The Conflict Between Israel and Palestine and its Implications for the Global Order
The world that we live in is a world with no control, as Zygmunt Bauman puts it, and what has seemed like a stable and peaceful world can easily be shattered by one wrong decision of the “key-holders” of global security.
An epitome of the status quo and perpetual struggle, Israel and Palestine have once again brought up to surface their animosities and showed the world the failure of living together in peace.
The latest conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is a continuation of disputes over territory that both sides regard as their rightful land. Even though Israelis were controlling only 5.5% of the land prior to the creation of the state of Israel, through several wars, forces of the state of Israel have occupied all territory but the strip of Gaza (controlled by Hamas) and some parts of the West Bank, including east Jerusalem.
While the western powers refused to acknowledge Israel’s occupation, they have turned a blind eye to the forced displacement of Palestinians from occupied territories. The former US President Donald Trump has officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and thus broke the status quo that was the formal description of the situation in Israel, but occupied territory was de facto regarded by west as Israel´s territory.
The support from the US and many EU countries for Israel’s right to defend their land is just the latest confirmation of this silent acknowledgment of Israel’s actions against Palestinians. Although, many officials have tried to be less explicit on this issue, Israel’s PM Netanyahu’s Tweet just affirmed that Israel has the support of the US and the majority of the EU.
Meanwhile, even though the US president Biden is facing a harsh critique for the support of Israel’s military action in the strip of Gaza, the US does not plan to withdraw its support. The US officials have for the third time blocked the joint statement of the UN Security Council in which countries condemn violence and call all sides to immediately cease fire. They justified their decision stating that the US has already sent the special envoy to mediate between the sides, excluding Hamas which the US treats as a terrorist organization.
At the same time, both the EU and the US are growing more tense towards China and Russia.
The EU has issued the largest set of sanctions in a long time towards China and Russia, while the US president Biden in his address to Congress has criticized and threatened Russia and China over the issues of Uighur, Navalny, and Ukraine.
While everyone is fixated on what is going to happen in Israel, NATO forces are doing a set of exercises throughout European countries, including those on doorsteps of Russia. Even though the exercises bear the defensive characteristic (Defender Europe is the name of one exercise), it is undoubtedly an implicit message to Russia and to China as well, that the US and Europe once again stand together to defend their values. That should signal that the US has returned to the international scene, what Mr. Biden kept announcing since he became the US President.
Although the conflict in Israel and NATO exercises might seem to have nothing in common, the underlying issue of the global order is what connects these events.
The post-war world has been marked by the emergence of a myriad of international organizations which were supposed to be the frame for global security and cooperation. The UN as the main international organization provided mechanisms, such as the declaration of Human Rights, to help recognize and prevent threats to global security. The main promoter of these mechanisms, the United States, saw free trade and peace as beneficial for their interests.
However, more and more concerns are being raised on the mistreatment and exploitation of the international institutions and their mechanisms for political and economic gains. Events such as the intervention in Yugoslavia, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, involvements in Libya, and the ever-stronger presence of the US and NATO forces around Russia and China, leave space for interpretation whether the forces that should be the main promoter of the global security are its main threat.
The example of the state of Israel and its occupation of Palestine is the best depiction of the global order in which merit for some countries is not the same as merit for others. The state of Israel was created with the blessings of the world superpowers despite its goal being a clear Jewish state and its constant ethnic cleansing. What has been a precedent in the post-war world promoting the protection of minorities and condemning all acts of occupation and aggression, obviously did not apply to Israel.
The western powers, with the US back as their leader, are provoking the Cold War 2.0 while undermining the institutions and mechanisms they themselves have created. Judging and criticizing Russia and China for violations of human rights and aggressive behavior, while at the same time the US is facing racial inequality domestically and refusing to act on Saudi Arabia’s murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi or Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, can only be seen as a clear hypocrisy. It can furthermore blur the line between what is rightful and not, since the western power’s approaches are selective. After all, what is the purpose of the global institutions and their mechanisms for global security if they are not equally used and how legitimate could any action be if the world powers constantly act in sheer hypocrisy?
What Israel or Saudi Arabia get away with, other countries get harshly punished for, mostly for the fact that their protection is not the sole political and economic interest of the US and its allies.
