The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) was established in 1949. Since 1950 it has been providing nutritional, health and educational services to the 750,000 Palestinians displaced as a result of ethnic cleansing by the zionist colonisers, those displaced in later waves of war and occupation, and their descendants. Today, owing to a lack of international support, the agency struggles to provide services to over five million Palestinian refugees. Since the Palestinian refugees’ plight is officially recognised as ’temporary’, Unrwa is also supposed to be a temporary organisation, with its mandate reviewed and renewed every three years by the general assembly.
No limits to US-granted immunity for Israel
A change in phraseology coming out of the USA in recent years quietly replaced ‘international law’ with ‘the rules-based order’. Over time, the ‘rules-based order’ became the dominant phraseology in western media and political discourse, despite not having anything like the same meaning.
The ‘rules-based order’ flaunted by American and British politicians is less about international law and more about international law as interpreted by the United States. It allows the USA to flout the rules that govern other nations, and in particular to justify its exceptionalist approach toward Israel. This was clearly articulated in the joint declaration made during President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel in July 2022.
The statement reaffirmed “the unbreakable bonds between our two countries and the enduring commitment of the United States to Israel’s security”, along with the determination of the two states “to combat all efforts to boycott or delegitimise Israel, to deny its right to self-defence, or to single it out in any forum, including at the United Nations or the International Criminal Court”.
This commitment underpins the consistent refusal of the United States to hold Israel to account for its repeated violations of humanitarian law or to condemn its policy of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The USA and its allies have always been partial in their application of the moral imperative, particularly when applied to international law. Israel remains the most immune and, regardless of sin, its brutal ethnic cleansing continues to have the full financial and military support of the USA and Britain.
Israel is America’s military base in the middle east. It has ensured US domination of the region and its oil since WW2, and that is why Israel is supported by the USA regardless of its actions or world opinion.
Imperialism v humanity: the struggle of our times
Whilst from the perspective of the western imperialists, such actions are presented as being consistent with their ‘rules-based order’, for the rest of the world they clearly violate the most basic rules of international law – and of humanity itself.
The ICJ ruling in support of South Africa’s submission that Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people is a positive step, but if the court has no teeth, and if the genocide continues, what is the point of the court? What, in fact, is the point of the United Nations itself?
And if there is no legal mechanism for stopping what we all see and know is a genocide, and our own governments are complicit, who is going to see that justice is done?
Israel and the UN system are both in the dock. If nothing is done to hold Israel accountable, it will be because the USA has a veto over the only body with any executive power – the UN security council.
The USA has used that position to protect Israel and green light its genocidal and apartheid activities with impunity for 75 years, despite international outrage.
The question is: how much longer will the world’s people allow that situation to continue?