Nineteen months into Israel-USA’s seemingly genocidal war on the people of Gaza, the official death toll now over 53,000, likely much higher, and climbing fast (approaching 200,000, some say), two questions beg to be asked – how and why did this war start, and why has it been so hard to stop?

According to the stalwart, supremely authoritative Guardian, the Gaza war was “triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted another 250.”

As for why the war drags on, seemingly without end, informed observers say the two ‘sides’ in the ‘conflict’ can’t agree to a ceasefire.

A circular argument, if ever there was one.

Hamas’ audacious, poorly calculated assault on southern Israeli communities, back in October 2023, was certainly the most proximal cause of Israel’s war — waged in partnership with the US (Israel-USA) – and the tireless efforts of staunch US allies Egypt and Qatar to broker a ceasefire have definitely been vexed.

But, in search of deeper reasons for the apocalypse Gazans now face, alongside their brethren across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and the apparent incapacity of the world’s most powerful players to bring it to an end, deep philosophy and doctrine may be more instructive than recent incidents and scenarios.

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The most salient of these: the categorical imperative among powerful states that public international law must be ignored, set aside, slipped into the lowest of bottom drawers.

That scrupulous enforcement of the modern world’s most canonical legal instruments (promulgated in the wake of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and Sobibor) doesn’t suit their interests, and might even undermine them.

David Lloyd George

Such was the view of James Balfour, Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and other British leaders, back in the 1920s, when they decided to hand over historic Palestine to European Zionists, in flagrant breach of their obligation under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, obliging them to advance “the well-being and development” of Palestine’s “peoples,” as “a sacred trust of civilization.”

At the start of Britain’s Palestine Mandate, in 1922, the British carried out a census. Seventy-nine percent of Palestine’s people were Arab Muslims, ten percent were Christian, and eleven percent were Jewish — half of the latter of indigenous Arab origin, the remainder recent immigrants from Europe – the Brits determined.

Out the window these census figures were flung, along with Britain’s solemn duty to uphold its solemn legal obligation to the post-WWI international community.

The rest is history – the history of canonical laws and binding treaties tossed out the window or into the fireplace, on behalf of this ‘Jewish State’ Britain had resolved to create, in partnership with European Zionists, thereby enabling Eastern European Jews to go anywhere, really, except to Britain.

The UN plan to partition Palestine, at the end of Britain’s dismally executed Mandate — set forth in General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), promulgated in November 1947 — assigned 55 percent of historic Palestine to its Jewish people (a third of the population), and the remainder of the tiny slice of territory to Arab Palestinians. Jerusalem would be held as an internationalized corpus separatum.

Israel supported the resolution, then, upon its passage, proceeded to violate it.

Scene from 1947-49 Nakba

Between December 1947 and early 1949, Israel forcibly expelled almost a million Palestinians, or terrorized them into fleeing, including from lands slated for the future Arab state.

They also seized western Jerusalem.

Western leaders wrung their hands, but did nothing.

UN General Assembly Resolution 194, promulgated on December 11, 1948, stated that “[Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”

On 17 December 1948, Israel’s second application for UN membership was rejected by the Security Council (the first was ignored). Three months later, in Resolution 69, the UNSC approved Israel’s third application by a vote of 9 to 1 (Egypt voting against), on condition of young Israel’s implementation of the Partition Plan, and the Palestinian Right of Return, set forth in Resolution 194.

On this basis, on 11 May 1949, the UNGA approved Israeli membership by two-thirds majority.

Israel proceeded to renege on its commitment to the UN, and the Western powers did nothing.  

In October 1956, in connivance with Britain and France, and in flagrant breach of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, obliging member states to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” Israel set out to overthrow Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, and seize the Suez Canal.

Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser

US President Dwight Eisenhower put his foot down, and the tripartite assault was thwarted.

Eleven years later, claiming self-defense, Israel launched a war against Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Modern legal scholarship argues Israel’s June 1967 war had no basis under Article 51 of the UN Charter, the right to self-defense.

In any case, under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, Israel was now an occupying power. Overruling one of its most senior legal advisors (Theodor Meron, now an advisor to the ICC), the Israeli government publicly declared that the Palestinian territories were “disputed,” not occupied, that it would uphold Geneva IV as it pleased, although it wasn’t obliged to do so.

The UN Security Council disagreed.

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UNSC resolution 242, passed on November 22, 1967, affirmed the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” (among the most canonical statements of modern international law), and the “commitment [of UN member states] to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter.”  

UNSC 242 also called on Israel to withdraw its armed forces from “territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

It didn’t. Fifty-eight years later, Israel continues to occupy the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (which it annexed in 1980, along with the Syrian Golan Heights, in flagrant violation of the UN Charter), and Gaza.

As for its obligations under Geneva IV (obligations it denies), Israel has violated virtually all of them.

Instructions to Bethlehem Palestinians (David Kattenburg)

And, notwithstanding common Article 1 of all four Geneva Conventions, obligating “High Contracting Parties” to “respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances,” Israel has violated its Geneva IV obligations with absolute impunity, a most unique dispensation guaranteed by Europe’s most powerful states, Canada, and, of course, Israel-USA.

At no point have any of Geneva IV’s highest High Contracting Parties undertaken to “ensure” Israeli “respect” for the convention. To the contrary, they have aided and abetted Israeli violations as an occupying power, helping Israel to profit from its occupation (declared unlawful last July, by the International Court of Justice), and profiting from the technologies Israel has developed, in the course of its century-long dispossession, subjugation and oppression of the Palestinian people.

Nor have the UK, France, Germany, Canada or Israel-USA abided by Article 25 of the UN Charter, obliging member states “to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council.”

Back in December 2016, opining on Israel’s settlement enterprise for the umpteenth time, the UNSC declared that Israel’s West Bank settlements have “no legal validity,” and constitute “a flagrant violation under international law.”

UNSC 2334 also called on UN member states “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”

In other words, to refrain from treating Israel’s occupation as if it were legal, which, according to the July 19 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, it is not.

Protesting in the Netherlands (David Kattenburg)

By refusing to order Israel out of Gaza — fully occupied territory since June 1967 and under genocidal assault for the past nineteen months — this is precisely what the most powerful UN members states are doing, Israel’s Western allies foremost among these. They are treating Israel as if it held lawful sovereignty in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories, free to do as it pleases, regardless of what the UN Charter, Geneva IV, the 1948 Genocide Convention, and 1973 Apartheid Convention say, in utter disregard for international law.

They themselves deny the law. They refuse to abide by it, pushing it as far away as possible. Ignoring it.

In search of the how’s and why’s of Israel’s savage assault on Gaza, dispatching the tiny concentration camp/ghetto to a hell lower than anything Dante could have imagined, and why the war seems impossible to stop, these are the reasons why.

For his own thoughts on the non-role of international law in the context of Israel and Palestine, the GPM spoke with Michael Lynk.

Michael Lynk is Emeritus Professor of law at Western University, in London, Ontario, Canada. Between 2016 and 2022, Lynk served as the seventh UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967.

Listen to our complete conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here.

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Watch our complete conversation with Michael Lynk here: