War on Gaza: Does international law even matter anymore?
An injured child holds food in Khan Younis, Gaza, on 15 August 2024
Selçuk Aydın and M Behesti Aydogan write in Middle East Eye on 21 August 2024:
There has been a widespread global outcry against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, but it has yet to be translated into concrete steps at the international level to stop Israel. Amid the ongoing violence and oppression in Gaza, this discrepancy between global popular will and state/institutional action has fuelled the public’s growing distrust in the international system, and perhaps most importantly, in international law itself.
Amid this backdrop, the need to reevaluate the functions of international law has become extremely pressing. Earlier this month, a conference at Bogazici University in the Turkish city of Istanbul, titled “Rethinking International Law After Gaza”, explored this very issue, raising important questions about decolonisation and the future of international law. Participants included renowned lawyers, experts, academics and lawmakers from around the world.
International law regulates global political and economic relations at different levels, purporting to facilitate peace, human rights and environmental protections.
Yet, in reality, it has served to further western colonialism and privilege the liberal West. Both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court have been asked to take steps towards prosecuting Israel, but they have been slow to act, with the latter long accused of over-focusing on African states. International law’s colonial roots and western bias have led to marginalisation of the Global South. It is Eurocentric in its production of knowledge, systematically disregarding other regions and their experiences.
Double standards
Israel’s latest war on Gaza not only constitutes a genocide, but it also involves other large-scale crimes, such as domicide, or the systematic destruction of housing. And yet, despite regularly criticising Russia for failing to adhere to international law, western states have not taken the same approach with Israel.
Great-power competition is a term used to define contemporary world politics after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the decline of US hegemony. In a multipolar world, US hegemony is in direct competition with the rise of China and Russian revisionism. Within this fragmented structure, why are states not taking clear steps on the crisis in Gaza?