Another day, another tragedy in Gaza. At the time of writing, rescuers were pulling bodies from the rubble following an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Meanwhile, a few kilometers away, in Khan Younis, the terrible effort to unearth bodies buried in mass graves on the grounds of Nasser Hospital continues. The Palestinian death toll is now over 34,000 and 1.1 million people in Gaza face catastrophic levels of food insecurity.
The world is also on edge, as many fear a wider regional war after Iran sent a retaliatory barrage of drones and missiles against Israel, following Israel’s attack on the Iranian consular building in Damascus. Since then, Iranian air defenses have shot down three suspected Israeli drones over the central city of Isfahan. Ignoring calls for caution from around the world, including its closest partner and protector – the United States, Israel remains determined to conduct a costly ground operation in Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of civilians are sheltering. Commentators and political figures have declared that Israel is a “liability” and that its leaders have “lost” their way.
Isn’t it time to declare Israel a pariah state?
The “rogue state” label has a sordid history. It has long been used as a weapon against states considered antagonistic to Western political interests. The label had its heyday during the Clinton years, when it was used to designate countries that were seen as unpredictable, obstinate and, in short, unwilling to follow international standards.
Eventually, the Clinton administration abandoned the “rogue states” for more politically correct label “states of concern”. But as the US-led “war on terror” divided the world into the good and the bad, the label “rouge states” was once again revived by the Bush administration as a catch-all term for the countries that constituted the “world of evil.” ”.
Without a doubt, this label helps the West’s self-perception as a “force for good” in the world. But it also provides a justification for the dismissive treatment and isolation of rogue states – presumably to prevent them “from destroying public order, unleashing wars and subverting entire areas of the world”.
The irony now is that Israel, often considered a bridgehead for Western interests in the Middle East, appears to exhibit all the familiar characteristics of a pariah state.
In fact, it violated all international norms and laws during its genocidal war in Gaza.
For example, under international humanitarian law, States and non-State groups involved in armed conflict are obliged to protect civilians, medical personnel and humanitarian aid workers and to ensure the unrestricted passage of humanitarian aid.
Israel did not meet any of these rules. We know that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians killed since October 7th have been civilians. This includes more than 14,000 children. In January, Oxfam International reported that the daily death rate in Gaza was higher than in all other major conflicts of the 21st century.
Israel’s battlefield tactics have been indefensible. Israeli forces have insisted on attacking medical facilities in Gaza. Over the course of the campaign, Israel conducted more than 900 attacks on healthcare facilities, killing at least 700 medical professionals. Currently, only 10 of the 36 hospitals are partially functional in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli authorities alleged that hospitals in Gaza were being used as military bases by Hamas. This was the official justification for Israel’s two-week siege of al-Shifa Hospital, the enclave’s largest and most advanced medical facility.
When Israeli forces finally withdrew from the compound, witnesses described dystopian scenes of “human heads eaten by ravens, unidentified and decomposing body parts, and hundreds of corpses piled up and buried in mass graves.”
Israeli forces also attacked aid workers. There was global outrage and condemnation in early April after seven workers from the food aid organization World Central Kitchen were killed in an “attack targeting Israel”. But this attack was simply one of many. Gaza has been the most dangerous place for aid workers for more than six months, and close to 200 workers have been killed so far.
Contrary to all rules and regulations, Israel has also restricted aid flows to Gaza – this despite warnings from aid agencies that famine is imminent. In violation of Article 79 of the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, which require journalists to be protected as civilians in a war zone, he systematically attacked journalists and media personnel in Gaza, including their families. In fact, 75 percent of all journalist murders in 2023 occurred in Gaza, as a consequence of Israel’s military campaign. Israeli forces also reduced all Palestinian universities in Gaza to rubble.
Israel has also been eager to keep the front line open with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran, hoping that a regional war would force direct involvement from the US and other Western allies. On the Lebanese front, Israel, Hezbollah and other armed factions exchanged 4,733 attacks between October 7, 2023 and March 15, 2024. Israel was responsible for 3,952 of these incidents. Along with Hezbollah operatives, these attacks killed many civilians, including children, as well as journalists and doctors.
When Israel carried out its attack on the Iranian mission in Damascus, it killed Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Zahedi was the highest-ranking Iranian official to be assassinated since the assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani by the US in 2020. Iran’s retaliation was also the first time that a foreign country directly attacked Israel since 1991.
Ironically, Iran – often treated in the West as a prototypical rogue state – insisted on a restrained approach, declaring that the “matter can be considered concluded”. But it took some diplomatic wrangling to convince Israel to maintain its muted response. Reportedly, US President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to simply “take the victory,” after Israel “thwarted” Iran’s attack. In exchange for a limited Israeli response, Biden reportedly green light the Israeli land invasion of Rafah, although all actors in the region oppose the operation. Cairo warned that the invasion of Rafah could even endanger the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.
The numbers don’t lie either. The fact that Israel is largely isolated was evident in the vote count on the United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for a ceasefire in December. Although 153 countries voted in favor of the resolution, only 10, including Israel and the US, voted against it. In the last vote of the UN Security Council, on March 25, 2024, 14 of the 15 members voted in favor of the resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. Notably, the US chose to abstain rather than do what it usually does – veto any resolution that seeks to restrict Israeli actions against the Palestinians.
Israel is able to persist in its dishonest conduct and stubbornly circumvent international laws, regulations and norms because it has strong and permanent allies, such as the US, in the West. But labeling Israel as a dishonest actor, and treating it as such, is an essential condition for any punitive actions that the international community may take against a country that has violated the rights of Palestinians for 75 years with the greatest impunity.
With countries like Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, Spain and Belgium suspending arms sales to Israel, it appears that its devious nature is gaining some recognition. Eventually, one would hope that supporting Israel would become too great a responsibility, even for the US, and this would pave the way for Palestinian liberation.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
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