Tag Archives: Damascus attack

Netanyahu Failed in Gaza, Tries to Widen War

20 Apr

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[Prefatory Note: Interview by Mohammad Ali Haqshenas, initially published on April 20, 2024, by International Quran News Agency. In light of the relative mildness of the Israeli response, I would revise somewhat my responses below. It now seems either that the US reaction to the Damascus attack or the concerns of the Netanyahu war cabinet rejected, at least for now, the temptations of a wider war. Iran as well seemed to accept an outcome of its retaliation directed at Israel, resulting in neither death nor damage was nevertheless sufficient for its purposes. The overall situation remains unstable, and hence uncertain, but Netanyahu’s escaping accountability for failures in Gaza seems for the present to rule out the option of a wider war against Iran, with US active involvement.]

QNA – Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to achieve goals in the “inhumane” war on Gaza and seeks to widen the conflict, a former UN special rapporteur says.

Netanyahu Failed in Gaza, Tries to Widen War: Ex-UN Rapporteur

“Netanyahu has failed to achieve the goals of Israel’s massively destructive and inhumane response to October 7, leaving his last best option, the widening of the war in ways that make Iran the main antagonist of Western interests,” Richard Anderson Falk, a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, told IQNA.

The comments come amid boiling tensions in the region after the Israeli regime targeted the consular section of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, on April 1.

The attack claimed lives of high-profile Iranian military personnel that were in Damascus on advisory mission.

Faced with the international organizations’ inaction, Tehran decided to respond to the attack. Iranian armed forces launched Operation True Promise with dozens of drones and missiles against military targets in Israeli-occupied territories on April 14.

What follows is the full text of the interview with Professor Falk about the issue: 

IQNA: What do international laws and conventions say when it comes to targeting a country’s diplomatic mission?

Falk: The immunity of consular facilities from international attack is one of the most widely respected and uncontroversial commitments of international law as formalized by the Vienna Convention on Consular Immunity. Even without this Convention Israel would be bound by a similar body of constraints that are considered part of “customary international law” or enjoying the status of “jus cogens” norms, binding on all sovereign states whether or not a treaty exists, and in the event that a treaty exists, being a non-party does not relieve a government of a sovereign state to comply with the legal framework.

In this instance such arguments are unnecessary as both Israel and Iran are parties to the Vienna Convention as are another 191 states. 

IQNA: Following the Israeli strike against the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Tehran urged the United NationsSecurity Council to condemn the strike but the Council failed to do that due to the US support for Israel. What does this inaction mean when we take into account the responsibilities of the UN to maintain international peace?

Falk: Such action in the UNSC by the USA to insulate Israel from its obligation to comply with international law with regard to consular and embassy immunity is a reminder that when it comes to enforcing international law, the UN was designed to be weak, giving a right of veto to the five countries victorious in World War II, which arguably is the UN’s greatest deficiency when it comes to achieving the paramount war prevention goals of the UN.

In effect, the 1945 architects of the UN subordinated upholding international law to according primacy to these five geopolitical actors in relation to enforcement or even interpretation of relevant legal obligations. Although only five countries are accorded a right of veto in the UN Charter, it has been used, especially by the US to thwart the will of the majority of states and of members of the UN by being extended to shield “friends” and allies from accountability.

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Some years ago the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, complained about this situation by the pithy phrase “the world is greater than five.” The world may be greater, but the UN is not. There are many situations of this kind concerned with securing compliance with international law by UN members who cannot veto a proposed UN decision but enjoy a sufficient special relationship with one of the five that suffices to block any UN enforcement initiative taken against it.

IQNA: What are the long-term implications for international law if such attacks go unchecked?

Falk: The implications for international law are what they have always been in modern times. When the obligations of law clash with the strategic interests of powerful states, geopolitical policies prevail, and the core obligation of the rule of law (treating equals, equally) is ignored. This generalization applies to the pre-UN history of international relations.

A good example is the war crimes trials conducted at Nuremberg and Tokyo in 1945 where the crimes of the victors were exempted from legal scrutiny while the crimes of the losers were the subject of indictment, prosecution, and punishment. More concretely, the atomic bombings of Japanese cities and the strategic bombing of German cities were accorded impunity. A double standard highlighted by being described as “victors’ justice.”

