Stop with the 'international law' arguments already.
In a world where entities do not come close to agreeing on the so-called “rules of the game,” international law cannot be valid. Indeed, it is not.
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If I had a shekel for every time some pundit mentioned “international law” in their commentary about the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war, I would be able to fund as much political lobbying as the Palestinians, Qataris, and Iranians do in the West.
International law is often heralded as the beacon of order and justice across a chaotic world. Embodied in treaties, conventions, and the decisions of international bodies, it ostensibly serves to mediate and resolve conflicts— in which all parties involved agree to the ground rules.
Within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the relevance and effectiveness of international law are put to a rigorous test. This protracted and deeply rooted conflict offers a stark lens through which to examine whether international law holds any significant sway in resolving disputes, or if it is merely an idealistic framework that falls short in practice.
Circa 1947, as the United Nations was deliberating what to do with British Mandate Palestine — leading to the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, or two states for two peoples — there is a reason why Jewish organizations collaborated with the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine during the deliberations, and the Palestinian Arab leadership boycotted it outright without leaving any room for negotations:
The Jewish state, which was envisioned to be and ultimately became a democracy, appreciated the UN’s jurisdiction at the time and believed in a democratic way of dealing with the Jewish-Arab issue in British Mandate Palestine.
Arab governments back then and still today are not democratic. Their “rules of the game” are not those of the West, and the same can be said about many African, Asian, and South American countries.
Thus, in a world where entities do not come close to agreeing on the so-called “rules of the game,” international law cannot be valid. Indeed, it is not.
Many liberals would argue that this is where democratic peace theory — one of three major international liberalism theories today — should come into play. This theory suggests that democratic countries are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies. Several factors are responsible for motivating peace between democratic states, including:
“Monadic” forms – Democracies are in general more peaceful in their international relations.
“Dyadic” forms – Democracies do not go to war with other democracies.
“Systemic” forms – More democratic states in the international system makes the international system more peaceful.
A realist would say that it does not matter whether or not a state is a democracy, because all states behave according to anarchy, which is described as the lack of a supreme authority that can effectively resolve disputes, enforce laws, and order the system of international politics. After all, the Nazi party was elected democratically. So too, apparently, was Hamas in Gaza.
The second major liberal theory is economic interdependence theory, the mutual dependence of participants in an economic system who trade in order to obtain the products they cannot or do not produce efficiently themselves. Such trading relationships require that the behavior of a participant affects its trading partners, and it would be costly to rupture their relationship. More economic interdependence in the world, therefore, supposes more peace.
On October 6th, 2023, amidst the ceasefire in place, some 18,000 individuals from Gaza were employed in and supported by Israel, channeling $25 million each month into the Gaza Strip.
With Israel’s backing, the Gazan economy experienced a remarkable 20-percent growth, and per-capita GDP soared by 19 percent. Then Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad — both backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran — opted for war on October 7th, and these 18,000 individuals immediately became unemployed. So much for economic interdependence theory.
Finally, the third major theory is liberal institutionalism, in which international cooperation is based on institutions (such as the United Nations) which dictate rules to which member states agree, thus reducing conflict and security competition (at least in theory).
Yet Israel has been routinely and disproportionately targeted by such institutions in the most unjust and bizarre ways. Already in 1952, just four years after the State of Israel’s founding, an Israeli initiative at the United Nations for a ceasefire in Korea, put forward by representative Abba Eban, encountered serious opposition, only to pass easily once Norway replaced Israel as the sponsor.
Eban went on to famously say: “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.”
There was also the notorious “Zionism is racism” UN resolution in the 1970s. And eight years ago, then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave words to what Israelis had been feeling for decades, as he criticized the UN for its “obsession with Israel.” True to form, the organization issued 14 condemnations of the Jewish state in 2023 — double the rest of the world, combined.
Meanwhile, Israel remains the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and North Africa, and the only state in the region where Jews, Christians, and Muslims live in relative peace (within Israel, I mean). But don’t just take it from me. Khaled Hassan, an Egyptian ex-Muslim, recently said:
“Do you really want to know why I support Israel? It’s because if the entire world became Israel, we’d still be able to fall in love. To party. To dance. To hold hands. To go for a drink. To look after the vulnerable. To vote. To love and live under the rule of compassion and democracy. To have freedom of religion and freedom of speech. On the other hand, if the entire world became the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Qatar, Yemen, Syria, Gaza, Iraq, et cetera, you know exactly what would happen. Hate, fear, terrorism, and bloodlust.”1
Lawrence, who knew Arabia well, compared Arab societies to shifting sand that one moment speaks quietly and the next turns into a storm.
“It is a society that has a strong tendency for violence, a society that can only exist under the rule of tyranny,” said historian Benzion Netanyahu. “It is a society that is overly preoccupied with genius, pride, and victory. It is a society that in a certain sense is still characterized by the ancient mentality of ancient times.”2
This is where realism, the antidote to liberalism, comes into play — but even within realism, there are different streams. One is known as “defensive realism” which indicates that the structure of the international system (“anarchy”) fosters security competition, but it really rules out the great power of war almost all the time.
Therefore, it makes sense to care about the balance of power, but to focus on maintaining how much power a state has. Defensive realists contend that, if a state tries to gain more power, the system will punish it.
