FASCISTS OF A FEATHER ...
US and Hungary Stand Alone at ICJ in Favor of Israel’s Blockade on Gaza
Israel Falsely Claims It Has Facilitated Humanitarian Assistance
In its written submission, Israel maintained that its refusal to allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza is justified by defense and security concerns no matter how urgently that assistance is needed. Israel said the case was “outrageously brought against it for seeking lawfully to repel heinous attacks against its citizens and territory” and it “is part of an abusive and systematic campaign that regrettably weaponizes international law, and international legal institutions, with the aim of depriving Israel of fundamental rights accorded to all sovereign States, including the right to defend itself.”
Israel failed to mention that the ICJ unequivocally established in its 2004 advisory opinion “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” the non-applicability of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter in the situation between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. A state cannot invoke the right of self-defense to defend against an attack which originates inside a territory it occupies. Because Israel continues to occupy Gaza, it has relinquished its right to claim self-defense in response to Palestinian attacks.
Moreover, as Marko Rakovec argued for Slovenia, no claim to the right of self-defense can ever justify violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law, including the denial of urgently needed humanitarian assistance.
In addition, Israel falsely stated that “as before,” it “goes to great lengths to continue to allow and facilitate the provision of necessary humanitarian assistance and services in Gaza under very challenging circumstances.” Although Israel has blocked all humanitarian aid from Gaza since March 2, it began preventing food, water, electricity and gas from entering Gaza immediately after the October 7, 2023, attacks.
Israel argued that it “is committed to observing all the international legal obligations that are incumbent upon it, including those prescribed by the law of armed conflict and those reflected in the provisional measures indicated by the International Court of Justice.” But in spite of the ICJ’s orders in January, March and June of 2024 that it take immediate steps to allow unrestricted and unhindered aid to enter Gaza, Israel has shamelessly violated those commands.
Israel’s Legal Obligations as the Occupying Power
On July 19, 2024, the ICJ ruled that Israel was illegally occupying the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Even though Israel withdrew its military presence from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the ICJ affirmed that Israel continues to occupy Gaza because it exercises “effective control” over “the land, sea and air borders” and maintains “restrictions on movement of people and goods, collection of import and export taxes, and military control over the buffer zone.” The court also held that international law prohibits the acquisition of territory by threat or use of force and protects the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
During last week’s hearing, state after state reiterated Israel’s legal obligations by virtue of its status as an occupying power.
Israel has a legal duty to administer the territory for the benefit of the local population; to agree to and facilitate relief schemes; to facilitate the proper functioning of all institutions dedicated to the care and education of children; and to maintain the medical establishments and hospitals, including those set up by UN entities.
In addition, Israel must respect the decisions of the Palestinian people to receive basic goods and services from UN entities, including food, water, shelter, hygiene, medical supplies and clothing, in order to fully benefit from their right to self-determination. Israel has an obligation to assist those UN activities.
Israel’s Unilateral Ban on UNRWA Is Illegal
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is the agency that has provided food, education and health care to Palestinian refugees since 1949. “As a subsidiary organ of the United Nations established by the General Assembly, UNRWA is entitled to all rights and privileges accorded to UN organs by international law,” Ma Xinmin said on behalf of China. “In fulfilling its obligations toward UN organs in good faith, Israel shall safeguard and facilitate UNRWA’s humanitarian operations, protect the safety of the personnel and ensure its privileges and immunities.”
Nevertheless, in January, Israel banned UNRWA from operating in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and urged funders to stop financial support of the organization. The U.S. and several of its allies (which provided 60 percent of UNRWA’s funding) immediately suspended funds. All except the U.S. resumed funding UNRWA.
Since Israel is a member state of the United Nations, bound by the UN Charter, it may not deny any impartial humanitarian organization such as the UN the ability to administer relief schemes. Because it is the occupying power in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel cannot unilaterally declare that a humanitarian organization is not impartial and deny its relief procedures. Humanitarian relief employees, medical personnel and UN personnel must be respected, protected and treated humanely and not subjected to intimidation or harassment. Attacks shall not be directed against them.
Ardi Imseis, speaking on behalf of Palestine, quoted UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who said that “UNRWA is indispensable in delivering essential services to Palestinians” and “UNRWA is the backbone of the United Nations humanitarian relief operations” in Gaza. The secretary-general’s written statement to the court says:
Since October 2023, UNRWA has supported nearly 2.3 million affected individuals [in Gaza] with food, healthcare, and shelter. It has distributed food aid to around 1.9 million people and provided more than 60% of primary healthcare services in Gaza. Furthermore, UNRWA has sheltered hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons in more than 100 schools and continues to deliver psychosocial support and primary health consultations.
Imseis told the ICJ that Israel seeks to prevent UNRWA from fulfilling its mandate in order to further “the erasure of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and ultimately in the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including through forcible transfer.” UNRWA, Imseis added, is the “last hope” of the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, to survive Israel’s genocide.
Israel alleged that 19 out of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff took part in Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack. UNRWA fired nine staffers, concluding that they could have been involved, although the evidence was not authenticated or corroborated.
The UN secretary-general appointed Catherine Colonna, former foreign minister of France, to lead an independent review to assess whether UNRWA was doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and respond to allegations of serious neutrality breaches when they are made. The review concluded that Israel’s allegations were unsubstantiated and lacked credible evidence.
