Basic morality and simple logic dictate that the right of
self-defense belongs to the Palestinian people, not to their oppressor.
And international law agrees.
By Craig Mokhiber, Mondoweiss, September 10, 2024
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Members of the Palestinian resistance hold their weapons during a
memorial service for Mohammed al-Azizi and Abdul Rahman Sobh, who were
killed by Israeli forces in July 2022, in the West Bank city of Nablus.
(Photo: Shadi Jarar’ah/ APA Images)
One of the many disturbing revelations that have emerged since the
current phase of genocide in Palestine began almost a year ago, is the
degree to which U.S. and other Western politicians are prepared to
dutifully stick to a script provided by Israel and its Western lobbies,
whether the script is true or not. A case in point is the oft-repeated
“self-defense” canard.
After every successive war crime and crime against humanity
perpetrated by Israel in its current genocidal rampage, the single most
common refrain of Western government officials (and of Western corporate
media) is that “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
No, it does not.
In fact, as a matter of international law, this is a double lie.
First, Israel has no such right in Gaza (or the West Bank and East Jerusalem).
And, secondly, the acts that the “self-defense” claims seek to justify would be unlawful even where self-defense applies.
The UN Charter, a treaty binding on all member states, codifies key
rights and responsibilities of states. Among these are the duty to
respect the self-determination of peoples (including the Palestinians),
the duty to respect human rights, and the duty to refrain from the use
of force against other states (where not authorized by the Security
Council). Israel, for the 76 years of its existence, has been repeatedly
in breach of these principles.
A temporary exception to the prohibition on the use of force is codified in Article 51 of the UN Charter for self-defense from external
attacks. But importantly, no such right exists where the threat
emanates from inside the territory controlled by the state. This
principle was affirmed by the World Court in its 2004 opinion on
Israel’s apartheid wall. And the Court found then, and again in its 2024
opinion on the occupation, that Israel is the occupying power across
the occupied Palestinian territory. Thus, Israel, as the occupying
power, cannot claim self-defense as a justification for launching
military attacks in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or the Golan
Heights.
Of course, Israel, from within its own territory, can lawfully repel
any attacks to protect its civilians, but it cannot claim self-defense
to wage war against the territories it occupies. In fact, its principal
obligation is to protect the occupied population. In doing so,
an occupying power can undertake essential law enforcement functions (as
distinct from military operations). But, given that the World Court has
subsequently found that Israel’s occupation of the territories is
itself entirely unlawful, even those functions would likely be
illegitimate, except as strictly necessary to protect the occupied
population and within a short timeline of withdrawal.
In its most recent opinion, the Court has declared that Israel’s
presence in the territories violates the principle of
self-determination, the rule of non-acquisition of territory by force,
and the human rights of the Palestinian people and that it must quickly
end its presence and compensate the Palestinian people for losses
suffered. As a matter of law, every Israeli boot on the ground, every
Israeli missile, jet, or drone in Palestinian air space, and even a
single unauthorized Israeli bicycle on a Palestinian road, is a breach
of international law.
In sum, Israel’s lawful remedy for threats that it alleges emanate
from the occupied territories is to end its unlawful occupation,
dismantle the settlements, leave the territories, remove the siege, and
fully relinquish control to the occupied Palestinian people.
Here, international law is a simple reflection of common sense and
universal morality. A criminal cannot take over someone’s home, move in,
loot its contents, imprison and brutalize the inhabitants, and then
claim self-defense to murder the homeowners when they fight back.
And, beyond occupied Palestine, while Israel has a right to
self-defense from attacks by other states, it cannot claim that right if
the attack is a response to Israeli aggression. Israel cannot attack a
neighboring state (e.g., Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen) and then
claim self-defense if that state strikes back. To accept such an
assertion would be to turn international law on its head.
Thus, most assertions by Western politicians and media that “Israel
has a right to self-defense” are demonstrably false, as a matter of
international law.
