a book entitled Protecting Human Rights in Occupied Palestine: Working Through the United Nations, Clarity Press, 2022, with a forward by Ms. Albanese.
This double dynamic has reached its climax during the first three-year term of Francesca Albanese tenure as SR that happened to coincide with Israel’s genocidal response to the October 7 Hamas-led attack, which instead of opposition elicited the active complicity of North American and leading European governments and the passive complicity of Arab and many other governments around the world, with a few notable exceptions, including South Africa, Colombia, and Chile. In this period, the excellence of Ms. Albanese’s SR reports made a major impact on civil society awareness. They added professional competence as to why allegations of Israeli genocide were well-grounded in law and fact. Her energetic and courageous high visibility talks in all parts of the world at the invitation of a great variety of organizations made her a prime target of vicious smears by Zionist support groups, especially in the West, characterizing her without a shred of evidence as ‘a notorious antisemite.’ As with Israeli bombing of Gaza, Israel’s acknowledged intention is not to be accurate but to inflict maximum damage. In this case, the battlefields are symbolic yet the blood of victims spills.
This pattern of increased reliance on SR reports also reflects an awareness of Israel’s formidable, sophisticated, and well-funded efforts to shape the public discourse on Israel/Palestine, and the acceptance by the most influential Western media platforms of a one-sided approach that gives consistent priority to Israel’s spin on developments in Gaza and the West Bank. The separate reports of the SR to the Human Rights Council and General Assembly each year have become the go-to source trustworthy relevant information and analysis for anyone seeking objective assessments of the ongoing Palestinian ordeal, now reaching a peak with the connivance of the Trump presidency and a totally subservient Congress.
We welcome this opportunity to congratulate Francesco Albanese on the renewal of her second three-year term, and take note of the shameful effort of Israel, US, Germany, and a few other UN members to end the Mandate concerned with Occupied Palestine altogether. Given the personal abuse to which she was subjected, it is a tribute to Ms. Albanese commitment and courage that she is willing to endure further abuse for another three years.
We celebrate her achievements, and join with those who feel that a Nobel Peace Prize would be a highly deserved recognition of her contributions to peace and justice to so recognize her achievements. Some are even suggesting that her credentials of service to the UN while under fire make her an ideal candidate to become the first female Secretary General of the Organization. The UN needs a person that can take the heat of abusive criticism at a time when the UN’s most powerful member is an undisguised opponent of internationalism and even cooperative problem-solving on a global scale. Given these realities it is almost inconceivable that such an inspirational choice will be made at the UN any time soon. Among other hurdles, it would only become technically possible in the highly unlikely event that the five permanent members of the Security Council gave their approval.
Should I ever be asked, Francesca would certainly receive my vote based on her extraordinary performance but also as an expression of my hopes for a stronger, more relevant UN in the future when called upon with a sense of urgency to stop genocide and uphold global security in the manner set forth in the UN Charter.]
\\\*****////SR Letter to Jürg Lauber\\\*****///
3 April 2025
To your excellency, Jürg Lauber, President of the Human Rights Council;
We write as former Special Rapporteurs of the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967 with reference to the reappointment of Francesca Albanese to this position. We are conversant with her work since becoming Special Rapporteur, which we commend, and for Jürg Laubers the basis for this message of enthusiastic support for her reappointment, which we understand is scheduled to be voted on 4 April 2025.
We have learned that a small number of governmental members of the HRC have indicated their intention to vote against Ms. Albanese. We find this show of opposition to be irresponsible and harmful to the United Nations, which stands for excellence of performance combined with accuracy and objectivity of analysis. Ms. Albanese has been confronted with extreme behavior on the part of Israel, including flagrant instances of disregard of basic provisions of international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and the Genocide and Apartheid Conventions, as well as those obligations incumbent on an Occupying Power to extend protection to the civilian population of the Occupied society in all circumstances. With insight and careful research Albanese has called world attention to these patterns of wrongdoing as is her duty as Special Rapporteur.
Against this background of Israel’s lawlessness, Ms. Albanese, by her reports and public appearances has brought these patterns of Israeli violation of international law to the attention of millions all over the planet. She is trusted by the many of the most influential media platforms and is a frequent participant in webinars, academic conferences, and media events. Under the most difficult of circumstances, she is doing exactly what she is supposed to do as a UN SR. Having ourselves been attacked unfairly and inaccurately when similarly acting on behalf of the UN we feel great sympathy for our friend Francesca who has been mercilessly smeared and misrepresented in this unseemly effort by Israel and its partisans to shift attention from her message to her alleged lack of credibility as a messenger due to the diversionary slur of being a ‘virulent antisemite.’
As suggested, we not only ardently support reappointment, but believe the work of Ms Albanese should be formally acknowledged and praised by the top echelons of UN officials. In our judgment, she has received in the past insufficient support in carrying out difficult missions on behalf of the UN in her unpaid role as SR operating in a particularly dangerous atmosphere. She has the right to expect to be insulated from such irresponsible and false invective. We hope that you will be able to congratulate Francesca Albanese after she is reappointed tomorrow.
Respectfully yours,
John Dugard, Richard Falk, and Michael Lynk
\\\******///
[Prefatory Note: This poem was initially published in TRANSCEND Media Service (TMS) on April 14, 2025. It is by the Hawaiian poet, Puanani Burgess, who also engages in healing and reconciliation activities. It made me think that we who have brought children into the world have often been complacent when it comes to giving them names, which can be lifelong gifts or unwanted challenges. When we name our child it ideally manifests love and our hopes, offering guidance at the unconscious levels of being, and if lucky, of becoming, telling us of who we are and wish to be. I thank Puanani Burgess for making me think of naming as our initial, sometimes pre-natally expressed, act of parenting.]
