Why does Israel face no consequences for violating international law?
Published in The NB Media Co-op
(*artwork: ‘Scales of Justice’ by Incé Husain)
The violence in Gaza in the last three weeks has plunged Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian territories into global consciousness.
As Israel’s past and present violations of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories start to become common knowledge, there is interest in understanding why Israel has never faced consequences. Today, Israel remains uncriticized by most Western leaders as it commits a plethora of war crimes in Gaza, with civilian deaths now nearing 10,000.
Michael Lynk, former United Nations Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, explains why Israel has succeeded in violating international law without consequences and how it might be stopped.
He says that Israel’s freedom from punishment is rooted in its all-encompassing support from the United States and the associated biases in journalistic reporting. He believes that this can be overcome by citizens consistently engaging in civil resistance to pressurize governments into enforcing international law.
The role of a Special Rapporteur is unpaid and voluntary. It consists of writing reports on human rights trends and delivering them to the United Nations (UN). Lynk applied for the role due to his “strong interest in Israel and Palestine”. With a background in law, he had worked with the UN in Jerusalem during the peak of the First Palestinian Intifada in 1989, and has authored numerous articles on the legal aspects of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Lynk’s reports as Special Rapporteur have called for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 and are loaded with accounts of Israel’s international law violations.
In 2020, Lynk’s report identified international law violations by Israel in its collective punishment of Palestinians, its expansion of Israeli settlements, and its planned annexation of the West Bank. He called for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories seized since 1967, and wrote that “the international community should take all measures necessary” to ensure this, including imposing sanctions and countermeasures.
In 2022, Lynk’s report described how the Israeli occupation had evolved into an apartheid system, with a legal structure that systematically oppresses the Palestinian people. The report illustrated how the Palestinian way of life was deliberately brutalized to benefit Israeli Jews. He urged the international community to accept these findings, to collectively build a plan to end the apartheid system, and to ensure that Israel faces consequences. A press release from the UN reads “with the eyes of the international community wide open, Israel had imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world.” A news story by the UN emphasized that this would have been prevented if action had been taken by the international community thirty to forty years ago to dismantle Israel’s occupation.
Throughout Lynk’s term as Special Rapporteur from 2016 to 2022, Israel barred him from entering both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. He was forced to write his reports by relying on human rights documentation by Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights organizations.
“I was never allowed in during the six years I was Special Rapporteur. The (United Nations) General Assembly would call on Israel to allow me to enter and would criticize Israel for its decision to bar me,” he says. “My backup plan was to rely upon the excellent human rights reporting done by Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights organizations. The human rights crisis in Israel and Palestine is probably the best documented occupation and human rights crisis in the world.”
Lynk explains four of the many international law violations Israel has committed. The first relates to annexation, the second to settler expansion, the third to the use of starvation as a means of control, and the fourth to equating civilians with combatants.
The term “annexation” describes the forceful takeover of another country and proclaiming rule over the land. Israel annexed parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967 and 1980, and has steadily continued to illegally annex Occupied Palestinian Territories since. This has greatly harmed Palestinian society by subjecting Palestinians to increasingly aggressive human rights violations.
“It has been absolutely forbidden since the end of the second World War for an occupying power to annex a territory captured during war,” says Lynk. “It has to return the occupied territory in full, as quickly as possible, to the sovereignty, which are people under occupation.”
Israel has illegally built 300 settlements filled with 720,000 Israelis settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. This “settler expansion” is a means for the occupying power to claim rule over all the land it seized through military conquest. The UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly have repeatedly stated that these Israeli settlements are a violation of international law.
“It has been forbidden for 74 years under the 4th Geneva Convention for an occupying power to put any part of its civilian population into the occupied territory,” says Lynk. “And the reason for that is that putting your civilian population into the occupied territory is a prelude to making a claim of sovereignty over the occupied or conquered land.”
On October 9th, 2023, Israel cut off Gaza’s access to food, water, electricity, fuel, and even animal fodder. Lynk says it is absoutely forbidden under international law to use starvation or deliberate deprivation as a means of control. In addition, Israel’s incessant bombing of Gaza has killed thousands of civilians, revealing that Israel is not distinguishing between civilians and combatants.