Sally Langrish argued to the ICJ that, “The United Kingdom considers that UNRWA is an ‘impartial humanitarian organization’ for the purposes of Article 59 of [the Fourth Geneva Convention]. In so far as impartiality is understood as meaning ‘neutrality,’ UNRWA also satisfies that requirement.” She quoted the Colonna report, which states that “since 2017 UNRWA has established and updated a significant number of policies, mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the obligation to uphold the principle of neutrality.”
Since Israel occupies Palestinian territory, it cannot exercise sovereignty or sovereign powers over it, Elinor Hammarskjöld, legal counsel of the United Nations, told the ICJ, quoting a prior ruling of the court. “The enactment of the ‘Law to Cease UNRWA Operations’ and of the ‘Law to Cease UNRWA Operations in the Territory of the State of Israel’ by the Knesset of Israel on 28 October 2024 appears to constitute an extension of sovereignty over — or exercise sovereign powers in — the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” she added.
In the past 19 months, Israeli forces have killed nearly 300 UNRWA workers, and detained and abused more than 50 UNRWA staff, including teachers, doctors and social workers.
Nuh Yilmaz, arguing on behalf of Turkey, called Israel’s unilateral decision to stop the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza “a form of collective punishment against all civilians in Gaza.” Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a party, specifically forbids collective punishment. It says, “No protected person [civilian] may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. … Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.” Collective punishment is considered a war crime.
Israel has long had UNRWA in its sights. In 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “UNRWA is an organisation that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem and the narrative of the right-of-return, as it were, in order to eliminate the State of Israel” and it needed “to pass from the world.”
“UNRWA is much more than a relief agency,” Mohamed Helal argued on behalf of the League of Arab States. “UNRWA is the principal instrument by which the United Nations protects the right of return of Palestine refugees. It is not an exaggeration to argue that preserving the right of return is the agency’s raison d’être.” And, he added, “In addition to being a fundamental right of Palestine refugees, preserving the right of return is essential to protecting the right of self-determination.”
In an apparent attempt to circumvent UNRWA’s delivery of humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza and neutralize criticism, the U.S. and Israel are planning to establish an alternative delivery scheme. But the UN and all aid organizations operating in Gaza reject the U.S.-Israeli plan. It is thus unlikely that funders will finance it.
Only the U.S. and Hungary Support Israel’s Claims
In their testimonies at the ICJ hearing, both the U.S. and Hungary parroted Israel’s specious claims. Josh Simmons, a legal adviser at the U.S. State Department, admitted that Israel must provide aid to Gaza but said it does not have to work with UNRWA. Hungary argued that the ICJ should not render an advisory opinion as it “may directly contribute to the escalation of the conflict.”
It is no coincidence that it is the U.S. and Hungary that are attempting to shield Israel and its leaders from international accountability. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. They are charged with the war crimes of starvation as a form of warfare and intentional attacks on civilians. The warrants also charge them with the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. The charges stem from Israel’s denial of food, water, electricity and fuel, and specific medical supplies to the Palestinians in Gaza.
States parties to the Rome Statute, including Hungary, have a duty to cooperate with the court and facilitate the arrest of any ICC suspect who enters their territory. On April 3, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán hosted Netanyahu, blatantly refusing to fulfill Hungary’s legal obligation to arrest the Israeli prime minister and send him to The Hague. Although Orbán announced Hungary’s withdrawal from the statute on April 3, it does not take effect for one year.
The U.S. government has long enabled Israel in its commission of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has furnished Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance and provided it with diplomatic and political cover in the UN Security Council.
It is likely that the ICJ will issue its advisory opinion in a matter of months. Although its decision will not be legally binding, it will probably have a profound impact on international law, international assistance to Israel and global public opinion.
Meanwhile, the people of Gaza continue to endure unimaginable suffering. Maher Ghanem, who lives in the Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, told The New York Times, “What we’re going through in Gaza can’t be called life.”
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.Donate
Marjorie Cohn
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law, and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense and she is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
US and Hungary Stand Alone at ICJ in Favor of Israel’s Blockade on Gaza
May 6, 2025
Source: Truthout
Since March 2, Israel has blocked all food, medicine, fuel, and other relief from entering the besieged Gaza Strip, home to 2.1 million Palestinian people. “Israel is starving, killing and displacing Palestinians while also targeting and blocking humanitarian organizations trying to save their lives,” Ammar Hijazi, Palestine’s ambassador to the Netherlands, told the International Court of Justice (ICJ) during last week’s five-day hearing. “Humanitarian aid is being used as a weapon of war.”
The ICJ convened the hearing at the request of the UN General Assembly to address the following question:
What are the obligations of Israel, as an occupying Power and as a member of the United Nations, in relation to the presence and activities of the United Nations, including its agencies and bodies, other international organizations and third States, in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including to ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population as well as of basic services and humanitarian and development assistance, for the benefit of the Palestinian civilian population, and in support of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination?
Just days after the World Food Programme said it had run out of food in Gaza, the hearing commenced at the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands. Thirty-nine states, the United Nations and three other international organizations presented oral arguments. All states but two — the U.S. and Hungary — condemned Israel’s denial of humanitarian assistance to the starving people of Gaza. Although Israel refused to orally address the ICJ, it filed a written statement with the court. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that Israel decided “not to take part in this circus” and called the ICJ hearings part of a “systematic persecution and delegitimisation of Israel.
Patricia Pérez Galeana, representing Mexico, quoted UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s April 29 statement to the UN Security Council: “The humanitarian situation throughout the Gaza Strip has gone from bad, to worse, to beyond imagination.”