Choosing My Name
Puanani Burgess
When I was born my mother gave me three names:
Christabelle, Yoshie, and Puanani
Christabelle was my “English” name,
My social security card name,
My school name,
The name I gave when teachers asked me for my “real” name
A safe name
Yoshie was my home name
My everyday name,
The name that reminded my father’s family
That I was Japanese, even though
My nose, hips, and feet were wide,
The name that made me acceptable to them
Who called my Hawaiian mother kuroi mame (black bean),
A saving name
Puanani is my chosen name
My piko name connecting me back to the ‘āina
And the kai and the po’e kahiko
My blessing, my burden,
My amulet, my spear
Puanani Burgess
********************
Hawaiian Word Definitions:
__________________________________________________________
“Choosing My Name” is a poem written by Hawaiian author, Puanani Burgess. It can be found in her book, Growing Up Local: An anthology of poetry and prose from Hawai’i.
Puanani Burgess (1947 -2024) was a poet, priest, aunty, and friend to many. She was a community activist in the Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement for over fifty years. As the designer and facilitator for Building the Beloved Community – a process that brings ceremony, storytelling, and circles of trust and respect – Aunty Pua shared Native Hawaiian practices throughout the world to bring healing and reconciliation. She served as the Myles and Zilphia Horton Chair for the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee and as a community scholar in residence at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawai’i. Aunty Pua was an ordained Zen Buddhist priest in the International Daihonzan Chozen-ji.
“You want to make a difference? Then start by looking within.” – Aunty Puanani Burgess
[Prefatory Note: The post below is based on my responses to Murat Sofuoglu, a journalist working for TRT World in Turkey devoted to the Reappointment of Francesca Albanese, published on 4/3/25. Although the article relies on the interview, its tone and content are quite different. This is another pivotal moment for the UN, and specifically for its Human Rights Council, raising the question whether the Organization is subject to geopolitical manipulation in addressing controversial issues that test the UN’s political independence. Tomorrow the UN Human Rights Council Assembly of Governments will vote on whether to reappoint Francesca Albanese as Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestinian Territories for a second term of three years. She has been accused of ‘virulent antisemitism’ in carrying out this controversial role.]
Will the UN Pillory Francesca Albanese?
1. How do you feel about her mandate extension vote on April 4?
The renewal of a Special Rapporteur mandate after three years for an additional and final term of three years completes six years of unpaid voluntary service to the UNHuman Rights Council. Having known many SRs, especially during my own six years as SR for Occupied Palestine (2008-2014), I encountered not a single case of non-renewal for a second term as SR. Unlike the initial appointment, which is by consensus, that is, there must be no dissenting votes by governments that are members of the Human Rights Council, the second three-year term is by majority vote.
In the case of Francesca Albanese, the argument for her approval is overwhelmingly strong. She has displayed great energy and commitment in meeting the challenge of this sensitive position despite encountering irresponsible opposition since day one to her performance at every turn led by the Israeli partisan civil society organization, UN Watch. She has been repeatedly attacked as an antisemite, which is totally a totally defamatory smear that has been repeated by Israeli media and lobbying organizations around the world even influencing Western governments to varying degrees. Similar attacks, although less ferocious, have been directed at each of the three SRs that preceded Francesca Albanese. Knowing her well, I can affirm that she is a person of the highest moral character, a true champion of human rights, and someone who is entirely free from prejudice against any ethnicity, including of course the Jewish people. At the same time, she is an unsparing critic of Israel as a state guilty of settler colonial policies and practices that made the Palestinian people suffer extreme harm and hardships since 1948. Isreal and its minions around the world have increasingly relied on a ‘politics of diversion,’ which has meant in this setting to shift as much attention as possible away from the message and toward the credibility of the messenger.
2. Do you believe that she will be reappointed as Special Rapporteur by the UN Human Rights Council?
If Albanese is not reappointed it will be greatly damaging to the reputation of the UN, and particularly the Human Rights Council as it would represent a punitive response to her courageous diligence and overall competence that warrants praise and unconditional support given the surrounding circumstances. She has produced the most widely read and influential SR reports in the entire history of the HRC during her first term, which coincided with a period of Israeli behavior widely condemned by world public opinion as an instance of transparent genocide reported to the world in real time by virtue of digital age communications. Her two reports on Israeli genocide are carefully researched and presented in accord with the highest scholarly standards and widely discussed in the media and academic gatherings. Instead of her appointment coming under special scrutiny, her performance should be celebrated as contributing to a knowledge-based understanding of the relations between state violence and international criminal law in the context of allegations of genocide.
3. How do you see pro-Israeli opposition against her reappointment?
It seems likely that Israel, although not a member of the HRC, will go all out in denouncing Albanese, and treat her as the poster child of UN antisemitic hostility to Israel, a country that Israeli supporters argue is being held to higher standards than any other country in the world only because it is a self-proclaimed Jewish state. Such a propagandistic contention ducks the substantive question as to whether Israel has responded to the October 7 Hamas attack by engaging in practices that violate the Genocide Convention.
It is quite likely, although far from certain, that the heavy load of opposing Albanese will be carried by UN Watch, a notorious NGO that unconditionally defends every Israeli atrocity by engaging in repeated character assassinations of those like Albanese are brave enough to mount fact- and law-based criticisms. The recent withdrawal of the US from the HRC is probably helpful from the perspective of weakening pressure on Western governments to oppose her reappointment, although a few European states have expressed opposition to the reappointment of Albanese and indicate that that they might vote against her. It is possible that unconvincing allegations of receiving funding and paid travel in violation of UN rules could be brought up in the HRC debate to discredit her in the course of a debate prior to the vote.
It is also possible that Israel will see the writing on the wall, and not further tarnish its own reputation by openly opposing such a qualified candidate for reappointment, but doubtful. Israel is more likely to seize the occasion as one more way to castigate the UN for spreading venomous slander by shielding anti-Israel personnel and promoting their racist attitudes. This is shameful, of course, in view of Israel’s own criminal behavior being convincingly condemned by the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court in several near unanimous authoritative decisions.
4. During her first term, her outspokenness against Israeli policies and genocide in Gaza has marked an extraordinary period in UN history and even for human rights struggle in world history. How do you reflect to support and opposition she has received during this period?
The overwhelming majority of people in the world endorse the views professionally set forth in Francesca Albanese’s fine reports to the HRC that have activated the moral conscience of the world to endorse allegations of genocide and other crimes that she has documented and denounced. On the basis of such reports, it is a source of widespread disappointment that the UN and leading states have failed to enforce international law in ways that protect the long-suffering Palestinian people against such flagrant unlawful and unjust treatment. Palestine have been victimized and persecuted in their own homeland ever since Israel was established in 1948. International law has been authoritatively declared. What is missing is its ‘enforcement.’
This ‘enforcement gap’ must be closed if the human rights of vulnerable people are to be protected. This involves more than ending impunity for Israel. It requires UN reform, especially limiting the role of the veto power given to the five winners of World War II in the Security Council and empowering the General Assembly to enforce international law whenever the Security Council is somehow blocked in the future from carrying out its basic undertakings, especially as here where apartheid, genocide, ecocide, as well as flagrant collective punishment are at stake.
In the immediate instance of this crucial reappointment vote on April 4th, it is essential that the UN meets the challenge of supporting a brave, dedicated, and talented SR who has persisted in her role despite receiving little by way of support from the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and other high level UN civil servants, including the High Commissioner of the HRC, Volker Türk. There have been unanswered calls from her removal from the SR position by members of the US Congress and in an unverifed public statement by the former US Special Envoy on Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, that the UN Secretary General called Albanese ‘a horrible person’ in private conversation. [Times of Israel, Jan. 15, 2025] Not to be outdone, Hillel Neuer, longtime director of UN Watch, submitted a 55 page document to the SG that outlined Albanese’s violations of the UN Code of Conduct that is applicable to those who serve the UN. His wider view was unrelenting view that Albanese was disqualified for reappointment because of the consistent antisemitism she exhibited in carrying out the UN mandate on Occupied Palestinian Territories.
This test case at the HRC tomorrow will cast another dark shadow over the UN reputation should a majority of HRC member states vote against Albanese’s reappointment. It would create a terrible precedent for the future as well as render a grave personal injustice in the present. It would discourage many persons of conscience from taking on these voluntary positions at the UN that are neither compensated nor insulated from the whiplash of geopolitics and the dangers of being unprotected by the UN in the face of threats and disgraceful insults.
d the link below.
[Prefatory Note: The post below was published in a modified form as an opinion piece by the Andalou Agency in Turkey on February 27 with the title Trump’s Riviera Proposal for Gaza’s ‘Day After. Trump’s brazen imperial outreach, articulated with neither qualifications, embarrassment, nor some claim of benevolence. In similar evasions of the sovereign rights of Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Mexico Trump early in his second term as the US President has shaken the stability of the Westphalian world order, at least as it emerged from World War II..
This rebirth of overt Western imperial expansionism seems part of a geopolitical shakeup that looks also to bypass the long Atlanticist partnership with Europe, denigrates alliance diplomacy, implements anti-immigrant exclusionary policies, as well as pursues a regressive form of economic nationalism that wields tariffs as a weapon and tacitly aspires to be a market-driven economic superpower that either challenges or eclipses a state-guided Chinese economic superpower, while these rivals each engage openly in anti-democratic patterns of domestic governance.
Against this background, the removal of the rubble and the people of Gaza and in their place create a new fantasy playground for affluent (and insensitive) tourists is a metaphor for the crassest imaginable human sensibility that avows banishing a people decimated by genocide from their homeland, a shock display of human cruelty when empathy is absent and greed takes over. However enacted, Trump’s plan inflicts a permanent punishment on the survivors of the Gaza death camp in collaboration with the main perpetrator of a transparent genocide.
The wider Trump plan for Palestine can be summed up in a single word: erasure. it was recently signified by the mandatory US adoption of the biblical name for the West Bank long in use in Hebrew discourse within Israel–Judea and Samaria. This together with other signals from Washington suggesting that Israel’s annexation of part or even all of the West Bank would be endorsed by the US Government in defiance of the international and UN understanding of the legal and political status of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).]
