The future of Palestine is about much more than the human and national rights of its own people — it has become the defining question about the future of humanity.
September 29, 2025
MONDOWEISS
Sinn Féin National Chairperson Declan Kearney
This month marks the 80th anniversary of the United Nations Charter being adopted, which has become the foundation of the United Nations itself and our international law framework.
The Charter emphasizes the universal nature of human rights, the exercise of self-determination, and global peace.
Following the defeat of fascism in 1945, the UN Charter fueled the emergence of a new international moral order which established the primacy of multilateralism, diplomacy and peaceful coexistence in managing global relations.
In the colonized countries of the Global South, it inspired a wave of anti-colonial and independence struggles. The Charter directly challenged the existence of imperialism and colonialism. In short, it declared the right of oppressed peoples to be free and to self-determination.
Ten years later in 1955, the Bandung Conference brought together 29 newly independent and still colonized countries. This was another watershed moment. It gave voice to the popular aspiration of peoples in the Global South to control their own destinies.
The Bandung Principles explicitly expressed support for universal fundamental rights, and the UN Charter; for national self-determination and sovereignty; opposition to racial domination; and, for equality and peace.
The Bandung Principles foreshadowed the launch of the South African Freedom Charter just two months later.
From the midst of the apartheid regime and Afrikaner repression of the black and coloured people majority, the Freedom Charter outlined a democratic vision for South Africa with equality, justice and shared prosperity at its heart. It made clear that ‘the people shall govern’ and ‘the land shall be shared among those who work it’.
This was a seminal proclamation about the future of South Africa at that time.
While it initially receded from popular memory in the face of relentless repression, it later became a catalyst for the resurgent national liberation struggle in the 1980s.
As a result, the intensified armed struggle and emphasis on mass mobilisation throughout South Africa provided inspiration to other national independence and anti-colonial struggles elsewhere in Africa, as well as Latin America, Palestine, the Basque Country, and Ireland.
Earlier in the century, Ireland’s own freedom charter was expressed in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic declared at the outset of the Easter Rising in April 1916. It too was a visionary, transformational document which asserted the sovereign right of the Irish people to be free, and looked towards the establishment of a national Republic ‘guaranteeing religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities for all its citizens, and resolved to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally’. Today it continues to inspire the popular momentum for Irish national self-determination.
The central importance of the UN Charter, and enduring legacies of the Bandung Principles and South African Freedom Charter, represent important frameworks to inform how the challenges and contradictions of the modern geopolitical context are managed. They codify the basis of a new rights-based, world order.
Currently, the UN Charter and multilateralism are under sustained and deliberate attack.
Since the beginning of 2025, the words and actions of the new US administration have confirmed its total rejection of the existing rules-based approach to managing geopolitical relations.
A new, dangerous world order is emerging. The most graphic evidence is clear in US complicity with the Israeli Zionist plan to annihilate the Palestinian people, by prosecuting an apocalyptic genocide in Gaza, and annexation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel systematically violates international law. It defies the UN Charter and is carrying out multiple crimes against humanity in Palestine because the US allows it to do so with complete impunity.
As a result, the entire Middle East region is being destabilized and pushed towards a political abyss. But this suits US imperial interests.
Noam Chomsky has correctly described Zionist settler colonization as the most extreme form of imperialism. There is a direct correlation between US and Israeli objectives in the Middle East.
At the heart of all the present global turbulence is a relentless determination to reassert US global dominance through the use of inherently destabilizing strategies.
Hence, the threats to begin trade wars and the demonization of international partners; support for unilateral attacks against Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and the unprovoked war against Iran; and most recently, the violation of Qatar’s national sovereignty by Israel (now viewed throughout the Middle East and elsewhere as a terrorist state).
And we can add to this list by including the narrative which denies the existence of a worldwide climate emergency; and continued aggressive implementation of US imperialist objectives in the Caribbean and Latin America – and in particular, against Cuba.
