International Law and the Middle East Conflict

The idea of prohibiting territorial expansion through war does not seem to constitute any obstacle to the Arabs seeking the destruction of the state of Israel and the takeover of all its territory.

In the context of the conflict in the Middle East, one often hears talk of so-called international law. The concept of ‘international law’ itself is, in fact, somewhat misleading, as every state is a completely sovereign actor on its own territory, and there is no body that could enact laws binding all states in the same way that each state’s legislative body enacts laws that bind private citizens. What is usually meant when speaking of international law are agreements between states, to which countries are free to accede and from which they may also withdraw.

In the Arab-Israeli conflict, it is almost always Israel that is the one accused of violating international law, and only very rarely so Arab states or organizations. Beneath, I will contend with mentioning three of the various aspects related to this issue:

• The starting point of any legislation should be that it binds all actors, not just the selected few who, in someone’s opinion, do not happen to be the ‘right persons’ (or communal actors). Since a) Israel is required to strictly comply with all possible international agreements and decisions, b) other countries, starting with the United States, consider it in their right to control and criticize even every single military operation carried out by Israel, and c) at least the United Nations has condemned the actions of this tiny state more often than the actions of all its other member states combined, it is probably justified to ask, which then is the Middle Eastern state that follows this so often talked-about ‘international law’ in an exemplary manner? In other words, which of its neighboring states should Israel follow as an example? Would it be Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, or perhaps the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah? The point here being, that if all of the national actors in this vast region wipe the floor with the norms of the international law in question, whilst a tiny state surrounded and persecuted by them is required to obey these same norms to the letter, a layperson like myself might begin to suspect that what we see here is just a phenomenon called lawfare – a term derived from ‘warfare’, and in practice meaning simply the exploitation of judicial demagoguery as a weapon in the total war waged by all possible means against the target.

• In recent decades the idea of international law prohibiting territorial expansion through war – even at the expense of the aggressor having initiated the war – has become widespread among Western democracies. However, this does not seem to constitute any obstacle to the Arabs, who for the past 77 years have been seeking the destruction of the state of Israel and the takeover of all its territory. Moreover, the territories of most current states have been created or expanded through wars. For example, the vast territories of the states of Arizona, California, Nevada and New Mexico, now belonging to the leading country of the UN Security Council, the United States, previously belonged to the independent and legitimate state of Mexico, until the United States conquered them in a war in 1846-1848. A comprehensive list of the territorial conquests carried out by Russia through warfare since the 16th century would take up too much space. The other permanent members of the UN Security Council, Great Britain, France and China, have expanded their territories through war as well.

• When we constantly hear talk about all of what the Arabs have the right to demand from Israel (never the other way around), wouldn’t it be true that rights that may at some point have existed could also be lost as a result of one’s own actions – and this would apply both to individuals, as well as wider human populations? For example, if, under the UN resolution of 1947, the Arabs in the Mandatory Palestine had been presumed entitled to obtain a state of their own, wouldn’t that right have been forfeited when they, together with other Arabs, declared that they didn’t give a hoot about that resolution, and started the war? Not to mention all the endless crimes that the Arab states and organizations have committed since then? Isn’t the establishment of an independent Palestinian Arab state at the expense of Israel today about the same as a chess player demanding that his opponent recognize a draw in a game played 77 years ago (and repeated many times since), which was played specifically at his request by the principle winner-takes-all and in which he was checkmated? In other words, it is no longer about any right, but simply about the fact that, as the proverb goes, it is not the one making demands who is insane, but the one who yields to those demands.