Tag Archives | International Law

The international community wants to hold Israeli leaders accountable for war crimes committed in Gaza. Why is the United States standing in the way?

The ICJ ruling finding Israel’s occupation unlawful makes the first test for David Lammy’s ‘progressive realism’ clear: either Labour opposes dispossession and genocide, or it is complicit.

In finding there is a plausible case against Israel, the International Court of Justice treated with contempt the argument from Israel that the case should be dismissed as it is exercising its right of self-defence.

Since October 7, there have been five elements that indicate we may be seeing a paradigm shift in the hundred years’ war waged against the Palestinian people.

The problem for Palestinians is not just that of Israel’s violence, but also the lack of international will to hold Israel accountable.

UN official Mary Lawlor calls Israeli attacks on Palestinian human rights organizations an “atrocity.” “It’s as simple as that,” Lawlor tells Mondoweiss, “Israel does not want human rights defenders documenting and publicizing the attacks and injustice done to the Palestinians. So, this is their tactic.”

The United States claims it is operating under a “rules-based order”—but the term is not the same international law recognized by the rest of the world. Rather, it is camouflage behind which American exceptionalism flourishes.

The international community has a political, and even legal, frame of reference regarding its position on the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Unfortunately, however, it has no genuine political mandate, or the inclination to act individually or collectively, to bring this occupation to an end.