The US President, Donald Trump, surprised the world with his proposal for the reconstruction and development of Gaza after the Israeli genocide subsides. The main features of the plan were forced transfer of the surviving Palestinian population to foreign countries and the takeover of the Gaza Strip by the United States to manage the formidable reconstruction effort, with financing mainly extracted from the Arab governments in the region, especially the rich Gulf countries, as the price of sustaining the geopolitical protection services provided for decades for regimes isolated from their own citizenry. As the Saudi ruler, Mohamed bin Salman put it succinctly some months ago, “I don’t care about the Palestinians, but my people do.”
Since its issuance on February 4, 2025 at a White House press conference at which Trump was standing next to the visiting Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the global response to the plan was largely one of shock unaccompanied by awe. Even the Israelis seemed initially puzzled by how to respond, Netanyahu displaying a soft form of support, likely pragmatically driven, for the general contours of the proposal, but with an explicit endorsement only of its most objectionable feature–the clear commitment to the ethnic cleansing of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza, which currently numbers over two million severely traumatized Palestinians. How could it be otherwise? To date, Israel has officially refrained from responding to the real estate and imperial aspects of the plan, that is, this bizarre vision of a Middle Eastern Riviera and an imperial US grab of land over which they had neither a prior claim nor a present connection.
From the perspective of human rights and international law population transfer was the characteristic of the plan that unsurprisingly generated the most opposition, first of all from the Palestinians, but also from persons and governments of minimal conscience all over the world. A weak form of justification was offered by Trump and his most loyal supporters, mainly in the US, in the form of insisting that no approach to Israel’s Gaza problem has previously had worked, so it was time to try something different. Yet an outlandish, one-sided proposal that serves Israel’s interests by depopulating the Occupied Palestinian territory in a manner that would exceed the largest and most dramatic previous forced removal of Palestinians since the nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 when upwards of 750,000 Palestinians were coerced and terrorized to leave their homes, many soon to discover that their villages were being demolished, and learn that their right of return bestowed by international law and human decency was to be forever denied.
These days Palestinians disagree about whether this phase of massive ethnic cleansing should be treated as a second nakba or the nakba be viewed as a continuous process of the denial of the most basic rights of the Palestinian people and is continuing. It commenced in 1948 (or earlier) and continues into the present, denominated by Ilan Pappe as ‘incremental genocide.’ Both perspectives have merit. A focus on the most traumatic events is illuminates the high points of oppression and abuse while giving attention to the continuity of abusive denial of rights in apartheid structures and genocidal policies and practices of the Israel occupation also captures the essence of the Palestinian narrative of ethnic repression, exploitation, and resistance in their own homeland.
No abuse is more continuous in this tragic history of the Palestinian people than is the denial of their most basic right of all, the right of self-determination, a legal entitlement of all peoples, enshrined as common Article 1 in both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights that both entered into force in 1966, and were preceded by expressions of international consensus that stressed the affirmation of a right of resistance against colonial rule that included armed struggle.
It is also significant that the UN, often the target of Israel’s defamation due to its record of symbolic support of Palestinian rights over the years, was itself responsible for a crucial denial of Palestinian human rights by its proposed solution of the emergent struggle for the future of Palestinian in 1947 by way of decreeing partition of mandate Palestine, which amounted to a continuation of British colonizing tactics of ‘divide and conquer.’ The Zionist movement accepted the partition proposal, as set forth in General Assembly Resolution 181, while the Arab governments and the representatives of the Palestinian people rejected it leading to the 1948 War. Such a division was to be expected as all along the Zionist Project was opportunistic in taking what it could get in various political climates but never abandoning its ambition to have all of Palestine. The Palestinian refused to go along with a sequel to the quasi-colonial administration of Palestine after World War I that was couple with the British pledge in the Balfour Declaration to support the Zionist Project at least to the extent of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It is important to recognize that this encroachment on Palestinian basic rights preceded by more than a decade the rise of Hitler in Germany.
This tactical ploy by the leadership of the International Zionist Movement of pretending to be satisfied by an improvement of their position in relation to their goals was a master stroke of international public relations. In this sense ‘partition’ was an improvement on the UK colonialist Balfour Declaration that pledged support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine but not a state, while partition offered the Jewish people a state of their own. From a Palestinian perspective the UN was furthering the colonialist goals of Britain, which sought to neutralize Palestinian nationalism by the counterweight of Jewish immigration, and its competing nationalist vision, which indeed backfired by producing a Zionist phase of anti-colonial struggle seeking the removal of British hegemonic presence in Palestine under the guise of being the mandatory power with a supposed ‘sacred trust’ from the League of Nations to promote the wellbeing of the people under its protective control.
Trump’s proposal is an extremist version of this practice of denying Palestinians any agency over their own future as a people or a nation. The initiative issuing from the White House presumes an imperial prerogative and a reminder that Orientalism persists in the 21st Century here taking the form of self-proclaimed superior Western civilizational management and entrepreneurial skill when if comes to global problem-solving. As if to be unashamed of such an approach Trump makes not the slightest claim that he has consulted with respected Palestinian leaders or even sought genuine Arab or Turkish advice, much less their overt endorsement, although he did claim with evidence or concrete references enthusiasm for the plan among those had previously discussed these intentions.