“The very core of international humanitarian law is the separation and the distinction between combatants on the one hand and civilians on the other,” says Lynk. “If you’re targeting combatants, but in doing so you’re either deliberately or recklessly or indiscriminately bombing areas where you know there are going to be a large number of civilians gathering and they’re like to be harmed by that, that is a fundamental breach of international law. It amounts to a war crime.”
Lynk says that all this documentation is ignored by both Western leaders and mainstream media, creating a narrative that hides Israel’s violence and protects it from consequences. Israel denies that it breaches international law, Western leaders do not hold it accountable, and the evidence is banished to a “memory hole” that stays unperturbed as Israel continues its onslaughts. He emphasizes that Article 25 of the Charter of the UN demands that all member states, including Israel, must obey its decisions. Yet, the global North - Europe and North America - ensures that Israel is immune by staying silent on its blatant violations of international law.
He adds that Canadian reporting on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel is “exceptionally poor”, with no full-time journalists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and news coverage that rarely references international law.
“The reporting in Canada tends to see Israel and Palestine as two separate teams on a soccer field. This is not a football match,” says Lynk. “It’s one nation ruling over and subjugating another nation. This is an occupation that has metastasized into annexation and apartheid, and we don’t see that kind of reporting in most mainstream media.”
Lynk summarizes that international law in the Middle East is “closer to power than it is to justice.” Unlike domestic courts whose rulings are mandatory and enforced, international law is built from ideals. Its functionality relies on mutual, unbiased commitment from all countries. Without this, international law has no power. In practice, gross hypocrisy is evident in the global North’s implementation of international law. It eagerly condemned Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, while Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people have never been called out.
“International law by itself has no army, it has no police. It has courts that can only issue advisory, not mandatory, decisions in these circumstances,” says Lynk. “When international law is combined with international resolve, then you have life and dynamism in international law. When you have international law that is chosen to be ignored or sidelined or deliberately misinterpreted with no resolve to enforce it, then it stems as an issue of hypocrisy.”
Lynk emphasizes that Israel remains undeterred by international law due to its “exceptionally strong” relationship with the United States. He draws from quotes by Kofi Annan, former secretary of the UN, that state that Israel is not held accountable due to the “diplomatic shield” the United States provides. He reads that the United States “is possessive” of the occupation of Palestinian territories, vetoing progressive UN Security Council resolutions on Palestinian territories that prevents other countries from improving the fates of the Palestinian people.
Since 1973, the United States has issued 84 vetoes as a permanent member of the UN Security Council; half of these served to protect Israel. While ten vetoes supported Israeli action against Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, the rest enabled Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. None of the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council - Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China - have ever issued a veto to protect Israel from a resolution.
This was most recently exemplified during the October 18th, 2023 UN Security Council vote for humanitarian pauses in Gaza to deliver life-saving aid to millions of civilians. Twelve of the fifteen countries on the UN Security Council voted in favour, two abstained, and only the United States voted against, thereby nullifying the sentiments of the majority. Lynk adds that the United States recognizes its lonely, inherently precarious position on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. He references a passage from former United States president Barack Obama’s memoir, A Promised Land, that states how American diplomats had to defend their hypocrisy in applying international law to other countries but not Israel. He reads that American diplomats “found themselves in the awkward position of having to defend Israel for actions that we ourselves opposed.”
Lynk believes that international law implementation would be more just if two to three votes were required for a veto instead of one. This would ensure that no final decisions on global issues would be tied to a single country.
Attempts to hold Israel accountable surged in response to three of its five major prior assaults on Gaza since 2008. The UN Human Rights Council commissioned three independent investigations to determine whether international law had been breached by both Israel and Hamas (see 2008-2009, 2014, 2018). All reports found that they had. Regarding Israel, all reports called its lack of accountability a “justice crisis”. The reports warned that such attacks will repeat unless the international community holds Israel accountable.
