Israel’s defiance of international law and US complicity have perpetuated Palestinian dispossession, but Palestinians remain steadfast in their struggle for self-determination.
Palestinians for decades have stood their ground and against all odds have continued to live where they rightfully belong: their ancestral homeland.
Beginning with the current ceasefire of January 19, they have begun their march of defiance north to a Gaza which has been leveled by genocidal Israelis.
The inspiration of Palestinian resistance and steadfastness against Israel’s apocalyptic campaign in Gaza has thrown America’s hegemonic “world order” into disorder. The global community has been shaken by America’s ruination of the “rules-based order,” in which there is one set of rules for Israel and another for the rest of the world.
Washington has spared no effort and expense to maintain its Central Command military agent in the Middle East, even at the expense of weakening and destroying, the very institutions and organizations it created to provide order and stability after the devastation of the Second World War.
While the US and Israel have tried to control and manipulate the fate of Palestine, it is important to recognize that international law is on the side of the Palestinians. And as they lay waste to the rule of law in their pursuit of dominance, it is necessary to focus attention on the framework of cooperation among nations and the protocol of rights that was adopted after 1945 to create order out of chaos. This is especially the case since Israel continues to act as if it were uniquely above all international laws and norms.
A recent example among many of Israel’s contempt for United Nations organizations established to oversee the execution of international law and humanitarian relief is the passage of legislation by the Israeli Knesset banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from operating in war-ravaged Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
After World War II, four treaties, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, were adopted to ensure that the systematic atrocities committed against civilian populations, particularly the genocide committed against European Jews, never happened again. The Conventions and two additional protocols (1977 and 2005) have become the foundation of modern international law.
In an ironic twist of history, Israel, the self-proclaimed haven for Jews, has blatantly and continuously violated the Geneva Conventions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The following are a number of examples of Israel’s refusal to be accountable to the rule of law and willingness to trash the international order to maintain power.
Israel’s Illegal Occupation of Historic Palestine
Now more than ever it must be emphasized that a country cannot keep and occupy land it has taken by force. The prohibition on territorial conquest is enshrined in the 1945 UN Charter, specifically Article 2(4).To acquire territory after a war, a peace treaty must be negotiated and agreed upon by all parties involved.
Since its declaration of statehood in May 1948, Israel has engaged in two major wars with its Arab neighbors. It has never negotiated a treaty or returned Palestinian land it seized by conquest in its wars in 1948 and 1967.
By the end of the 1948 war, Israel controlled not only the land the United Nations General Assembly suggested for a Jewish state but also 60 percent of the area proposed for the Palestinian state. And since its preemptive war of 1967, Israel has continued to illegally control the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the Syrian Golan Heights.
In a landmark ruling on July 19, 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, concluded that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories after 1967 amounted to de facto annexation, which violated the UN Charter’s prohibition against the acquisition of territory by war. It ruled that Israel’s occupation was unlawful and must end.
Although the Court limited its ruling to the prolonged occupation, settlement, and annexation of territory after 1967, its decision, however, could easily have been applied to Palestinian land seized and occupied in the 1948 war—land renamed Israel.
The ICJ has ruled that Israel must begin to decolonize. As a member state of the United Nations and party to the Geneva Conventions, it has an obligation to comply. In addition, all parties to the Convention have the duty to ensure Tel Aviv’s compliance. Instead of compliance, Israel has truculently entrenched its presence, increased its violence, and planned for annexation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Right of Return
The right of return of refugees is considered a fundamental principle of international law derived primarily from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 13). Additionally, UN General Assembly Resolutions 194 and 3236 further reaffirmed the principles and rules already anchored and binding in humanitarian and refugee law.
Israel’s 1948/1967 wars of expansion have made Palestinians refugees in their own land. In keeping with the Zionist project to ethnically cleanse Palestine, Israel has consistently rejected their right of return to their homes.
The World Court ruled unequivocally that all Palestinians displaced during the 1967 occupation must be allowed to return to their original place of residence and that Israel is obligated to “evacuate all settlers” from existing colonies established during the occupation.