The only possible saving grace is to suggest that this is an application of Trump’s preoccupation with deal-making in international relations. Seen in this transactional light, he purpose of the Riviera proposals is to agitate other political actors to put forward alternative plans of their own. It was not so implausible as it might at first seemed. The Gulf governments held a meeting prior to an Arab Summit in Cairo with Gaza on the top of the agenda, both in relation to assuming some economic responsibility for restoring viability to the social existence in the Gaza Strip and offering to allow substantial number of Gazans to be transferred to their respective countries. Even if this dynamic produces a more plausible plan for Gaza its evolution seems to exclude Palestinian participation or consent, and if anything, will likely stir a new cycle of militant resistance. The Palestinian people, more generally, have suffered too severely and too long to swallow an arrangement devised by others that does away with its long deferred legal and moral entitlement to self-determination, although it is wrong to be too sure, given the deep trauma, the extension of genocidal tactics to the West Bank and several of Israel’s neighbors, and an undoubted Palestinian ‘realism’ in adjusting to the obstacles standing in the way of liberation.
Subtly embedded in the Trump proposal are valuable ‘get out of jail’ cards for Israel. It is notable that Israel is not even held accountable for reparations or bearing any of the economic or ecological burdens of the multiple challenges of social reconstruction in Gaza, much less are Israeli leaders made accountable for the commission of genocide and related crimes. Instead, the core perverse idea prevails in the West that the victims should pay for the crimes of the perpetrators, yet again prolonging the underlying injustice inflicted for more than a century on the Palestinian people, and certainly not acting in accord with the moral imperatives of law. human dignity, and justice, or even the prudential virtues of regional stability. If anything resembling the Trump Riviera Plan becomes the sequel to the Gaza Genocide, it will most likely produce a range of Palestinian resistance strategies, including forms of armed struggle. Despite the dark shadows hovering over the current situation of the Palestinian people, either long confined to refugee camps or now traumatized by genocidal agendas of forced dispossession, including in the West Bank, the future of Israel is not assured, nor is the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination foreclosed.
[Prefatory Note: This post is modified version of a keynote presentation at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul at the start of an excellent two-day conference entitled :Rethinking International Law After Gaza on August 3-4, 2024.]
Israel’s Recourse to Genocide: Overt Yet Denied
Friends, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen:
It is my great privilege to take part in this important gathering. This conference promises to be the most comprehensive and perceptive attempt to understand the relationship of international law to the horrific happenings in Gaza over the last 10 months. It is most unfortunate for the people of Gaza that the theme of this conference, ‘after Gaza’ was far too optimistic and premature. It’s really during this prolonged ordeal experienced by the whole of Gaza that makes it more appropriate for us to speak of the successes and failures of international law, ‘in light of Gaza’, or ‘with reference to Gaza’ but not wait until “after Gaza” becomes a reality to make a final assessment of ‘international law after Gaza.’
It is with extreme regret that an objective observer is compelled to acknowledge that the genocide continues even during the ceasefire, posing increased threats of wider destructive political violence in the region, which is directly linked to Gaza, and has become an increasing concern and worry as genocide approaches a culminating phase. Before I get to the topic I had been asked to talk about, which is the dismissal of international law as a misleading and useless deception in circumstances of this sort, let me mention a widely circulating misconception, which is an understandable cynicism about the value of international law arises because Israel has so flagrantly disregarded authoritative judgments without adverse consequences. Had Israel complied it would have stopped the genocide in its tracks, and as well, would have ended the occupation of not only Gaza, but the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a near unanimous majority of the International Court of Justice decreed in its historically important Advisory Opinion July 19, 2024.
The international community reflecting the documented views of the leading international Human Rights NGOs had concluded several years ago that the Israeli administration of the Occupied Territories of Palestine commencing after the 1967 War had the adopted the policies and practices of an apartheid regime, and thus the Occupation constituted an international crime associated with racist domination and subjugation. This apartheid assessment suggests further that Palestine and its peoples were being victimized by a form of settler colonialism, suggesting comparisons with the experience of the breakaway British colonies: the United States, Canada, Au\stralia, New Zealand, which had premised their state-building processes and societal stability on systemic racial domination in relation to the resident native peoples, which amounted to apartheid before the crime existed, in effect, ‘apartheid before apartheid.’ .
To the extent that patterns of control didn’t succeed in overcoming resistance to the colonizing project, each of these colonial undertakings increased the severity of their efforts to displace the native population and take advantage of its economic resources. This dynamic generally led to increased resistance, generating a cycle of action and reaction that led to a harsher form of apartheid, and after that if resistance persisted, to a systemic inflection point that in rare instances gives up its criminal path as South Africa surprisingly did, or the regimes supersedes apartheid by recourse to genocidal tactics of dehumanization and mass killing as Israel has done after the Hamas expression of armed resistance that occurred on October 7, and was accompanied by its own commission of war crimes..
In other words, in situations of settler colonialism genocide often becomes a sequel to apartheid in a situation such as existed in Palestine. The historical context has changed. Unlike many earlier genocides, including the Holocaust, the Palestinian experience occurs in a post-colonial, historical atmosphere in which both apartheid and genocide have been criminalized, and a series of anti-colonial wars have brought victory to the resisting native or national population. This historical contextualization is crucial conceptually to enable adequate appreciation of how this reversal of outcomes in encounters between the natives and the colonizers has come about. It also explains the emergent critical reinterpretation of the initial mainstream Western decontextualized interpretations supportive of Israel after the Hamas attack of October 7 with the effect of obscuring the settler colonial dimensions of events on that fateful day.
