While the assassination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar could have provided a way out of the Gaza conflict, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued vows of “total victory” make this unlikely.

However, the concept of ‘total victory’ is extremely problematic. Every time Israel liberates territory from Hamas and then withdraws, Hamas, which carried out the horrific attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, has quickly returned to regain control.

As a result, there has been a marked Israeli escalation in northern Gaza in recent days, and there has been much discussion about a so-called “general plan” being pushed by some right-wing members of Netanyahu’s government.

The plan, devised by a former Israeli general, Giora Eiland, is essentially to abandon negotiations, divide the enclave in two and give the 400,000 residents of northern Gaza the bleak choice between leaving or dying.

We don’t know if Netanyahu will officially endorse the plan. Israeli leaders reportedly told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week that they will not implement the proposal. However, it nevertheless has broad support among Israel’s political and military elite.

The Israeli army has already issued deportation orders for the people of northern Gaza. The government has said anyone who remains will be considered a military target and will be denied food and water.

While Israel denies it is hindering humanitarian aid, the World Food Program said no food aid entered northern Gaza for two weeks in early October. Although some aid has since arrived, thousands of people are still at risk of famine and outbreaks of preventable diseases.

In addition, many Palestinians, including the sick, elderly and injured, are unable to move and have nowhere to go. The prospect of the overcrowded and unprotected tent cities of the South is hardly enticing.

Israeli human rights groups say the army has deliberately blocked aid to give the population no choice but to leave northern Gaza. Israel may now withdraw under pressure from the United States, which has given Netanyahu’s government a 30-day deadline to increase aid to Gaza or risk losing American arms funding.

Undermining international norms and rules

Israel’s war against Gaza, and now Lebanon, has repeatedly challenged the foundations of the liberal, international rules-based order that emerged after World War II, as well as the basic tenets of international law, multilateral diplomacy, democracy and humanitarianism.

The norms of the liberal world order are reflected in various institutions, such as:

• the UN Charter
• the UN Security Council, with its theoretically legally binding resolutions
• the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague
• the Geneva Conventions that regulate the rules of war
• the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), among many others.

Recently, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem is illegal and ordered the country to withdraw. In response, Netanyahu said the court had made a “decision based on lies.”

In a separate case, South Africa has filed a complaint with the International Court of Justice, alleging that Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinian people over the past year. The world’s highest court has provisionally ruled that there is a “plausible” basis for a finding of genocide, and said Israel must take measures to ensure its prevention.

Currently, however, human rights groups and others have argued that Israel has failed to comply with this order, undermining one of the key institutions of the liberal world order.

This is further compounded by the fact that few major democratic states have been willing to strongly condemn Israel’s failure to comply with international law in Gaza – or have been late to do so – let alone in any concrete way. have intervened.

Moreover, the UN Security Council has failed – largely because of the US veto – to take tangible measures to enforce its own resolutions against Israel, as well as the rulings of the International Court of Justice.

This fuels the widespread perception of hypocrisy regarding the liability of notionally democratic states for alleged violations of humanitarian law, compared to other countries that do not have major power backers.

For example, in the early 1990s, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted several resolutions against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, followed ten years later by resolutions demanding that Saddam Hussein’s regime comply with weapons inspection mandates. The US and its allies used these resolutions as legal justification for their invasion of Iraq. Ultimately, no weapons of mass destruction were found. Then, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan later said that the invasion of Iraq was illegal and in violation of the UN Charter.

However, dozens of UN Security Council resolutions on Israel have been adopted but not implemented. Many others have been vetoed by the US.

ICC prosecutors have also requested arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity (in addition to several Hamas leaders, who are now dead). The arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant were met with outrage by some Western politicians. Still, the West broadly praised the ICC’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Moreover, the US Congress attempted to sanction the court over Netanyahu’s arrest warrant, further underscoring the often selective way in which international law is applied by nation states.

A crisis of legitimacy for the world order

Democratic states like to present themselves as the protectors, and sometimes as enforcers, of the liberal world order, ensuring continued international peace and security.

Israel and its supporters often characterize its military actions as the forward defense of the democratic world against tyrannical larger powers, as a means of protecting itself against adversaries who seek to destroy it. The problem is that Israel’s actions often directly contradict the liberal world order it claims to defend, undermining its legitimacy.

The failure to rein in Israel’s actions has led to accusations of “double standards” regarding international law. The US and Germany provide Israel with 99% of its arms imports and diplomatic cover. Although Germany has stopped approving new arms exports to Israel, both countries certainly have more leverage to stop the carnage in Gaza if they wish.

The West’s self-proclaimed moral superiority is likely in tatters as it continues to undermine the principles of the liberal world order. The question is: if this world order falls, what will the new world order look like?