It is a mistake to conclude that international law is useless because of this subordination to geopolitics. For one thing, an effective international legal order is essential to sustain the stability of relations in most areas of interaction among sovereign states. Trade, investment, finance, communications, travel and tourism, diplomacy are among the areas of international life that depend on mutuality of interests and the practice of equality when it comes to enforcement and implementation.

Many would insist that the US has weakened the UN by its “irresponsible statecraft.”

Beyond this, “responsible statecraft” by dominant states (‘dominance’ does not refer to the same political actors that possess veto rights at the UN) can unilaterally exercise restraint in the use of the veto or in pursuing conflictual behavior. Many would insist that the US has weakened the UN by its “irresponsible statecraft.” The extent to which the US has managed relations between the UN and Israel in an excessive manner is illustrative.  It is as much a reflection of domestic political considerations as it is of the international conflictual context.

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Even when international law is flagrantly violated as it was in the Damascus attack, and Israel is protected against a punitive response at the UN, the impact on world opinion, global solidarity initiatives, and the clarification of legitimacy ensure that international law plays a role in the behavior of states. Populist action often influences the actions of leading geopolitical actors.

In the post-1945 anti-colonial wars the weaker side militarily generally prevailed politically, in part because international law and the flow of history was on their side. Transnational activism in the form of boycotts and sanctions often is vindicated by assessments that the targeted country is violating international law in serious ways.

International law, even if not implemented by the inter-governmental order of states or by the UN, is helpful in mobilizing civil society to take a variety of nonviolent coercive actions.

In short, international law, even if not implemented by the inter-governmental order of states or by the UN, is helpful in mobilizing civil society to take a variety of nonviolent coercive actions. This dynamic contributed to the collapse of the apartheid regime in South Africa 30 years ago and it is mounting ever stronger pressure on Israel in light of its Gaza genocide, further justified by its defiance of international law.   

IQNA: Iran said it used its legitimate right to self-defense by launching strikes against Israel. What do international laws say about this?

Falk: There are several issues present. Does a single attack of this nature, however unlawful, engage the right of self-defense as specified in Article 51 of the UN Charter. This Charter definition is linked to “a prior armed attack” as distinct from an act of aggression, but given the paralysis in the UN, it might be deemed reasonable in view of the frequency of past lethal violations of Iran’s sovereign rights and the failure to take any punitive action against Israel’s defiant attitude in shaping national policy in the security domain.

A further international law issue concerns matters of proportionality and discrimination. Estimates vary as to the scale of the Iranian attack involving 170 or more drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles, and yet little damage resulted, and no one killed. As Iran gave some notice of its planned retaliation to the US and other governments, it may have intended, as some commentators have suggested, that its retaliation for Israel’s responsibility in relation to the Damascus attack, its retaliation to be symbolic and performative, rather than a full-scale attack as suggested by the array of drones and missiles.

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To some extent, because of enforceability issues, what a state does in retaliation for such one-off violation of its sovereignty is assessed and judged in relation to precedents reflecting past practice. If deemed to be consistent with such practice it is legitimized and widely viewed as reasonable, whereas if not, it is regarded as unacceptably provocative. Israel has reacted to the Iranian attack of April 14 as an unacceptable provocation, despite its own prior attack causing high-profile Iranian deaths and the paucity of damage inflicted by Iran’s retaliation. Israel is proposing a retaliation to Iran’s retaliation. If Israel carries out its threat in a way that causes death and destruction in Iran it is almost certain to escalate the conflict in dangerous ways. When acting in these grey sectors of law, such as the law governing international retaliation, the criterion of reasonableness offers some guidance to both actor and responder. Of course, perceptions of reasonableness may vary greatly.

IQNA: Some analysts believe that the Israeli regime targeted the consulate to escalate tensions with Iran and use this as a cover to continue its massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. What is your take on this and how can Tel Aviv be held accountable for its crimes in Gaza?

Falk: As suggested above, Netanyahu has failed to achieve the goals of Israel’s massively destructive and inhumane response to October 7, leaving his last best option, the widening of the war in ways that make Iran the main antagonist of Western interests. The backgrounding of the Ukraine War in light of the events in Gaza lend plausibility to this kind of ‘politics of deflection.’ Israel is a master of shifting public attention from its crimes to its critics or to lesser objects of concern.

Achieving accountability in a legal sense is almost impossible so long as the Global West, especially the US, supports Israel. Any sort of attempt at imposing accountability through the UN can be blocked by casting a veto in the Security Council, which the US has not been reluctant to do. Accountability in its political sense could be achieved if Israel is treated by many governments in the Global South as a “pariah state” as was the experience of apartheid South Africa; also important are solidarity initiatives rooted in civil society activism. Accountability in a moral sense is exhibited by public expressions of outrage on the part of peoples the world over as well as by the frustrations caused by unenforceability of ICJ decisions.   