It was widely observed in the West that the Netanyahu coalition government that took over in January of 2023, was called the most extreme government in Israel’s history. What made it extreme was that it made no secret of its commitment to displace Palestinians from the West Bank by whatever means necessary, and subsequently from Gaza, as well. Always, the West Bank was the prize that the Zionist Project coveted. It never gave up the objective of eventually incorporating the West Bank into Israeli sovereignty. This makes it important to observe the reaction of Israel and the West to October 7 through a settler colonial optic. It also makes relevant an assessment of why the Israeli government ignored the reliable warnings from multiple sources, including the US Government and the Egyptian intelligence services. It also almost impossible to believe that Israel’s sophisticated surveillance capabilities would not have detected the signs of an impending Hamas attack, strengthening still further the conclusion that Israel let October 7 happen so as to have a sufficient rationale for its genocidal response.
It seems reasonable to conclude that Israel let the attack happen or chose to respond in a very tepid way and/or feeble responses on the day of the attack. And what followed cannot be justified by appeals to self-defense or Israeli security, which could have been upheld more efficiently with much less devastation of Gaza’s infrastructure and far fewer Palestinian deaths, injuries, disease, and traumatizing of survivors. So, in other words, what I’m suggesting is that October 7 provided a pretext for what this Netanyahu government already prior to the attack wanted to achieve by way of ethnic cleansing, forcible evacuation and unregulated settler violence, which was given a green light from the day that Netanyahu resumed control of the Israeli government. Settler violence in this pre-October 7 period was often accompanied in by a message pinned to Palestinian cars on the West Bank, ‘leave or we will kill you.’ This is a chilling message for Palestinians already living under an abusive occupation to receive. Such toxic sentiments were given additional credibility by ferocity of settler violence, burning a village and making life miserable for the Palestinians who were supposed to be protected by international humanitarian law against Occupier abuse.
The proper contextualization of what happened in this period preceding Israel’s recourse to genocidal violence is, in my view, very relevant. It gives a territorial rationale for the dehumanizing the Palestinian people as a people. Throughout history there has rarely been such an explicitly undertaken genocide in which the leaders themselves supplied overwhelming evidence of specific intent by their own political language, including its grisly confirmation by Israel’s Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, in the form of formally and publically ordering a total embargo on all Gaza imports of food, fuel, and electricity. Netanyahu’s approving reference to the Amalek passage in The Bible, which proposed killing an adversary of biblical Israel, including every adult, child, and even the animals that were possessed by The Amalek people. This amounts to invoking a genocidal precedent to serve as both a justification for and confession of the nature of the Israeli response.
The Performance of International Law: Disappointing Yet Significant
Turning to what is widely believed in response to the very natural concern as to how one can accept any serious role for international law in this area of global security, war prevention, and international crime after observing how systemically it has been disregarded during this period of time after October 7. This disregard was exemplified by the behavior of the leading Western liberal democracies that profess a fundamental commitment to extending the rule of law to international relations. In the case of Gaza, despite authoritative rulings of the most respected international institutions, leading governments and influential media in the West have refused to grant validity to authoritative judicial rulings by the most respected international tribunals. If you compare the response of complicit countries. especially my own, the US, to Israel’s onslaught against Gaza, with the outraged Western reaction to the Russian attack on Ukraine that relied on a self-righteous invocation of international law in relation to the UN Charter. This appeal to international law in the Ukraine context was reinforced by a Western attempt to involve the International Criminal Court from day one In bringing coercive action against Russian leaders.
Such a position contrasts with the effort to argue that reliance on international law on behalf of the Palestinian people being subjected to this kind of genocide was ‘without legal merit,’ to recall the cavalier dismissal of South Africa’s recourse to ICJ by the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. Such double standards is not only an expression of moral hypocrisy, but also represents an irresponsible tendency to convert international law into a policy instrument useful against adversaries, but unacceptable if invoked against friends. In a very real sense, this amounts to the distinction in the influential fascist jurisprudence developed by Carl Schmitt who denigrated international law unconditionally, and forthrightly conceived of international relations as determined by interactions between ‘friends and enemies.’ Such an outlook viewed norms of moral and legal restraint as applicable only to relations among friends. In dealing with enemies, there are no rules, but only tactics designed to gain victories or avoid defeats. Conflict of a serious kind are resolved by superior displays of hard power.
To be sure, this is a very nihilistic view of international society and the way in which its normative order operates. If there is to be an effective law in the domain of security, it has to have an imperative principle of treating equals equally. The practice of double standards in judgment and action is just the opposite, that is, treating equals unequally based on strategic and geopolitical priorities. This tension between contradictory roles of international law is in the background of statecraft. Reliance on the primacy of geopolitics and disregard of international law is most troubling in this most explicit challenge of this kind faced since the end of World War II. Having so concluded and adding that what however authoritative the judgments and opinions of the International Court of Justice are, there is a near zero prospect that Israel will comply, or that sufficient political will is present to enforce the judgments. It is a critical situation where there exists a first-order humanitarian emergency, and yet the organized international community fails to respond despite the clarity of the law. This failure constitutes “a crisis of implementation.” A clear legal path exists alongside the equally clear geopolitical path, and the latter path has been chosen despite the humanitarian disaster that unfolded.
Despite All, International Law Matters
The dismissal of international law that results from the US and Israel choosing the geopolitical path has been a disaster for the reputation of the liberal democracies of the West, highlighted by the disgraceful welcoming of Netanyahu in 2024 to a joint session of Congress openly honoring one of the worst war criminals since Hitler. So far, I have highlighted the negative experience in the course of the Gaza genocide with respect to the role of international law. It tempts an acceptance of the cynical view that international law doesn’t matter, or it has no positive role to play in international life. I reject this nihilistic interpretation. I want to insist very briefly that despite these serious disappointments and failures, deficiencies, international law continues to matter. It matters for several reasons.
