[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]
- As you know, Israel resumed its relentless bombing of Gaza and has shattered the Gaza ceasefire with Hamas adopted on 19 January. Israel has resumed weaponizing starvation in Gaza by its decision to break the ceasefire agreement. Israel has broken international law by blocking aid to Gaza. What’s your opinion? What should we do to stop the Israeli crimes against Palestinians? How can the international community help Palestinians get rid of the Israeli occupation?
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.
- Ansarullah (known in the Western media as ‘the Houthis’) said that Yemen will not back down from continuing its support operations for the Palestinian people until the Israeli aggression on Gaza stops and the siege is lifted. Ansarullah officials affirmed that Yemen’s stance on Palestine stems from religious, national, and moral principles. Ansarullah vowed to continue their military operations against Israel and US forces in the region. How do you evaluate the Yemeni people and Ansarullah stance in support of innocent Palestinian people.
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..
- Israel is coming under increasing international criticism over its handling of the war in Gaza. Millions of people around the world have taken part in protests against Israel’s war crimes. Protesters voiced outrage over what they described as war crimes committed by Israel in the besieged Gaza Strip and demanded immediate international action. What’s your opinion that Israel is becoming more and more isolated due to its genocide?
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.’.
Global Justice in the 21st Century 