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, over 15,000 of them children. Thousands are missing under tons of rubble. Using the excuse of destroying Hamas, Israel has destroyed the life-sustaining infrastructure in Gaza, including shelter, hospitals, water treatment facilities, sanitation systems, farms, heat and power grids.
During the hearing, Saudi Arabia’s Mohamed Saud Alnasser said, “Israel’s hideous conduct, which piles illegality upon illegality, is well documented.” Zane Dangor, representative of South Africa, told the court, “The humanitarian aid system is facing total collapse. This collapse is by design.”
In June 2024, the UN Independent International Commission found, “Throughout the siege on Gaza, Israel has weaponized the withholding of life-sustaining necessities, specifically by cutting off supplies of water, food, electricity, fuel and other essential supplies, including humanitarian assistance.”
“Under the world’s watchful eye, Palestinians across the Occupied Palestinian Territory are being subjected to atrocity crimes, persecution, apartheid and genocide,” Dangor stated. “While we watch, the gaze of Palestinians is directed squarely at the international community, and this Court — whose advice is urgently being sought, for the protection of their most fundamental rights, including the right to life.”
While the current blockade on Gaza is unprecedented in scope and duration, Israel has maintained a siege by air, sea and land on the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2007. A report by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor released in 2021 stated that the Israeli blockade “has affected all social, economic and humanitarian sectors,” leading to mass poverty and unemployment, a deteriorating health sector, and energy and wastewater crises. “Most refugees are unable to secure their daily needs of food, water, electricity, health care and education,” the report stated.
Since March 2, Israel has blocked all food, medicine, fuel, and other relief from entering the besieged Gaza Strip, home to 2.1 million Palestinian people. “Israel is starving, killing and displacing Palestinians while also targeting and blocking humanitarian organizations trying to save their lives,” Ammar Hijazi, Palestine’s ambassador to the Netherlands, told the International Court of Justice (ICJ) during last week’s five-day hearing. “Humanitarian aid is being used as a weapon of war.”
The ICJ convened the hearing at the request of the UN General Assembly to address the following question:
What are the obligations of Israel, as an occupying Power and as a member of the United Nations, in relation to the presence and activities of the United Nations, including its agencies and bodies, other international organizations and third States, in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including to ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population as well as of basic services and humanitarian and development assistance, for the benefit of the Palestinian civilian population, and in support of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination?
Just days after the World Food Programme said it had run out of food in Gaza, the hearing commenced at the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands. Thirty-nine states, the United Nations and three other international organizations presented oral arguments. All states but two — the U.S. and Hungary — condemned Israel’s denial of humanitarian assistance to the starving people of Gaza. Although Israel refused to orally address the ICJ, it filed a written statement with the court. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that Israel decided “not to take part in this circus” and called the ICJ hearings part of a “systematic persecution and delegitimisation of Israel.
Patricia Pérez Galeana, representing Mexico, quoted UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s April 29 statement to the UN Security Council: “The humanitarian situation throughout the Gaza Strip has gone from bad, to worse, to beyond imagination.”
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, over 15,000 of them children. Thousands are missing under tons of rubble. Using the excuse of destroying Hamas, Israel has destroyed the life-sustaining infrastructure in Gaza, including shelter, hospitals, water treatment facilities, sanitation systems, farms, heat and power grids.
During the hearing, Saudi Arabia’s Mohamed Saud Alnasser said, “Israel’s hideous conduct, which piles illegality upon illegality, is well documented.” Zane Dangor, representative of South Africa, told the court, “The humanitarian aid system is facing total collapse. This collapse is by design.”
In June 2024, the UN Independent International Commission found, “Throughout the siege on Gaza, Israel has weaponized the withholding of life-sustaining necessities, specifically by cutting off supplies of water, food, electricity, fuel and other essential supplies, including humanitarian assistance.”
“Under the world’s watchful eye, Palestinians across the Occupied Palestinian Territory are being subjected to atrocity crimes, persecution, apartheid and genocide,” Dangor stated. “While we watch, the gaze of Palestinians is directed squarely at the international community, and this Court — whose advice is urgently being sought, for the protection of their most fundamental rights, including the right to life.”
While the current blockade on Gaza is unprecedented in scope and duration, Israel has maintained a siege by air, sea and land on the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2007. A report by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor released in 2021 stated that the Israeli blockade “has affected all social, economic and humanitarian sectors,” leading to mass poverty and unemployment, a deteriorating health sector, and energy and wastewater crises. “Most refugees are unable to secure their daily needs of food, water, electricity, health care and education,” the report stated.
Israel Falsely Claims It Has Facilitated Humanitarian Assistance
In its written submission, Israel maintained that its refusal to allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza is justified by defense and security concerns no matter how urgently that assistance is needed. Israel said the case was “outrageously brought against it for seeking lawfully to repel heinous attacks against its citizens and territory” and it “is part of an abusive and systematic campaign that regrettably weaponizes international law, and international legal institutions, with the aim of depriving Israel of fundamental rights accorded to all sovereign States, including the right to defend itself.”
Israel failed to mention that the ICJ unequivocally established in its 2004 advisory opinion “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” the non-applicability of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter in the situation between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. A state cannot invoke the right of self-defense to defend against an attack which originates inside a territory it occupies. Because Israel continues to occupy Gaza, it has relinquished its right to claim self-defense in response to Palestinian attacks.