First of all, during the Gaza genocide it was demonstrated that trust in the professionalism of the International Court of Justice can be depended upon in even politically sensitive cases. And further, that ICJ interpretations of the relevance of international law are not subject to political manipulation by backroom interference. In this way, the ICJ can be contrasted with the operational realities of the Security Council and General Assembly, which are explicitly political institutions. Also impressive was the size of the majority at the ICJ that condemned the genocide, calling it ‘a plausible genocide’ in its Interim Judgment and additionally ordering Israel to cease all acts that have a potential genocidal impact. Particularly impressive was the composition of the majority vote that included several Western judges who voted against their country’s political positions on the issues. In other words, the ICJ in this historically important moment demonstrated both professional competence and independent identity, earning widespread public respect as a preferable way of resolving even the deepest international conflicts. This greatly helps establish the ICJ as an important resource for the future and for international juridical development overall.
Furthermore, and particularly with reference to the July 2024 Advisory Opinion on the legality of Israel’s occupation that commenced in the aftermath of the 1967 War the ICJ delivered an authoritative legal assessment. This highest and most revered international judicial tribunal concluding that Israel was systematically and flagrantly in fundamental violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and International Humanitarian Law with respect to its legal duties as the Occupying Power. It called upon the UN and international member states to ensure Israel’s conduct should result in the termination of its administrative rights in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem and its legal obligation to withdraw its presence from Occupied Palestine as rapidly as possible.
A third level of positive contribution by international law in this kind of situation that is often overlooked. It is that such an authoritative rendering of international law lends legitimacy to solidarity initiatives such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement and other forms of civic action putting pressure on Israel to change its ways. International law condemnation of Israel lends a legal foundation for the advocacy of an arms embargo and gives symbolic support to ways of civil society chooses to give policy effects to a growing delegitimation of Israeli behavior. This kind of global civil society activism proved instrumental in the South African context of the successful struggle against apartheid and helped sway the engagement of the US government in the Vietnam War, bringing peace and victory to the militarily weaker military side.
A fourth reason for adopting a more positive view of international law is, what I would call, its pedagogical value in teaching students and concerned citizens around the world what international law prescribes in situations of this kind and why it is important to shape foreign policy by law rather than by military power. And, it builds, in my view, a political consciousness that is much more responsive to law-governed behavior and the future increased influence of a world order perspective that displaces geopolitics in favor of law.
A Concluding Remark
Depending on subsequent developments, Gaza could prove to be a turning point from adherence to a Schmittian worldview of friends and enemies using international law strategically and generate a much stronger effort to make international law an effective regulative framework. Such effectiveness in global security policy domains would then become similar to the manner in which law has long operated in many other sectors of international life, including international diplomacy, the maintenance of stability in the oceans and space, and high levels of compliance in most economic relationships. So, it’s wrong to think of this dismissal of international law extends beyond the boundaries of its supposed role in war prevention, human rights, and the management of global security.
Leaving war prevention and the management of global security to the discretion of winners of World War II is something that was decided back in 1945, and perhaps the biggest mistake in the peace-building approach that prevailed in the aftermath of that most significant of international wars. What we are observing in Gaza is part of the deferred legacy of leaving world peace and the observance of human rights within domain of geopolitics rather than seeking to accept an international law framework binding on the strong as well as the weak.
d Tokyo at the end of World War II. The losers were held accountable by punishing through the judicial processes those accused political, military, and corporate figures that physically survived. while giving impunity to the crimes of the winners, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This whole post-1945 normative order was built on a solid foundation of double standards and moral hypocrisy. We must promote international law as a regulative instrument that binds all members of international society, regardless of the outcome of wars, and repudiate this kind of flirtation with the fascist insistence on linking justice to power. Universities around the world have a momentous potential opportunity to motivate engaged citizenship, and a vocational dedication for justice through law in this time of unprecedented jeopardy for the human species.
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(Prefatory Note: I was surprised pleasantly by this award not often bestowed these days on a faculty member who writes and speaks in a critical voice on core issues of US foreign policy, especially in the context of Middle East politics, and above all with regard to Palestine/Israel, and particularly with someone who like myself early on named Israel’s response to October 7 in Gaza as ‘genocide.’ It is awkward to call such attention to myself but irresponsible not to take note of signs of academic freedom defying a repressive atmosphere in many venues of higher education. This hostility to the traditions of freedom of expression is recently becoming overtly punitive (e.g. terminating $400,000,000 in Federal Grants to Columbia University science programs for its supposed tolerance of antisemitism, itself a manipulated allegation that actually encourages what it claims to be opposing.]
[Prefatory Note: The post below has to do with the decision by the legislative bodies in Israel and the US to hereafter refer internationally to the West Bank by their biblical names, Judea and Samaria. An article by Kazim Aizaz Alam appears in TRT World on February 14 that quotes my responses to an interview he conducted with me on February 12. https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/why-us-israel-want-to-rename-occupied-west-bank-as-judea-and-samaria-18264875
I publish here a somewhat extended version of my response to the two questions put to me. The issue of language, as it with authoritative declarations of applicable law make nothing happen by themselves, but they have potentially great values in the symbolic domains where politics occurs.]