The quest for self-determination and national democracy is the essential struggle of our modern times.
The fundamental rights conferred on every nation by the UN Charter are being routinely ripped up, and repeatedly so on the floor of the UN General Assembly and UN Security Council.
Meanwhile, wars rage in Ukraine, as a result of the imperialist interests of Russian oligarchs; and in Congo and Sudan, due to the legacy of neocolonialism in Africa.
However, Palestine crystallizes the fundamental contradiction between the right to self-determination and colonialism.
It is the most totemic national democratic struggle of our generation. It is consequential for the Middle East region and the international community.
Gaza and the West Bank have become litmus tests for the enforcement and primacy of international law, and for the UN as the principal multilateral institution.
This latest phase of Israel’s one-hundred-year colonial war in Palestine is being used as a proxy to expand its borders into Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
Israeli expansionism is inextricably tied up with the strengthening of US economic and military interests in the Middle East and Asia. That is what the Abraham Accords strategy, and normalizing of relations between Gulf states and Israel, is all about. Palestine and its people are pawns and bargaining chips in these power plays.
What is happening in Palestine represents an existential strategic challenge for global democratic opinion. It asks the question about what type of world we choose to live in – one which is dominated by US imperial interests and its proxies, or a multilateral global system built upon rules and principles which respect the rights of all people to determine their national futures, and to live in peaceful co-existence with each other.
The future of Palestine is about much more than the human and national rights of its own people; it has become the defining question about the future of humanity and morality.
Our modern geopolitical landscape has been shaped by imperialism and colonialism.
The largest Western states continue to shore up their economic and military dominance through the G7, NATO, and the ‘Five Eyes’ surveillance and espionage alliance.
The role of the G7 has institutionalized the gap between the Global South and North. The result is a division in humanity maintained within a neocolonial framework, which perpetuates underdevelopment and global inequality.
And yet, despite this, significant global shifts and realignments are happening.
The courageous leadership given by South Africa by taking its case against Israel to the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention inspires hope. Its role alongside Colombia and others in developing the The Hague Group as a multilateral platform against Zionist colonialism in Palestine is hugely significant.
At the same time, the widening of the BRICS partnership is creating a bulwark against the attrition of Western neoliberalism in the Global South and East.
The influence of the African Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States can no longer be ignored.
The mobilization of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Arab countries, which are committed to the multilateral order, along with other democratic voices, will be essential to bringing about reform of the UN as an institution, and restoring its authority.
And although colonialism continues to cast a long shadow, we cannot lose sight of the fact that our global landscape has been progressively shaped by anti-imperialist struggles.
The Republics of Cuba, Vietnam, and South Africa all grew from the national liberation tradition.
The legacies of Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Nelson Mandela, and recently deceased Pepe Mujica, are beacons of inspiration. They remind us that change is possible, no matter how impossible it may seem.
The proof is to be found in the progressive governments in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Colombia. All have their roots in anti-imperialist and national liberation politics. That is, the politics of self-determination, people’s sovereignty, and a vision of social and economic transformation. Change for the many, not the few.
In August, during the annual Féile an Phobail in Belfast, the Basque leader Gorka Elajabarrieta and I spoke at an event to address ‘Another World is Possible: The Politics of National Liberation’.
We drew from the experience of the unfinished national liberation struggles in the Basque Country and Ireland, and spoke about the challenges which have been confronted and the strategic progress being made. We set our contributions within the current global context.
We both made the case for a political strategy to counter insurgent imperialism and neocolonialism. The Zionist colonial war against Palestine, and the West’s attempt to reconstruct geopolitics in its imperialist interests must be stopped.
The starting point should be a fundamental strategic discussion among those movements, parties, and governments which reflect the modern national liberation tradition.
It is time to put the politics of national liberation at the center of global politics again.
A new international political program with self-determination and national democracy at its core is needed.
That should draw upon the experience of revolutionary and democratic forces from within the Global South, East, and North.