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IQNA: What do you think about the efforts of the ICJ to hold Israel accountable for its genocide in Gaza, especially given that the regime is planning an attack on Rafah where more than 1.5 million displaced have taken refuge?

Falk: This question raises complicated issues. The initiative in the ICJ has been greatly important for passing judgment on Israel’s moral and political wrongdoing with respect to the Gaza genocide yet limited in effectiveness. The ICJ has been unable to implement the persuasive legal pronouncements of its Interim Orders of January and March instructing Israel to take actions to mitigate further suffering of the Palestinian people. Israel has refused compliance, backed by the US, and seems poised to go ahead with its threatened attack on grossly overcrowded Rafah, with expectations of shockingly high casualties.

The ICJ and the UN generally are neutralized by “a crisis of implementation.” In the face of stubborn geopolitical resistance, it lacks the mandate, will, and capabilities to enforce international law, let alone promote global justice. If the UN became more robustly endowed, an obvious undertaking would be to form an International Protection Force that would give meaning to the Responsibility to Protect norm. As things are, such a justifiable response to genocide is unthinkable, which conveys a lot about why so many people are disappointed by or frustrated with the UN.

Professor Richard Anderson Falk is the author or co-author of 20 books and the editor or co-editor of another 20 volumes. In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed him to a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967”.

The views and opinions expressed in this interview are solely those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the view of International Quran News Agency.

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Interview with Daniel Falcone: Trials and Tribulations of Palestinian Refugees in Syria & Israel/Palestine/Iran

15 Apr

[Prefatory Note:This series of questions was posed for my consideration early in late March 2024, published by CounterPunch on April 9th under the title, “The Forgotten Palestinian Refugees in Syria.” I have revised somewhat my responses, partly because of the impact of developments in April, especially the bombing of Iran’s consular facility in Damascus on April 1st killing 12 persons, including 7 Iranian military advisors, which led Iran to abandon its practice of retaliating for attacks by indirect responses to US/Israel assets/military bases or to entrust retaliations to Iran’s regional non-state allies in the region, including Hezbollah, the Houthis, and possibly Hamas. On this occasion Iran deliberately itself retaliation on April 12th, firing as many as 300 drones and missiles toward Israeli targets. Most were intercepted with the help of Israel’s Western supporters (and Jordan), yet Israel has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and threatens to retaliate, escalating the conflict. What will happen with this Israeli effort to get the US involved in a wider war directed at achieving regime-change in Iran remains uncertain, but raising doubts about the war-prevention capabilities, and even motivations, of the US and to a lesser extent, China and Russia.]

Interview with Daniel Falcone: Trials and Tribulations of Palestinian Refugees in Syria Prior to the Israel’s April 1st Attack on the Iran Consular Building in Damascus

Daniel Falcone Introduction: The Syrian Civil War was the longest and most complex geopolitical conflict to emerge out of the Arab Spring, thus creating a complicated legacy for leftist analysts to interrogate. In this interview, exclusive for Counterpunch, former United Nations special rapporteur, and international relations scholar Richard Falk, breaks down Palestine and Syria and the history and politics of that refugee crisis from the left. Often, this topic finds the center-right media attempting to focus on Syria, not in the interest of Palestinians, but to remove the attention away from US/Israeli aggression. Falk, a fierce critic of US and Israel foreign policies, highlights the complex circumstances of the Palestinians in Syria and points out how a host of domestic and foreign policies, and worldviews from the left and the right, both complicate and threaten Palestinian survival and their pursuit of liberation in the face of ongoing US-sponsored settler colonialism.

Daniel Falcone: How many Palestinians are in Syria, and how long have they been there?

Richard Falk: It is difficult to be very accurate about refugee and displacement statistics due to the prolonged internal Syrian turmoil over the course of more than a decade since 2011, and still are not fully resolved. Before the Syrian Civil War the number of Palestinian refugees registered by UNRWA in Syria was 526,744, the majority of whom came to Syria during the Nakba in 1947, fleeing especially from what was then northern Palestine, now Israel. A large proportion of the Palestinian refugees in Syria chose and were able to live outside the refugee camps, with no more than 111,000 of the more than a half million living in the nine official, and three unofficial camps, according to estimates in 2002.