Resettlement (euphemism for removal) to other countries has always been Israel’s solution to what they term the “refugee problem.” The country’s racist politicians have embraced President Donald Trump’s proposals to “clean out” Gaza by removing Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt; a plan advocated in 2023 by Israeli Finance/Defense Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
This became clear during a White House “press conference of the absurd” on February 4, when convicted felon turned president, Donald J. Trump, and indicted war criminal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arrogantly discussed Gaza in terms of a potential real estate venture.
In absolute disregard for international law, Trump talked of taking permanent control of Gaza, saying “We’ll own it.” He also proposed moving (ethnically cleansing) Palestinians to other countries, redeveloping the territory, and turning it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” There was not a word of rebuilding Gaza for Palestinians or words of securing peace.
Politicians, like Trump, are incapable of understanding the deep roots that displacement and removal have in the historic struggle of Palestinians and in their determination to remain on the land until they achieve their national aspirations.
Right to Resist
The global community has agreed that all people have the right to freedom and self-determination. To appease Israel, Palestinians have been made the exception.
The Palestinian right to resist Israeli domination and apartheid colonization has been expunged from most reporting by the US legacy media. Instead, their struggle for self-determination is described as “terrorism” and those who resist are characterized as “extremists and terrorists.”
The Fourth Geneva Convention and Additional Protocol I explicitly recognize the right to resist occupation as part of the right to self-determination—a fundamental human right.
Protocol I, which updated the 1949 law, extended the definition of international armed conflict to include wars of national liberation. It explicitly affirms the right to resist occupation, including armed struggle, in situations of colonial domination, foreign occupation and against racist regimes. The amendment gave legal legitimacy to the “resort to arms by national liberation movements.”
It is important to underscore that international law effectively underpins and codifies not only the right to resist occupation but also the legitimacy of resistance groups like the Palestine Liberation Organization, Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.
Right to Water
Israel’s Zionist founders were mindful that their dream of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was sustainable only if they controlled all the water resources of Palestine, parts of Jordan, Lebanon, and the Syrian Golan Heights. Plans to dominate the water resources were set in motion soon after 1948.
Following its 1967 war, Israel placed the water resources of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights under its military control. In 1982, authority over Palestinian water was transferred to the Israeli national water company.
In its October 2023 war on the Gaza Strip, Israel has deliberately obstructed Palestinian access to adequate amounts of water needed for survival. Much of the water that Gazans have had access to has been unsuitable for drinking.
Access to clean water is a fundamental human right. In its 2024 advisory opinion, the ICJ concluded: “In depriving the Palestinian people of its enjoyment of the natural resources in the Occupied Palestinian Territory for decades, Israel has impeded the exercise of its [Palestinians] right to self-determination.”
Since its initial July ruling, the Court has issued provisional measures reaffirming its prior order. Israel has violated all ICJ orders, including access to adequate food and drink.
Conclusion
Currently, the world is experiencing much of the same shock and insecurity that was widespread after the Second World War. To preserve Israeli hegemony in the Middle East, the United States, contrary to its own interests, has made a mockery of the very framework of international cooperation it played a major role in constructing.
It has been dismissive of the World Court for failing to act on its ruling that obligates UN member states “not to recognize as legal the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” or render aid or assistance in maintaining the occupation.
Israel’s politics of force and cruelty have prevailed due to the absolution and apologia afforded it by the United States and compliant Western governments. Powerful political, academia, corporate, and media forces have labored to render the United Nations irrelevant and have strained to silence the Palestinian narrative and voices.
Silence has been the breeding ground for genocide and chaos. German Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemoller (1892-1984), imprisoned for his opposition to Nazi rule, understood that national environment well when long ago he reminded us:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—-because
I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did
not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for
Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came
for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Interestingly, the Old Testament Genesis 27:36 also speaks to the travails that Palestinians have endured: “And Essau cried, is not he rightly named Jacob (supplanter)? For he hath supplanted [deceived] me these two times; he took away my birthright and behold now he hath taken away my blessing.”
Palestinians guided by international law are the only ones to decide the future of the state of Palestine. Not the United States and certainly not Israel.
– Dr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist specializing in the history, politics and governments of the Middle East. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
