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THE INTERNATIONAL RULES-BASED order emerged following the Second World War with one overarching aim: to prevent a repeat of the past.
The system was designed to foster global cooperation and adherence to fundamental human rights, whilst promoting peace and working collectively to prevent a third world war. Eight decades of diplomacy and cooperation have been shattered by the unending impunity afforded to one state – Israel.
Following the collapse of the League of Nations, the first concerted effort at global diplomacy, which failed to prevent World War II, a new international political system was designed – the United Nations (UN).
193 countries have acceded to the UN. Member States are required to adhere to a series of rules and charters including the UN Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UN Security resolutions, UN General Assembly Resolutions, the Geneva Conventions, treaties such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, international agreements such as ceasefires, and international court rulings such as judgements by the International Court of Justice.
The state of Israel is in breach of each one of these international rules and charters, as asserted by the United Nations itself. Its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, and yet Israel continues to sit in the chamber of the United Nations.
Critics of the International rules-based order have long lambasted the system as ‘rules for thee, but not for me’ – a system designed by powerful nations to ignore as they please. A criticism that grows louder.
The world has watched 20 months of live-streamed horrors from Gaza, wherein Israel has forcibly displaced a population of 2.2 million citizens into just 18 per cent of the small territory. In the 20 months since Israel responded to Hamas’ horrendous October 7 attack, Israel has killed over 55,000 Palestinians including over 28,000 women and children, and killed over 200 journalists, more than 400 aid workers, and have dropped over 100,000 tonnes of explosives on a civilian population – 50 per cent of whom are children.
Israel has attacked 38 hospitals, bombed schools and refugee camps, and in its latest and potentially most grotesquely cruel act, has fired tanks into crowds of starving men, women, and children seeking aid at the Israel-US backed militarised sites operated by the shadowy Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Gaza is the only territory in the world where 100 per cent of the population is at risk of famine. There is enough food and aid to prevent famine sitting just miles away from the people who need it, blocked by Israel. Each one of these actions represents a grave and callous breach of international law by the state of Israel.
‘The most moral army in the world’ broadcasts its war crimes on Instagram and TikTok through the personal accounts of IDF soldiers who laugh in the faces of the innocent people they are persecuting.
Gaza is not the first instance of the international rules-based system failing; in 1994, over 500,000 people were killed in the Rwanda genocide. World leaders – including then-US President Bill Clinton – deliberately chose not to intervene, with horrifying consequences.
How Gaza differs is that the global population has never been able to collectively observe a genocide unfolding in real time; social media timelines with seemingly unending footage of horrors from children burning alive to hospital patients in flames with IV lines still attached and mothers and fathers wailing – a population being destroyed by one of the strongest militaries in the world.
The full scale of what is unfolding in Gaza remains hidden, as Israel will not allow international media access. A new report from Harvard University suggests that at least 377,000 people are missing in Gaza. The report by Yaakov Garb for Harvard Dataverse analysed the Israeli military’s own data and combined these with spatial mapping, indicating that Gaza’s population has decreased from 2.227 million to 1.85 million. Where is Gaza’s missing population? Beneath the rubble of the 92 per cent of residential buildings that Israel has damaged or destroyed?
Yet we are asked to ignore the evidence before our eyes and to follow blindly as political leaders arm, empower and embolden a rogue state to carry out what will eventually be ruled as war crimes.
The impunity given to Israel not only risks global security – after all, if Israel can attack sovereign countries without cause, action a genocidal campaign against a population, and ignore international law without repercussions, others can surely do the same – but it also threatens democracy. How can people be expected to have faith in democratic institutions or the international order when they see it so flagrantly violated?
The Middle East is at serious risk of widespread conflict, not at the hands of Iran or Hamas, but due to the actions of Israel, which in the last month alone has bombed Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Gaza. The timing of its latest attack on Iran, in which it killed several military commanders and scientists along with their families, killing 950 people and injuring 3,450, many of whom were civilians, was no coincidence; launching an illegal strike during US-Iran negotiations to quite literally blow up diplomacy.
The attack also paused legal proceedings against Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption. What the Israeli leader truly wanted, however, was US intervention, and Trump was all too eager to deliver.
The US wading into Israel’s attack on Iran is Iraq all over again. There are only two legal frameworks for attacking another country: UN Security Council actioned force to restore or maintain international security, or self-defence when a state is attacked by another.
Neither applies to Israel’s actions in Iran or the subsequent bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities by the United States. There is no evidence that Iran was planning an imminent attack on either Israel or the United States, nor is there evidence to support the claim that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. It isn’t Iran that has nuclear weapons, it’s Israel.
In 2003, the US attempted to substantiate its actions in Iraq by presenting now-roundly-rejected evidence of weapons of mass destruction; This time, Trump rejected the intelligence of his own government and followed Netanyahu like a lap dog. President Bush may have lowered the bar for attacking another country under the guise of pre-emptive strikes, but Netanyahu and Trump will take us to the floor.
We may now have a temporary ceasefire between Iran and Israel, if it holds – Trump was positively gleeful on social media to extol his role, only to be left red-faced and angry within hours when Israel decided to launch further attacks – they had to get the last strike in, naturally.
Don’t expect the fragile cessation of violence to hold. As long as Israel continues to be propped up by the US and other countries, the Middle East is at risk.
Perhaps the greatest flaw of the United Nations is its inability to effectively enforce the rules to which its members are required to adhere, but that does not mean there are no tools or avenues available.
Israel’s participation in the UN General Assembly should be suspended, and an immediate humanitarian convoy should be launched by the UN with the protection of its members to break Israel’s humanitarian siege on Gaza. Mechanisms to apply pressure on Israel also remain for political leaders; Israeli ambassadors could be expelled, all arms supplies banned, economic sanctions expanded, and suspension of cooperation agreements implemented.
Every single day that the international community fails to intervene, innocent people die. As Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld once stated, “The United Nations was not designed to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.” For the people of Gaza, hell has arrived.
Emma DeSouza is a writer and campaigner.
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