Current estimates of the Syrian refugee population arrives at even smaller numbers due to the fact that many Syrians fled to neighboring countries and to Europe. It is now believed that correct current number of Syrian refugees within the borders of Syria is about 450,000. This experience of internal and external displacement of Palestinians in Syria during the civil war, exhibited the dangers of being vulnerable as a refugee in a combat zone during wartime, especially in the face of the growing enmity between the Syrian government and Palestinian refugees, greatly aggravated by their opposed alignments in the Syrian Civil War. Palestinians in Syria overwhelmingly supported the opposition to al-Assad regime in Damascus.   

Daniel Falcone: What kinds of social, political, and economic devastation do Palestinians living inside Syria experience? Stephen Zunes has indicated that reliable numbers for Palestinian civilians killed by Syrian military assaults is around 4,000.

Richard Falk: Until the civil war began in 2011 relations between the Syrian government and the Palestinian refugees seemed positive, especially as compared to the negative features of Palestinian treatment and experience in several other Arab countries, particularly Jordan (‘Black September 1970’) which encouraged the voluntary displacement of Palestinians, departing from Syria, and seeking refuge elsewhere, especially in Turkey and Western Europe. Prior to the civil war Palestinian refugees enjoyed substantially equal rights in Syria as compared to the resident population, being allowed to own property, and work in almost all sectors of the economy.

After 2011, Syrians were viewed by the Damascus government as a hostile presence in view of their overall support for the anti-government political forces, which in part reflected the Shiite-dominated Damascus political leadership in a life-and-death struggle with the Sunni-dominated opposition forces. Among other developments was violent repression by Syria of the refugee camps in Syria, most prominently the Yarmouk Camp located on the outskirts of Damascus, resulting in many Palestinian deaths, forced and voluntary displacements, and widespread hunger in the period between 2011 and 2018.

Such conditions prompted many Palestinian refugees in the 12 Syrian camps to risk the increasingly dangerous migrant journey to Europe, a situation further aggravated when Trump’s defunded UNRWA in 2018. Prior to the civil war in Syria, Palestinian refugees were much more regulated and their economic, political, and social options restricted in Lebanon, with its delicate Muslim/Christian demographic balance, and in Jordan, where the sheer numbers of Palestinian refugees were seen by the government as posing a political threat of a demographic character as further reinforce by their suspected distrust of the Hashemite monarchy.

Daniel Falcone: Is there a problem on the left in the United States in undermining the plight of Palestinians in Syria in relation to the left’s varying perspectives on the Syrian Civil War?

Richard Falk: Yes, the hostility of the hard left to intervention against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, despite its oppressive tactics, autocratic governance, and outright atrocities seemed dogmatically based on siding with whatever political forces around the world validated their behavior by deploying anti-imperial rhetoric and slanted arguments against siding with the anti-Damascus insurgents, which were a hybrid coalition that included more humane and democratic elements than did the government, at least at the outset of the conflict. At the same time, complexities were present no matter which side was supported in the bitter civil strife due to the lack of coherence by either the government or its array of opponents.

Beyond this, at the outset of the Syrian civil strife the US and Turkey underestimated the capabilities and loyalties of Syrian armed forces, being too quick to think it would be as easy to get rid of the Assad regime as it had been for NATO in 2013 to induce anti-Qaddafi regime change in Libya. NATO also badly miscalculated the domestic effects of regime change in Libya. Instead of a successor regime friendly to the Global West, the situation in Libya deteriorated from one of autocratic stability to a condition of political chaos and civil strife among Libyan ethnic communities, in effect from autocracy to a chaotic form of anarchy.

This misleading analogy between Libya and Syria was a costly miscalculation, especially for Turkey, compounded by the emergence of some strange opportunistic alliances in the course of the internal struggle. Perhaps most notable was the mutual relations between ISIS and the anti-Damascus forces. seeming joining in a common cause the liberal opposition to Damascus with an organization previously treated by the West as a virulent form of terrorism.

On the side of the Syrian government again, for a mixture of geopolitical and ideological reasons, were Russia and Iran. The Syrian Civil War was the most complex and prolonged struggle to spiral out of the Arab Spring, and perhaps in modern times, considering the bewildering variety of actors and issues at stake internally, regionally, and globally as well as the mix between state and non-state actors and compounded by the internal antagonisms on both sides.