Moreover, as Marko Rakovec argued for Slovenia, no claim to the right of self-defense can ever justify violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law, including the denial of urgently needed humanitarian assistance.
In addition, Israel falsely stated that “as before,” it “goes to great lengths to continue to allow and facilitate the provision of necessary humanitarian assistance and services in Gaza under very challenging circumstances.” Although Israel has blocked all humanitarian aid from Gaza since March 2, it began preventing food, water, electricity and gas from entering Gaza immediately after the October 7, 2023, attacks.
Israel argued that it “is committed to observing all the international legal obligations that are incumbent upon it, including those prescribed by the law of armed conflict and those reflected in the provisional measures indicated by the International Court of Justice.” But in spite of the ICJ’s orders in January, March and June of 2024 that it take immediate steps to allow unrestricted and unhindered aid to enter Gaza, Israel has shamelessly violated those commands.
Israel’s Legal Obligations as the Occupying Power
On July 19, 2024, the ICJ ruled that Israel was illegally occupying the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Even though Israel withdrew its military presence from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the ICJ affirmed that Israel continues to occupy Gaza because it exercises “effective control” over “the land, sea and air borders” and maintains “restrictions on movement of people and goods, collection of import and export taxes, and military control over the buffer zone.” The court also held that international law prohibits the acquisition of territory by threat or use of force and protects the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
During last week’s hearing, state after state reiterated Israel’s legal obligations by virtue of its status as an occupying power.
Israel has a legal duty to administer the territory for the benefit of the local population; to agree to and facilitate relief schemes; to facilitate the proper functioning of all institutions dedicated to the care and education of children; and to maintain the medical establishments and hospitals, including those set up by UN entities.
In addition, Israel must respect the decisions of the Palestinian people to receive basic goods and services from UN entities, including food, water, shelter, hygiene, medical supplies and clothing, in order to fully benefit from their right to self-determination. Israel has an obligation to assist those UN activities.
Israel’s Unilateral Ban on UNRWA Is Illegal
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is the agency that has provided food, education and health care to Palestinian refugees since 1949. “As a subsidiary organ of the United Nations established by the General Assembly, UNRWA is entitled to all rights and privileges accorded to UN organs by international law,” Ma Xinmin said on behalf of China. “In fulfilling its obligations toward UN organs in good faith, Israel shall safeguard and facilitate UNRWA’s humanitarian operations, protect the safety of the personnel and ensure its privileges and immunities.”
Nevertheless, in January, Israel banned UNRWA from operating in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and urged funders to stop financial support of the organization. The U.S. and several of its allies (which provided 60 percent of UNRWA’s funding) immediately suspended funds. All except the U.S. resumed funding UNRWA.
Since Israel is a member state of the United Nations, bound by the UN Charter, it may not deny any impartial humanitarian organization such as the UN the ability to administer relief schemes. Because it is the occupying power in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel cannot unilaterally declare that a humanitarian organization is not impartial and deny its relief procedures. Humanitarian relief employees, medical personnel and UN personnel must be respected, protected and treated humanely and not subjected to intimidation or harassment. Attacks shall not be directed against them.
Ardi Imseis, speaking on behalf of Palestine, quoted UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who said that “UNRWA is indispensable in delivering essential services to Palestinians” and “UNRWA is the backbone of the United Nations humanitarian relief operations” in Gaza. The secretary-general’s written statement to the court says:
Since October 2023, UNRWA has supported nearly 2.3 million affected individuals [in Gaza] with food, healthcare, and shelter. It has distributed food aid to around 1.9 million people and provided more than 60% of primary healthcare services in Gaza. Furthermore, UNRWA has sheltered hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons in more than 100 schools and continues to deliver psychosocial support and primary health consultations.
Imseis told the ICJ that Israel seeks to prevent UNRWA from fulfilling its mandate in order to further “the erasure of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and ultimately in the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including through forcible transfer.” UNRWA, Imseis added, is the “last hope” of the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, to survive Israel’s genocide.
Israel alleged that 19 out of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff took part in Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack. UNRWA fired nine staffers, concluding that they could have been involved, although the evidence was not authenticated or corroborated.
The UN secretary-general appointed Catherine Colonna, former foreign minister of France, to lead an independent review to assess whether UNRWA was doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and respond to allegations of serious neutrality breaches when they are made. The review concluded that Israel’s allegations were unsubstantiated and lacked credible evidence.
Sally Langrish argued to the ICJ that, “The United Kingdom considers that UNRWA is an ‘impartial humanitarian organization’ for the purposes of Article 59 of [the Fourth Geneva Convention]. In so far as impartiality is understood as meaning ‘neutrality,’ UNRWA also satisfies that requirement.” She quoted the Colonna report, which states that “since 2017 UNRWA has established and updated a significant number of policies, mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the obligation to uphold the principle of neutrality.”
Since Israel occupies Palestinian territory, it cannot exercise sovereignty or sovereign powers over it, Elinor Hammarskjöld, legal counsel of the United Nations, told the ICJ, quoting a prior ruling of the court. “The enactment of the ‘Law to Cease UNRWA Operations’ and of the ‘Law to Cease UNRWA Operations in the Territory of the State of Israel’ by the Knesset of Israel on 28 October 2024 appears to constitute an extension of sovereignty over — or exercise sovereign powers in — the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” she added.