1. Isreal claims that the occupied West Bank — which they’re officially renaming as Judea and Samaria — is an integral part of Israel? Some Israelis cite Biblical references to say that Judea and Samaria form an “inseparable part of the historic homeland of the Jewish people”. What does history say? Do the Palestinians have a counter-argument?
The Biblical references, Judea and Samaria, has long been used in Hebrew discourse about the future of the West Bank, especially internally by Israeli leaders, but was not previously used internationally in deference to the broad consensus among state and at the UN on treating the areas of Palestine West of the Jordan River by English language names in the period of the British Mandate. Reference to the biblical names within
Israel conveyed to Israeli public that the governing leadership had not given up its resolve to incorporate the West Bank within the boundaries of its territorial sovereignty whenever political conditions were favorable to such an enlargement of Israel. although the claim, regardless its status in Jewish religious tradition had no modern legal or moral standing.
By using this kind of messaging adherents of Zionist Project had long been signaling to their adherents a rejection of the establishment of meaningful Palestinian statehood even if they appeared to go along for public relations reasons with the two-state approach. It was always was assumed in international circles that a Palestinian state would have its core reality by way of sovereign rights in the West Bank, as supplemented by a national capital in East Jerusalem and recovery of Gaza linked by corridor to the West Bank. This was the dominant contours of the idea underneath the almost universally promoted ‘two-state solution,’ and earlier provided the basis for the UN partition resolution of 1947 [GA 181, Nov 29, 1947] that was rejected by Palestinians at the time as a division of mandate Palestine decreed by the UN without any legitimating referendum determining the preferences of the residents of Palestine or through the participation on the part of authentic representatives of the Palestinian people in shaping the UN plan. Hence, from Palestinian and Arab perspectives this imposition of partition was regarded as an unacceptable denial of the inalienable Palestinian right of self-determination and by the Zionist Movement as a major victory on the road to Palestinian state, second in importance only to the Balfour Declaration pledging British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, an instance of colonial unilateralism.
The Palestinian argument rests on the legal and moral relation of the two peoples as regulated by international humanitarian law and the 4th Geneva Convention governing situations of belligerent occupation that commenced in the aftermath of the 1967 War. The UN has been ineffectual when it comes to addressing the repeated flagrant violations by Israel, which consistently evaded and defied it legal responsibilities as Occupier. This refusal to adhere to its obligation under international law was exhibited in various ways, above all by the establishment and expansion of Jewish settlements, the annexation of the whole of the formerly divided city of Jerusalem, and a reliance on multiple forms of collective punishment. These were the most prominent Israeli and consistent violations, aside from its failure to uphold its primary legal duties specified in the Geneva Convention to respect and leave unaltered the Occupied territory and unconditionally safeguard its inhabitants. Israel never fulfilled the initial widespread expectations on all sides that its occupation of the West Bank in 1967 would be temporary and short-lived. This was the authoritative expectation underpinning the widely heralded unanimous Security Council Resolution 242 adopted unanimously on Nov. 22, 1967. This UN resolution ambitiously and optimistically delimited the conditions for a durable peace: Israeli withdrawal of security forces; peace within secure and recognized boundaries; freedom of navigation; just resolution of ‘refugee problem,’ and security measures including within de facto demilitarized zones.. None of these conditions came to pass because the Israeli state managers of the Zionist Project were determined at some future opportune time to achieve sovereign control of the West Bank, and signaled this intention when comparative weak and insecure only in Hebrew to avoid an international pushback. The names of the West Bank embodied in Jewish traditions involving a return to the so-called ‘promised land’ were ways of keeping faith with dominant strains of Zionist ideology.
2/ What should the Palestinians, and the supporters of their cause in the rest of the world, do to stop the renaming effort?
The Israel overtness in renaming the West Bank as Judea and Samaria indicated an Israeli intention to make these territorial claims overt and to impart active coercive policies to satisfying its remaining territorial and sovereign claims to the West Bank. Such a move in defiance of the UN framework governing Occupation, which was as noted to be accompanied by an expectation of IDF withdrawal, dismantling of the settlements, protection of Palestinian rights.
Governments and media should refuse to follow this Israeli lead as was unfortunately done by the US Government. It is important in contrast to follow the lead of ICJ in its Advisory Opinion of July 19, 2024 in ordering an end to Israel’s prolonged belligerent occupation, not only by an Israel withdrawal of its forces, but also by repudiating any Israeli territorial sovereignty that occurred during its punitive and abusive occupation that has already lasted almost 58 years. Such perceptions of unlawful Israeli administration of the West Bank underlay the ICJ near unanimous and historically important Advisory Opinion that authoritatively set forth Israel’s violation of international norms of belligerent occupation, and placed Israel under a duty to bring to an immediate end its Occupation regime, putting the UN and member governments under a legal obligation to assure that this would happen.
By this internationalization of the Zionist renaming of the West Bank in accordance with its goals, but in opposition to the international consensus is indicative of the confrontation that seems to be the shared intention of Netanyahu and Trump, but if coercively implemented in a substantive manner will further inflame the dire situation facing the Palestinian people who have been subjected to a genocidal ordeal of the past 16 months, and left the Gaza Strip devastated and its people bare survivors of one of the great humanitarian and ecological disasters of modern times. .
Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He initiated this blog partly in celebration of his 80th birthday.
Global Justice in the 21st Century 