The second lie contained in these repeated assertions is the
suggestion that a claim of self-defense justifies Israel’s myriad
crimes. International law does not allow a claim of self-defense to
justify crimes against humanity and genocide. Nor does it magically
overcome the international humanitarian law imperatives of precaution,
distinction, and proportionality, or the protected status of hospitals
and other vital civilian installations.
In addition, the presence of people associated with armed resistance
groups (even if proven) does not automatically transform a civilian
location or protected structure into a legitimate military target. If it
did, the common presence of Israeli soldiers in Israeli hospitals would
equally render those hospitals legitimate targets. Attacking hospitals
is not an act of self-defense. It is an act of murder and, in systematic
and large-scale cases, of the crime of extermination.
A claim of self-defense does not justify collective punishment, the
siege of civilian populations, extrajudicial executions, torture, the
blocking of humanitarian aid, the targeting of children, the murder of
aid workers, medical personnel, journalists, and UN officials- all
crimes perpetrated by Israel during the current phase of its genocide in
Palestine. And all shamelessly followed by claims of self-defense by
Israel’s defenders in the West.
Thus, every response of a politician or complicit corporate media
voice to an Israeli crime that begins with “Israel has a right to defend
itself” is at once a justification of the unjustifiable and a
bald-faced lie- and it should be called out as such.
Further, what you will never hear these voices utter is that Palestine has a right to defend itself,
even though, under international law, it absolutely does. Rooted in the
UN Charter, and in international humanitarian and human rights law, and
affirmed by a series of UN resolutions, Palestinian resistance groups
have a legal right to armed resistance to free the Palestinian people
from foreign occupation, colonial domination, and apartheid.
And the world agrees. The UN General Assembly has declared:
“the inalienable right of …the Palestinian people and all
peoples under foreign occupation and colonial domination to
self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity,
national unity and sovereignty without foreign interference” and has
reaffirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence,
territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial
domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means,
including armed struggle.”
Of course, all resistance must respect the rules of humanitarian law,
including the principle of distinction to spare civilians. But
Palestine’s right under international law to armed resistance against
Israel is by now axiomatic.
Simply put, the Palestinian people have a recognized legal right to
resist Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide, including through
armed struggle. And, since the underlying resistance is lawful,
alliances, aid, and support to the Palestinians for this purpose are
also lawful.
Conversely, as Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide are
unlawful, support to Israel in those endeavors by Western states is
unlawful. Indeed, the World Court has found that all states are obliged
to end any such support to Israel and to work to end Israel’s
occupation.
And one more point on the notion of self-defense. History did not
begin on October 7, 2023. In the 1930s and 40s, Zionist colonists
traveled from Europe to attack Palestinians in their homes in Palestine.
No Palestinian militia traveled to Europe to attack the colonists in
their homes in England, France, and Russia. (Of course, Jews fleeing
European persecution had every right to seek asylum in Palestine and
elsewhere. But Zionists had no right to colonize the land and to
dispossess the indigenous people).
For more than 76 years since, Israel has attacked, brutalized,
displaced, dispossessed, and murdered the indigenous Palestinian people,
and sought to erase them. It has ethnically cleansed hundreds of
Palestinian towns and villages, stolen Palestinian homes, businesses,
farms, and orchards, and destroyed Palestinian civilian infrastructure.
Every Palestinian community has experienced daily assaults on dignity,
arrests, beatings, torture, pillage, and murder at the hands of Israel.
Survivors have been forced to live under a regime of apartheid and
racial segregation and with the systematic denial of civil, political,
economic, social, and cultural rights in their own land.
Every peaceful Palestinian effort to end the oppression and to regain
the Palestinian right to self-determination, through diplomatic
initiatives, judicial action, peaceful protest, or organized boycotts
and divestment, has been met with repression or rejection, not only by
Israel but by its Western sponsors.
In this context, basic morality and simple logic dictate that the
right of self-defense belongs to the Palestinian people, not to their
oppressor. And international law agrees.
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