Good morning.
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, and the regional conflicts surrounding it, has continued to be the most significant global story of this year. Fourteen months in, reports of Israeli airstrikes that leave the streets littered with bodies keep coming.
According to official estimates from the Gaza health ministry, more than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel last year. The actual death toll is likely significantly higher. Schools, hospitals, roads, places of worship, homes – nothing has been spared in Israel’s intense bombing of the Gaza Strip.
Israel faces serious allegations of war crimes, ranging from collective punishment to genocide. The international criminal court’s unprecedented move to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and former defence minister Yoav Gallant underscores the gravity of these accusations.
And the violence has metastasised beyond Gaza’s borders, spilling into Lebanon, the West Bank and Syria. Diplomatic efforts have yielded little respite, with peace appearing an increasingly remote prospect. A senior Israeli minister recently said the country’s military will remain in Gaza for many years, confirming fears that the fateful “day after” will not come any time soon.
For today’s newsletter I have interviewed Wadie Said, a professor of law and dean’s faculty fellow at the University of Colorado school of law and son of eminent Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, about the past 14 months in Gaza.
In depth: ‘Palestinians are desperate to have a say in their future’
Hi Wadie – when you look back, what are your primary reflections on the past 14 months of this conflict?
I would have never imagined that we would still be talking about this. It would not have been something that I could wrap my head around last November. On the one hand, worldwide support for Palestinians and their national rights has never been higher, especially in the so-called west. On the other hand, the violence is not stopping.
No one is hiding the statistics – no one is hiding the number of mosques, churches, electricity generators and medical facilities that have been targeted and destroyed. And the Israeli military and government provide the thinnest justification. This does not correspond in any way to a belligerent power’s obligations under international law. But it just doesn’t matter.
Has international law been effective?
There’s a real concern about genocide being committed and there’s also an obligation that was imposed on the Israelis to stop doing things that could be interpreted as part of a genocidal campaign. The international court of justice issued an opinion back in January about the plausibility of what is happening in Gaza being genocide. But the situation we’ve been in for the past 14 months or so is that [Israel] refuses to be bound by any standards and any accusation or claim backed up by evidence. They just deny it or say that it is an outrage, absurd or meritless.
This discussion about the law and its obligations means a lot to people the world over. The vast majority would like to think that we’re all bound by certain standards and those standards protect us. So there’s a dissonance between that and what the people in Gaza specifically, and the West Bank and displaced Palestinians, are experiencing.
The utility of the law in situations like this is to insist on some sort of minimal universal standard. It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that there’s no binding enforcement mechanism for the world court but it’s about changing our understanding and popular perception so that at some point a change can happen, because the pressure will become too much. It’s been frustrating that it’s taken so long but people are going to insist on that to the extent that they’re still moved by these horrors, which they seem to be.
Has the inability of the court to stop the violence affected the credibility of international law?
I remember many times when accountability for powerful actors in the context of international tribunals for war crimes and other similar issues gets thwarted. I could really go on about this, about the number of disappointments. Look at the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was set free by Jack Straw in 2000.
The Israelis don’t recognise any attempts to rein them in or any attempts to hold them accountable – they reject all of them. But, nevertheless, these international institutions on which the whole western-backed international order rests are willing to take the stand. It is quite remarkable, and it provides a record and a basis for people to rally around.
It’s not just a question about whether Benjamin Netanyahu or Yoav Gallant are going to be arrested and taken to The Hague. For the first time, we are asking: can Israeli officials visit this country or that country? They can visit the United States, but what happens if their flight is diverted and they have to make an emergency landing in a place that’s a signatory to the ICC [international criminal court]? Who would have thought that this is the type of discussion we would be having? What we’re seeing is a kind of a universal struggle to insist on basic standards.
What’s next for Gaza?
How do I answer that? Obviously, the first thing that has to happen is the violence has to stop. The Israelis have to stop shooting and I say that very deliberately – it’s the Israelis who are doing the most deadly shooting.
Foreign journalists have not been allowed into Gaza. We see Palestinian journalists engaging in the most heroic work, along with their rescue workers and medical staff. We’re witnessing some of the most amazing aspects of humanity on display every day, but we don’t really know what’s going on fully in Gaza, so it’s hard to envision what comes next.
Some Israeli officials and some in the west are talking about settling Gaza and annexing the West Bank as if all of these things are inevitable. The whole discussion completely obviates, glosses over and ignores the idea that Palestinians will have a say in their own future. Palestinians are desperate for their rights, desperate to have a say in their future and desperate for their own sense of freedom. That’s not going away despite the unbelievably destructive levels of violence that the Israelis have employed to try to crush that sentiment among Palestinians.
I would say the overwhelming number of people who grapple with this issue are very critical of what the Israelis have done, but translating that into tangible change has flummoxed us.
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Jimmy Carter dies aged 100
Jimmy Carter, the 39th and longest-lived American president, has died at the age of 100. “My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love,” said Chip Carter, the former president’s son, in a statement.
Harold Jackson’s obituary presents a comprehensive portrait of the Georgia Democrat and humanitarian, whose diplomatic endeavours beyond the presidency earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. This picture essay weaves together some of the most significant moments of his remarkable journey: “Carter essentially lived in three centuries,” writes his biographer Jonathan Alter.
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