In the past 19 months, Israeli forces have killed nearly 300 UNRWA workers, and detained and abused more than 50 UNRWA staff, including teachers, doctors and social workers.
Nuh Yilmaz, arguing on behalf of Turkey, called Israel’s unilateral decision to stop the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza “a form of collective punishment against all civilians in Gaza.” Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a party, specifically forbids collective punishment. It says, “No protected person [civilian] may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. … Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.” Collective punishment is considered a war crime.
Israel has long had UNRWA in its sights. In 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “UNRWA is an organisation that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem and the narrative of the right-of-return, as it were, in order to eliminate the State of Israel” and it needed “to pass from the world.”
“UNRWA is much more than a relief agency,” Mohamed Helal argued on behalf of the League of Arab States. “UNRWA is the principal instrument by which the United Nations protects the right of return of Palestine refugees. It is not an exaggeration to argue that preserving the right of return is the agency’s raison d’être.” And, he added, “In addition to being a fundamental right of Palestine refugees, preserving the right of return is essential to protecting the right of self-determination.”
In an apparent attempt to circumvent UNRWA’s delivery of humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza and neutralize criticism, the U.S. and Israel are planning to establish an alternative delivery scheme. But the UN and all aid organizations operating in Gaza reject the U.S.-Israeli plan. It is thus unlikely that funders will finance it.
Only the U.S. and Hungary Support Israel’s Claims
In their testimonies at the ICJ hearing, both the U.S. and Hungary parroted Israel’s specious claims. Josh Simmons, a legal adviser at the U.S. State Department, admitted that Israel must provide aid to Gaza but said it does not have to work with UNRWA. Hungary argued that the ICJ should not render an advisory opinion as it “may directly contribute to the escalation of the conflict.”
It is no coincidence that it is the U.S. and Hungary that are attempting to shield Israel and its leaders from international accountability. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. They are charged with the war crimes of starvation as a form of warfare and intentional attacks on civilians. The warrants also charge them with the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. The charges stem from Israel’s denial of food, water, electricity and fuel, and specific medical supplies to the Palestinians in Gaza.
States parties to the Rome Statute, including Hungary, have a duty to cooperate with the court and facilitate the arrest of any ICC suspect who enters their territory. On April 3, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán hosted Netanyahu, blatantly refusing to fulfill Hungary’s legal obligation to arrest the Israeli prime minister and send him to The Hague. Although Orbán announced Hungary’s withdrawal from the statute on April 3, it does not take effect for one year.
The U.S. government has long enabled Israel in its commission of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has furnished Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance and provided it with diplomatic and political cover in the UN Security Council.
It is likely that the ICJ will issue its advisory opinion in a matter of months. Although its decision will not be legally binding, it will probably have a profound impact on international law, international assistance to Israel and global public opinion.
Meanwhile, the people of Gaza continue to endure unimaginable suffering. Maher Ghanem, who lives in the Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, told The New York Times, “What we’re going through in Gaza can’t be called life.”
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.Donate
Marjorie Cohn
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law, and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense and she is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
The colonization of Palestine is not an anomaly in the liberal global order but its most glaring indictment. It exposes the hypocrisy of an international system that decries colonialism while institutionalizing and legitimizing it.
May 4, 2025
Source: Mondoweiss
Palestinians try to go about their daily lives amid the rubble of buildings or their makeshift tents during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on March 31, 2025. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)
The concept of exceptionalism is often invoked to explain “the Palestinian question” within the international system. Palestine is framed as an anomaly: an anachronistic settler-colonial project, enduring apartheid, occupation, and genocidal practices in a post-colonial world. Consequently, Israel’s violence, unlawful practices, and impunity are considered deviations within an international system otherwise grounded in shared values, impartial institutions, and a universal normative framework.
This narrative is dangerously misleading. It obscures the entrenchment of colonialism within the modern world order. Far from being an outlier, Palestine exposes the colonial foundations of international relations. Israel’s perpetration of colonialism is not an aberration in a fair and just world; it is instead the starkest manifestation of a global order designed and structured to uphold, protect, and legitimize (neo)colonial power dynamics.
The colonial architecture of international law
International law emerged to sanction the enslavement of millions of Africans, the colonial conquest of the so-called “New World,” and the subjugation of its Indigenous peoples economically, culturally, and politically. For over 500 years, it has orchestrated Europe’s history of exploitation and dispossession, serving to mediate competing imperial ambitions and legitimize territorial expansion. The works of Francisco De Vitoria and Hugo Grotius, considered the fathers of international law, exemplify this. Their conceptualization of “natural law” established a standard of civilization based on European lifestyles as the benchmark to advance territorial conquest and the oppression of non-Europeans. According to this standard, the so-called “civilized” had the right to conquer, while the “uncivilized” were to be enslaved, exploited, subjugated, and genocided. Any means of resistance of the “uncivilised” became synonymous with savagery and terrorism. The standard of civilization essentially consisted in the institutionalized power to colonize.
As international law evolved, it adapted to the features of new forms of colonialism. The global order that emerged from the ashes of World War II was still ruled by superpowers and their interests. However, it was presented as a fair and equal system under the facade of a universal legality guaranteed by super-partes institutions, steered by the United Nations.