“Offensive realists” believe that states look for opportunities to gain more power, and almost every time they see an opportunity to gain more power, with a relatively high likelihood of success and low cost of execution, they will try to capitalize on that opportunity.
The Middle East and North Africa are largely comprised of states that look for opportunities to gain more power, and the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war is a direct manifestation of “offensive realism.” More specifically, Iran sees an opportunity to embolden its “Axis of Resistance” (its proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and other places).
“Iran is currently doing everything it can to normalize relations with the Arab states and thus take the place of Israel, which had become increasingly closer to these countries,” said Dalia Ziada, an Egyptian political analyst. “The Iranians want to win over the Arab states as allies for their major goal: to wipe out Israel.”3
The Saudis, whose enemy is Iran, see an opportunity to side with Israel and the Palestinians to further entrench themselves as the leading Muslim power of the Middle East.
And Israel, too, now sees an opportunity to rid terror groups of their presence on the Jewish state’s borders and further establish itself within the region, likely through a normalization with Saudi Arabia, which keeps telling the world how much they want to (officially) make peace with Israel.
Historically, the issue between Israel and Arab states was never truly about the Palestinians. This is what many liberals get wrong about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians only seriously organized themselves in the 1960s, with the supreme help of the Soviets, who used the Palestinians as pawns to oppose the United States via Israel, a democratic state, during the Cold War.
The Arabs, too, have used the Palestinians as pawns in fear of the concept of Zionism, which is fundamentally a Western movement. It is a movement that lives on the border of the East, but always faces the West. And so it is today: Israel stands against the natural tendencies of the Middle East to penetrate the West and enslave it.
For this reason, the Arabs see Israel as a foreign creature in their region. And they fear the Jews’ existence as the only Western country in the Middle East. They feel that we are endangering their culture, their religion, and the structure of their society and regimes.
Even with Egypt and Jordan, which Israel made peace with in 1979 and 1994 respectively, there is a cold peace. With the United Arab Emirates, prosperity is the core variable of economic interdependence. But right now, as Israel faces an existential war, the core variable is survival — and survival always trumps prosperity.
Many question how this could be an “existential war” for Israel, given that it has one of the strongest armies on Earth, no less the backing of the world’s superpower (the United States). This demonstrates a tremendous misunderstanding of the greater geopolitical game at play here, of which Israel is a part by nature of existing in the region, and of which the Palestinians are a part by nature of being a convenient reason to oppose the region’s only liberal democracy.
All you have to do is look at the civil wars in Yemen, Syria, and Sudan to know that Israel and the Jews have little to do with the greater regional geopolitical frameworks. Thus, as longtime Israeli security official Avi Melamed says, to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you have to understand North Africa and the Middle East. The region’s larger, more powerful forces dictate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not the other way around.
However, there is one “rule” by which all countries on Earth play: money (or the equivalent, such as natural resources). It dictates the flow of power, the capacity for influence, and the stability of nations. In the interconnected web of international relations, economic power translates directly into political leverage, military strength, and social cohesion.
Hence why, for example, economic sanctions on the Iranian regime crippled their economy. Economic sanctions serve as a powerful tool for nations to exert pressure without resorting to direct military confrontation.
When the United States and its allies imposed stringent economic sanctions on Iran — targeting its oil exports, banking sector, and other critical areas of its economy — the effects were immediate and profound. Iran’s economy, heavily reliant on oil revenues, faced a severe downturn. The value of its currency plummeted, inflation soared, and ordinary Iranians experienced shortages of essential goods and services.
These sanctions disrupted Iran’s ability to engage in international trade, access foreign capital, and attract investment. The Iranian government, finding itself isolated from the global financial system, struggled to maintain its economic stability.
This economic strangulation was intended to compel Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program and other contentious issues, but the fanatical Muslims are a bit different than others: They cannot be bought.
The regime’s hardline factions often view concessions to Western demands as a sign of weakness that could undermine their authority. As a result, there is a strong incentive to maintain a defiant stance, even in the face of severe economic pressure.
The resilience of Iran under sanctions illustrates a broader point about the limitations of economic coercion as a tool of international diplomacy. While economic sanctions can inflict significant damage and pressure a targeted government, they are not always sufficient to compel a change in behavior, especially when the targeted leadership is ideologically committed and has alternative means of survival.
Sometimes — and I don’t write this joyfully — war is the best of the worst options. And in the midst of it, international law should be preserved for the countries that actually respect it.
Khaled Hassan on X
“Ben-Zion Netanyahu in an interview in 1998.” Haaretz.
“Im Westen fallen viele Leute auf eine grosse Lüge herein.” Tages-Anzeiger.
It should be clear to all by now the western based laws, customs and rational thinking cannot be applied to comprehend and control the vaguries of fanatical, religious and political ideologies. Wishful thinking is out to lunch because what you see it what you get and effective, situation appropriate solutions have to be effected to ensure survival. Arriving at the end result isn't pretty but is entirely necessary because there is no sense trying to change ingrained belief systems.
I agree, sometimes war is the best option. You must follow the course that you need to! The international law does not follow the truthful path. Fight for yourselves and the rest of the free world ! Thank you!