Daniel Falcone: What are the differences and similarities for Palestinian refugees trying to survive across the Arab world?

Richard Falk: Responding to this tangled issue of comparative treatment of Palestine refugees throughout the Arab World is a stretch for me. Responding broadly, there is agreement that attitudes toward Palestinians refugees varied through time and from country to country, influenced recently by Israeli/US diplomacy promoting normalization of Israeli/Arab relations during the final months of the Trump Presidency in the form of the now notorious Abraham Accords. Since October 2023 the Israeli genocidal onslaught in Gaza has made Arab countries more conscious of their own identities while becoming somewhat more engaged with the  Palestinian ordeal, including reacting with varying levels of concern to what is increasingly regarded by pro-Palestinian forces as ‘a second Nakba’, in effect a brutally forced evacuation being implemented with a genocidal ferocity that far exceeds the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948— that is creating humanitarian pressures for offering shelter to Palestinians outside of Occupied Palestine, highlighted by a situation of widespread starvation and disease in Gaza, grim realities further intensified by the Western defunding of UNRWA since late January 2024 in response to a dubious all out Israeli campaign to discredit UNRWA in a supreme instance of their mastery of the dark arts of deflection.

At present, in reaction to the humanitarian emergency in Rafah, and continuing Israeli threats to launch a military attack on the small city abutting the Egyptian border which is sheltering over a million helpless Palestinians in horrifying conditions even without taking account of the acute fears arising from Israel’s threatened military attack, Egypt has so far responding in two somewhat contrary ways: 1) by deploring the forced cross-border pressures on Palestinians to leave Gaza or die if they are so stubborn as to continue resisting and, 2) by preparing for a mass Palestinian exodus from Gaza by constructing a large walled-in temporary refugee facility in the Sinai Desert, which is part of Egypt. Whether Egypt will eventually be persuaded or bribed to accept a large new influx of Palestinian refugees is uncertain at this point.

The issue posed is tragic for Palestinians in Gaza who have stayed in their homeland despite hardship and abuse since its re-occupation by Israel in 1967, enduring periodic punitive large-scale military incursions from land, air, and sea in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, and 2021, reinforced by a crippling blockade since 2007. The role of Hamas in Gaza is complicated: it reportedly won internationally monitored elections in 2007 because it resisted Israeli abuses more credibly than did the Palestinian secular alternatives, and steadily gained legitimacy among Palestinians throughout the occupied Palestinian territories because it was not tainted by collaborationism or corruption to nearly the extent of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, itself an outgrowth of the discredited Oslo diplomacy.

Since 2006 when it took over a governing role in Gaza, Hamas has been reduced to being a ‘terrorist’ entity by Israel, United States, and Germany. Its diplomacy was spurned over the years despite credibly proposing long-term ceasefires on several occasions. Israel made no secret of preferring to discourage Palestinian resistance by keeping Gazans on ‘a subsistence diet’ as supplemented by ‘mowing the lawn’ as needed, as well as using Gaza as a virtual free-fire zone to test weapons and tactics, and send a deterrence/Dahiya message to regional governments throughout the Middle East that Israel was not inhibited by law and morality when it came to dealing with its enemies, and disdained such widely accepted legal limitations on force as proportionality and discrimination (as to targets). Additionally, Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is subject to the 4th Geneva Convention addressing issues of Belligerent Occupation, as well as the unanimous Security Resolutions 242  and 338, which projected an early Israel withdrawal to its 1967 borders after minor territorial adjustments.

The Syrian government’s relationship to the Palestine/Israel conflict seems contradictory in its central aspects. Syria alone among major Arab governments has been actively pro-Palestinian in its foreign policy since the 1948 War. Israel has engaged in various destabilizing moves toward Syria, most dramatically in the form of periodic air attacks at targets thought to be helping anti-Israeli forces in the region. Israel incorporated into Israel the occupied Syrian territory, known as the Golan Heights, under Israeli administrative control since the 1967 War, during the latter part of the Trump presidency. And now it has attacked the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus threatening to make the wider war a

major source of intensifying conflict in the Middle East. In other words, despite its encounters with Palestinian refugees, Israel and Syria have a long history of mutual hostility, given dramatic focus from time to time by

Israeli cross-border air strikes with target located in Syria.

This present engagement with Syria and Iran on one side and the Israel and the US, and most of NATO on the other side, points to a more dangerous phase in the Middle East conflict configuration that has evolved since the end of the Cold War.

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