Basque and Irish Republicans are committed to helping progress this debate. A Luta Continua.
A version of this article first appeared in An Phoblacht.
This month marks the 80th anniversary of the United Nations Charter being adopted, which has become the foundation of the United Nations itself and our international law framework.
The Charter emphasizes the universal nature of human rights, the exercise of self-determination, and global peace.
Following the defeat of fascism in 1945, the UN Charter fueled the emergence of a new international moral order which established the primacy of multilateralism, diplomacy and peaceful coexistence in managing global relations.
In the colonized countries of the Global South, it inspired a wave of anti-colonial and independence struggles. The Charter directly challenged the existence of imperialism and colonialism. In short, it declared the right of oppressed peoples to be free and to self-determination.
Ten years later in 1955, the Bandung Conference brought together 29 newly independent and still colonized countries. This was another watershed moment. It gave voice to the popular aspiration of peoples in the Global South to control their own destinies.
The Bandung Principles explicitly expressed support for universal fundamental rights, and the UN Charter; for national self-determination and sovereignty; opposition to racial domination; and, for equality and peace.
The Bandung Principles foreshadowed the launch of the South African Freedom Charter just two months later.
From the midst of the apartheid regime and Afrikaner repression of the black and coloured people majority, the Freedom Charter outlined a democratic vision for South Africa with equality, justice and shared prosperity at its heart. It made clear that ‘the people shall govern’ and ‘the land shall be shared among those who work it’.
This was a seminal proclamation about the future of South Africa at that time.
While it initially receded from popular memory in the face of relentless repression, it later became a catalyst for the resurgent national liberation struggle in the 1980s.
As a result, the intensified armed struggle and emphasis on mass mobilisation throughout South Africa provided inspiration to other national independence and anti-colonial struggles elsewhere in Africa, as well as Latin America, Palestine, the Basque Country, and Ireland.
Earlier in the century, Ireland’s own freedom charter was expressed in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic declared at the outset of the Easter Rising in April 1916. It too was a visionary, transformational document which asserted the sovereign right of the Irish people to be free, and looked towards the establishment of a national Republic ‘guaranteeing religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities for all its citizens, and resolved to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally’. Today it continues to inspire the popular momentum for Irish national self-determination.
The central importance of the UN Charter, and enduring legacies of the Bandung Principles and South African Freedom Charter, represent important frameworks to inform how the challenges and contradictions of the modern geopolitical context are managed. They codify the basis of a new rights-based, world order.
Currently, the UN Charter and multilateralism are under sustained and deliberate attack.
Since the beginning of 2025, the words and actions of the new US administration have confirmed its total rejection of the existing rules-based approach to managing geopolitical relations.
A new, dangerous world order is emerging. The most graphic evidence is clear in US complicity with the Israeli Zionist plan to annihilate the Palestinian people, by prosecuting an apocalyptic genocide in Gaza, and annexation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel systematically violates international law. It defies the UN Charter and is carrying out multiple crimes against humanity in Palestine because the US allows it to do so with complete impunity.
As a result, the entire Middle East region is being destabilized and pushed towards a political abyss. But this suits US imperial interests.
Noam Chomsky has correctly described Zionist settler colonization as the most extreme form of imperialism. There is a direct correlation between US and Israeli objectives in the Middle East.
At the heart of all the present global turbulence is a relentless determination to reassert US global dominance through the use of inherently destabilizing strategies.
Hence, the threats to begin trade wars and the demonization of international partners; support for unilateral attacks against Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and the unprovoked war against Iran; and most recently, the violation of Qatar’s national sovereignty by Israel (now viewed throughout the Middle East and elsewhere as a terrorist state).
And we can add to this list by including the narrative which denies the existence of a worldwide climate emergency; and continued aggressive implementation of US imperialist objectives in the Caribbean and Latin America – and in particular, against Cuba.
The quest for self-determination and national democracy is the essential struggle of our modern times.