The enshrinement of the Trust Territories system in the UN Charter and the Eurocentric epistemologies informing the codification of international treaties, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Genocide Convention among others reveal this continuity. The old standard of civilization was “repackaged” and translated into new and more acceptable dichotomies such as democratic vs. undemocratic, developed vs. underdeveloped, and liberal vs. non-liberal. European ideals of democracy, development, and economic liberalism became the new justification for the control and exploitation of other regions and peoples. The UN Security Council’s veto system is the most ostentatious admission of the post-WWII system’s renewed commitment to the hegemony of superpowers.
The decolonization wave of the 1950s to the 1970s brought only nominal independence, as former colonies remained ensnared in new forms of domination. Political independence obfuscated the enduring economic subjugation exercised through financial institutions, unfair trade agreements, and multinational corporations extracting wealth, reinforced by IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs. Former President of Ghana and political theorist Kwame Nkrumah denounced this period as the transition from classical colonialism to neo-colonialism. This economic subordination has been legitimized by ideological narratives that have presented capitalist development as equating to universal human rights standards, concealing its exploitative agenda.
International law and institutions, in essence, heralded a symbolic emancipation, short of material liberation from colonialism.
The ‘right to armed struggle’: friend or foe?
The laws of war, particularly the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977, reflect this contradiction. The pretense of regulating anticolonial struggle under the same legal frameworks that govern conflicts between states reproduces and further entrenches an inherent power imbalance rather than mitigating it.
This approach, while ostensibly universal in its application, imposes a formal legal symmetry between colonizers and the colonized—between an occupying power and those resisting domination. These norms fail to account for the structural inequalities and power dynamics that define colonial relationships. By treating the resistance of the colonized as subject to the same legal constraints as state militaries, these legal frameworks obscure the material and historical conditions of oppression.
Furthermore, these legal norms often function to delegitimize and criminalize resistance while preserving the structural dominance of the colonizer. The principle of distinction, for example—intended to protect civilians—does not adequately consider how colonial regimes blur the lines between military and civilian targets, nor does it address the inherent violence of occupation itself. Similarly, the prohibition of certain methods of warfare disproportionately restricts those resisting colonial rule, limiting their means of self-defense while leaving intact the superior military capabilities of the colonizer.
This legal framework thus serves not as a neutral arbiter of justice, but as a mechanism that entrenches the very power dynamics it claims to regulate. By regulating the scope and actors of violence through a framework of false equivalence, these norms enable colonial powers to depict colonized peoples as incapable of adhering to key legal principles. In doing so, they render anti-colonial wars of liberation impossible within the parameters of international law.
International law’s war on Palestine
The question of Palestine epitomizes this hegemonic essence of international law. Zionist settler-colonial ideology emerged and continues to operate within the political and economic framework of Europe’s imperial history, embedded in the international order as such.
UN General Assembly Resolution 181 partitioned Palestine, legitimized land dispossession, and embedded settler colonialism within international law. Despite being legally flawed, as it exceeded the UN General Assembly’s authority and was non-binding, the resolution became the basis for the unquestionable legitimation of Israel and the colonial legacy of the international system. The modern history of Palestine thus reflects this dialectic between internationally legalized systems of domination and resistance to the colonial framework underpinning them.
The Oslo framework sustained this dichotomy, further entrenching Zionist settler-colonialism under the guise of “peace negotiations. It is a political move to crystallize settler-colonialism and pacify the Palestinian resistance, promoting the paradoxical ambition to achieve the legitimization of Zionism by acceptance of the colonized/Palestinians themselves. Through this strategy and the narrative of “pragmatic approach,” the international community presents settler-colonialism as a “just and fair solution” eradicating the rights and aspirations to liberation, justice, and return of the indigenous population. In this framework, colonial control and oppression are further entrenched through neoliberal economic and political dependence that normalizes violence and domination under the guise of state-building. It formalizes the colonial relationship creating a colluded class of colonized – the Palestinian Authority (PA )- and empowering it as an intermediary gatekeeper of colonial power. This ultimately reinforces Israel’s architecture of settler-colonial violence. Israel’s ongoing mass expulsion and destruction campaign in the northern West Bank–the largest since 1967– conducted jointly with the PA stands as a stark testament to this ongoing reality.
It is not by chance that Palestine’s statehood project is revived every time that the colonial power is challenged in its essence and the decolonial mobilization resurges highlighting the long-term limits and inconsistencies of the international system. The campaign for the recognition of the state of Palestine is the genealogical continuation of the partition of Palestine. The current moment attests to it: with a live-streamed genocide, the only strategy that is re-proposed at the international level is, paradoxically, the reference to “legitimate solutions” and “legal frameworks” that do not question the settler-colonial foundations of Palestinian dispossession, but take it as a fait accompli. This is a strategic trajectory masked as an effort to implement mechanisms of accountability and justice through the intervention of international institutions, which rather than being “super parties” are vectors of colonial hegemony.
Emblematic in this sense are the ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant –which were initially requested also for Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, Mohammad Deif if they were not killed by the same colonial authority against which they were fighting before the warrants were ratified. While the world acclaimed this decision (that lacks enforcement) as historical, it was instrumental to flatten and normalize the asymmetric power relations between colonized and colonizer, putting anticolonial resistance leaders on the same dock as the state authorities ordering and implementing colonial massacres to eradicate and eliminate an entire people. This “bi-partisan” approach, and insistence on “objectivity” becomes the rule that subdues any attempt to denounce and revert unbalanced power relations.
The colonial foundations of international law have neutralised the colonised-coloniser relation and drowned it into a cycle of bothsidesism that always favors the more powerful colonizer, who not only holds the sword against the neck but also owns the power over the narrative.