“Israel has a proven record of not holding itself accountable through the actions of its political and its military leaders,” says Lynk. “We had a clear warning through these independently commissioned reports by the Human Rights Council. Here we are at probably the darkest moment we’ve had in a long, long time in this, with no steps taken by the international community to put into force or to learn the lessons of any of the prior three reports.”
Lynk anticipates that another investigation will be launched in response to the current attacks and lead to conclusions echoing those of the previous reports. He foresees that these will be deflected once more by the global North, keeping the norm of oppressing the Palestinian people intact. Though Lynk says the United States may lend support to a “two-state solution” calling for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and an independent Isreali state, he doubts that it will insist on the removal of all Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank, the release of East Jerusalem, and allow a thriving Palestinian state to rise. The absence of this pressure will give way to more violence by Israel.
Lynk adds that the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ) have been investigating war crimes and international law violations by Israel in recent years. Since 2015, the ICC has been assessing whether war crimes were committed by both Israel and Hamas. Meanwhile, the ICJ is gauging whether Israeli occupation is still lawful in response to a request by the UN General Assembly; the case will be argued in February 2024, with a decision revealed in late autumn 2024. Lynk says that it’s also important to note that Hamas has likely committed war crimes in its indiscriminate firing of rockets into civilian areas. This too violates the tenet of distinguishing civilians from combatants.
“We have an important, effective measuring stick in international law, but it is a single measuring stick that applies to everybody, to all actions, at all times.”
Though the term “genocide” - which describes the willful extermination of an ethnic group - has been used to describe Israel’s current attacks on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, official human rights documents assessing this do not yet exist. Lynk says it may take several years for human rights organizations to build persuasive reports that will officialize the use of the term “genocide”. He shares, for example, that the term “apartheid” for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories was only used in activism slogans until human rights organizations wrote rigorous legal reports that legitimized its use in the human rights community.
Lynk believes that citizens are instrumental for ensuring that countries uphold international law. He describes marches in major cities in Europe; large demonstrations that span millions; nearly half the housing in Gaza reduced to rubble in air strikes; the displacement of over a million people; the scenes of injured civilians arriving to overflowing hospitals; the number of dead rising each day; and how all this imagery will remain in public consciousness.
“I like to think that civil society is the unspoken superpower in international politics,” says Lynk. “You can't unsee what you have seen. There will be counterintuitive information spread, (but propaganda) slogans only go so far before people say “that doesn't match what I’m seeing in front of my eyes and what I’m reading in the paper through reputable sources.””
He further says that the millions of Muslims in Canada possess political understandings and self-confidence that deepens with time. Their voices, along with those of their allies, are ingrained in the liberal party that they voted in. Collectively, they are capable of steering the party’s actions by consistently voicing discontent. He shares that this power is reflected in Canada’s abstention in the recent UN General Assembly vote on the Occupied Palestinian Territories when it has historically sided with Israel.
“(Canada) abstained because, among other things, there is obviously growing public opinion with respect to what is going on. Even within his own caucus, Prime Minister Trudeau is facing significant pushback among some of his own MPs,” says Lynk. “They themselves are letting the PM know that there are red lines with respect to what Canada should be allowing.” ♦
For reliable information on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories, see the following resources recommended by Michael Lynk:
+972 magazine, independent journalism run by Palestinian journalists and Israeli journalists critical of the occupation
Mondoweiss, independent journalism from the United States focused on Israel, Palestine, and related United States foreign policy
The Guardian, independent journalism from the United Kingdom
Amnesty International, global human rights movement covering news and human rights campaigns
Human Rights Watch, global human rights movement covering news and human rights campaigns
Al-Haq, Palestinian non-governmental human rights organization covering news updates, blogs, related international law topics, and articles on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
B’Tselem, Israeli information center for human rights covering news updates, blogs, related international law topics, and articles on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
A modified version of this article appeared in The NB Media Co-op on November 9th, 2023:
*NOTE: on November 6th, 2023, the following sentence was changed:
He adds that Canadian reporting on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel is “exceptionally poor”, with no full-time journalists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and news coverage that is devoid of references to international law.
The sentence was changed to:
He adds that Canadian reporting on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel is “exceptionally poor”, with no full-time journalists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and news coverage that rarely references international law.