The fundamental rights conferred on every nation by the UN Charter are being routinely ripped up, and repeatedly so on the floor of the UN General Assembly and UN Security Council.
Meanwhile, wars rage in Ukraine, as a result of the imperialist interests of Russian oligarchs; and in Congo and Sudan, due to the legacy of neocolonialism in Africa.
However, Palestine crystallizes the fundamental contradiction between the right to self-determination and colonialism.
It is the most totemic national democratic struggle of our generation. It is consequential for the Middle East region and the international community.
Gaza and the West Bank have become litmus tests for the enforcement and primacy of international law, and for the UN as the principal multilateral institution.
This latest phase of Israel’s one-hundred-year colonial war in Palestine is being used as a proxy to expand its borders into Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
Israeli expansionism is inextricably tied up with the strengthening of US economic and military interests in the Middle East and Asia. That is what the Abraham Accords strategy, and normalizing of relations between Gulf states and Israel, is all about. Palestine and its people are pawns and bargaining chips in these power plays.
What is happening in Palestine represents an existential strategic challenge for global democratic opinion. It asks the question about what type of world we choose to live in – one which is dominated by US imperial interests and its proxies, or a multilateral global system built upon rules and principles which respect the rights of all people to determine their national futures, and to live in peaceful co-existence with each other.
The future of Palestine is about much more than the human and national rights of its own people; it has become the defining question about the future of humanity and morality.
Our modern geopolitical landscape has been shaped by imperialism and colonialism.
The largest Western states continue to shore up their economic and military dominance through the G7, NATO, and the ‘Five Eyes’ surveillance and espionage alliance.
The role of the G7 has institutionalized the gap between the Global South and North. The result is a division in humanity maintained within a neocolonial framework, which perpetuates underdevelopment and global inequality.
And yet, despite this, significant global shifts and realignments are happening.
The courageous leadership given by South Africa by taking its case against Israel to the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention inspires hope. Its role alongside Colombia and others in developing the The Hague Group as a multilateral platform against Zionist colonialism in Palestine is hugely significant.
At the same time, the widening of the BRICS partnership is creating a bulwark against the attrition of Western neoliberalism in the Global South and East.
The influence of the African Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States can no longer be ignored.
The mobilization of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Arab countries, which are committed to the multilateral order, along with other democratic voices, will be essential to bringing about reform of the UN as an institution, and restoring its authority.
And although colonialism continues to cast a long shadow, we cannot lose sight of the fact that our global landscape has been progressively shaped by anti-imperialist struggles.
The Republics of Cuba, Vietnam, and South Africa all grew from the national liberation tradition.
The legacies of Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Nelson Mandela, and recently deceased Pepe Mujica, are beacons of inspiration. They remind us that change is possible, no matter how impossible it may seem.
The proof is to be found in the progressive governments in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Colombia. All have their roots in anti-imperialist and national liberation politics. That is, the politics of self-determination, people’s sovereignty, and a vision of social and economic transformation. Change for the many, not the few.
In August, during the annual Féile an Phobail in Belfast, the Basque leader Gorka Elajabarrieta and I spoke at an event to address ‘Another World is Possible: The Politics of National Liberation’.
We drew from the experience of the unfinished national liberation struggles in the Basque Country and Ireland, and spoke about the challenges which have been confronted and the strategic progress being made. We set our contributions within the current global context.
We both made the case for a political strategy to counter insurgent imperialism and neocolonialism. The Zionist colonial war against Palestine, and the West’s attempt to reconstruct geopolitics in its imperialist interests must be stopped.
The starting point should be a fundamental strategic discussion among those movements, parties, and governments which reflect the modern national liberation tradition.
It is time to put the politics of national liberation at the center of global politics again.
A new international political program with self-determination and national democracy at its core is needed.
That should draw upon the experience of revolutionary and democratic forces from within the Global South, East, and North.
Basque and Irish Republicans are committed to helping progress this debate. A Luta Continua.
A version of this article first appeared in An Phoblacht.
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