Dismantling the master’s house
The colonization of Palestine is not an anomaly in this global order but its most glaring indictment. It exposes the hypocrisy of an international system that decries colonialism rhetorically while institutionalizing and legitimizing it practically. The frameworks of international law and governance, designed by and for the colonial powers, have always prioritized the preservation of power hierarchies under the guise of legality and justice. They reframe settler-colonialism as a legitimate underpinning of international relations.
Since October 7, 2023, the perceived universality of the international system has been fundamentally questioned, exposing its inherent contradictions. The evolving discourse and mechanisms of international law have revealed their limitations and the persistent alignment with colonial domination and its corollaries: racial privilege, systemic inequality, and capital accumulation. This moment calls for a critical reassessment of the conceptual and practical frameworks that underpin justice and liberation. Audre Lorde’s assertion that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change” underscores the necessity of reimagining these paradigms. The way forward requires a profound structural transformation, one that addresses and dismantles the entrenched systems of international law and governance that sustain oppression. In their place, alternative paradigms rooted in authentic equality, joint struggle, and decolonial justice must be cultivated. The Palestinian struggle for liberation exemplifies this broader challenge, compelling a confrontation with the colonial underpinnings of the global order and envisioning a world where justice transcends rhetoric to become an equitable and lived reality for all.
Mjriam Abu Samra
Mjriam Abu Samra is a Marie Curie Post-Doc Fellow at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, Italy, and at the Department of Anthropology at UC Davis, USA. She has been the Coordinator and Senior Researcher at the Renaissance Strategic Center—ARDD in Amman, Jordan.
Palestinians try to go about their daily lives amid the rubble of buildings or their makeshift tents during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on March 31, 2025. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)
The concept of exceptionalism is often invoked to explain “the Palestinian question” within the international system. Palestine is framed as an anomaly: an anachronistic settler-colonial project, enduring apartheid, occupation, and genocidal practices in a post-colonial world. Consequently, Israel’s violence, unlawful practices, and impunity are considered deviations within an international system otherwise grounded in shared values, impartial institutions, and a universal normative framework.
This narrative is dangerously misleading. It obscures the entrenchment of colonialism within the modern world order. Far from being an outlier, Palestine exposes the colonial foundations of international relations. Israel’s perpetration of colonialism is not an aberration in a fair and just world; it is instead the starkest manifestation of a global order designed and structured to uphold, protect, and legitimize (neo)colonial power dynamics.
The colonial architecture of international law
International law emerged to sanction the enslavement of millions of Africans, the colonial conquest of the so-called “New World,” and the subjugation of its Indigenous peoples economically, culturally, and politically. For over 500 years, it has orchestrated Europe’s history of exploitation and dispossession, serving to mediate competing imperial ambitions and legitimize territorial expansion. The works of Francisco De Vitoria and Hugo Grotius, considered the fathers of international law, exemplify this. Their conceptualization of “natural law” established a standard of civilization based on European lifestyles as the benchmark to advance territorial conquest and the oppression of non-Europeans. According to this standard, the so-called “civilized” had the right to conquer, while the “uncivilized” were to be enslaved, exploited, subjugated, and genocided. Any means of resistance of the “uncivilised” became synonymous with savagery and terrorism. The standard of civilization essentially consisted in the institutionalized power to colonize.
As international law evolved, it adapted to the features of new forms of colonialism. The global order that emerged from the ashes of World War II was still ruled by superpowers and their interests. However, it was presented as a fair and equal system under the facade of a universal legality guaranteed by super-partes institutions, steered by the United Nations.
The enshrinement of the Trust Territories system in the UN Charter and the Eurocentric epistemologies informing the codification of international treaties, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Genocide Convention among others reveal this continuity. The old standard of civilization was “repackaged” and translated into new and more acceptable dichotomies such as democratic vs. undemocratic, developed vs. underdeveloped, and liberal vs. non-liberal. European ideals of democracy, development, and economic liberalism became the new justification for the control and exploitation of other regions and peoples. The UN Security Council’s veto system is the most ostentatious admission of the post-WWII system’s renewed commitment to the hegemony of superpowers.
The decolonization wave of the 1950s to the 1970s brought only nominal independence, as former colonies remained ensnared in new forms of domination. Political independence obfuscated the enduring economic subjugation exercised through financial institutions, unfair trade agreements, and multinational corporations extracting wealth, reinforced by IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs. Former President of Ghana and political theorist Kwame Nkrumah denounced this period as the transition from classical colonialism to neo-colonialism. This economic subordination has been legitimized by ideological narratives that have presented capitalist development as equating to universal human rights standards, concealing its exploitative agenda.
International law and institutions, in essence, heralded a symbolic emancipation, short of material liberation from colonialism.
The ‘right to armed struggle’: friend or foe?
The laws of war, particularly the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977, reflect this contradiction. The pretense of regulating anticolonial struggle under the same legal frameworks that govern conflicts between states reproduces and further entrenches an inherent power imbalance rather than mitigating it.
This approach, while ostensibly universal in its application, imposes a formal legal symmetry between colonizers and the colonized—between an occupying power and those resisting domination. These norms fail to account for the structural inequalities and power dynamics that define colonial relationships. By treating the resistance of the colonized as subject to the same legal constraints as state militaries, these legal frameworks obscure the material and historical conditions of oppression.
Furthermore, these legal norms often function to delegitimize and criminalize resistance while preserving the structural dominance of the colonizer. The principle of distinction, for example—intended to protect civilians—does not adequately consider how colonial regimes blur the lines between military and civilian targets, nor does it address the inherent violence of occupation itself. Similarly, the prohibition of certain methods of warfare disproportionately restricts those resisting colonial rule, limiting their means of self-defense while leaving intact the superior military capabilities of the colonizer.
This legal framework thus serves not as a neutral arbiter of justice, but as a mechanism that entrenches the very power dynamics it claims to regulate. By regulating the scope and actors of violence through a framework of false equivalence, these norms enable colonial powers to depict colonized peoples as incapable of adhering to key legal principles. In doing so, they render anti-colonial wars of liberation impossible within the parameters of international law.
International law’s war on Palestine
The question of Palestine epitomizes this hegemonic essence of international law. Zionist settler-colonial ideology emerged and continues to operate within the political and economic framework of Europe’s imperial history, embedded in the international order as such.
UN General Assembly Resolution 181 partitioned Palestine, legitimized land dispossession, and embedded settler colonialism within international law. Despite being legally flawed, as it exceeded the UN General Assembly’s authority and was non-binding, the resolution became the basis for the unquestionable legitimation of Israel and the colonial legacy of the international system. The modern history of Palestine thus reflects this dialectic between internationally legalized systems of domination and resistance to the colonial framework underpinning them.
The Oslo framework sustained this dichotomy, further entrenching Zionist settler-colonialism under the guise of “peace negotiations. It is a political move to crystallize settler-colonialism and pacify the Palestinian resistance, promoting the paradoxical ambition to achieve the legitimization of Zionism by acceptance of the colonized/Palestinians themselves. Through this strategy and the narrative of “pragmatic approach,” the international community presents settler-colonialism as a “just and fair solution” eradicating the rights and aspirations to liberation, justice, and return of the indigenous population. In this framework, colonial control and oppression are further entrenched through neoliberal economic and political dependence that normalizes violence and domination under the guise of state-building. It formalizes the colonial relationship creating a colluded class of colonized – the Palestinian Authority (PA )- and empowering it as an intermediary gatekeeper of colonial power. This ultimately reinforces Israel’s architecture of settler-colonial violence. Israel’s ongoing mass expulsion and destruction campaign in the northern West Bank–the largest since 1967– conducted jointly with the PA stands as a stark testament to this ongoing reality.
It is not by chance that Palestine’s statehood project is revived every time that the colonial power is challenged in its essence and the decolonial mobilization resurges highlighting the long-term limits and inconsistencies of the international system. The campaign for the recognition of the state of Palestine is the genealogical continuation of the partition of Palestine. The current moment attests to it: with a live-streamed genocide, the only strategy that is re-proposed at the international level is, paradoxically, the reference to “legitimate solutions” and “legal frameworks” that do not question the settler-colonial foundations of Palestinian dispossession, but take it as a fait accompli. This is a strategic trajectory masked as an effort to implement mechanisms of accountability and justice through the intervention of international institutions, which rather than being “super parties” are vectors of colonial hegemony.
Emblematic in this sense are the ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant –which were initially requested also for Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, Mohammad Deif if they were not killed by the same colonial authority against which they were fighting before the warrants were ratified. While the world acclaimed this decision (that lacks enforcement) as historical, it was instrumental to flatten and normalize the asymmetric power relations between colonized and colonizer, putting anticolonial resistance leaders on the same dock as the state authorities ordering and implementing colonial massacres to eradicate and eliminate an entire people. This “bi-partisan” approach, and insistence on “objectivity” becomes the rule that subdues any attempt to denounce and revert unbalanced power relations.
The colonial foundations of international law have neutralised the colonised-coloniser relation and drowned it into a cycle of bothsidesism that always favors the more powerful colonizer, who not only holds the sword against the neck but also owns the power over the narrative.
Dismantling the master’s house
The colonization of Palestine is not an anomaly in this global order but its most glaring indictment. It exposes the hypocrisy of an international system that decries colonialism rhetorically while institutionalizing and legitimizing it practically. The frameworks of international law and governance, designed by and for the colonial powers, have always prioritized the preservation of power hierarchies under the guise of legality and justice. They reframe settler-colonialism as a legitimate underpinning of international relations.
Since October 7, 2023, the perceived universality of the international system has been fundamentally questioned, exposing its inherent contradictions. The evolving discourse and mechanisms of international law have revealed their limitations and the persistent alignment with colonial domination and its corollaries: racial privilege, systemic inequality, and capital accumulation. This moment calls for a critical reassessment of the conceptual and practical frameworks that underpin justice and liberation. Audre Lorde’s assertion that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change” underscores the necessity of reimagining these paradigms. The way forward requires a profound structural transformation, one that addresses and dismantles the entrenched systems of international law and governance that sustain oppression. In their place, alternative paradigms rooted in authentic equality, joint struggle, and decolonial justice must be cultivated. The Palestinian struggle for liberation exemplifies this broader challenge, compelling a confrontation with the colonial underpinnings of the global order and envisioning a world where justice transcends rhetoric to become an equitable and lived reality for all.
Mjriam Abu Samra
Mjriam Abu Samra is a Marie Curie Post-Doc Fellow at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, Italy, and at the Department of Anthropology at UC Davis, USA. She has been the Coordinator and Senior Researcher at the Renaissance Strategic Center—ARDD in Amman, Jordan.
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