Last Friday, the U.S. vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and release of the hostages. This is far from the first time that the U.S. has provided diplomatic cover for Israel, shielding it from international accountability and allowing it to continue violations of international law with impunity.
Palestinians look for survivors of the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Rafah on Tuesday. Hatem Ali/Associated Press
This time, however, the U.S. veto is particularly egregious and disheartening, both in the scope of its disregard for human life and in its threat to the international legal order.
Rather than join the rest of the Security Council in demanding a ceasefire, the U.S. is calling on Israel to “protect civilians.” U.S. senators and House representatives have asked that Israel conduct its war “in accordance with international law.”
This response is a fig leaf for complicity in the death and destruction being visited upon Gaza. Anyone with a shred of knowledge of Israeli history and its attitude to international law can only scoff at such an appeal. Why would anyone, let alone politicians who are expected to be much better informed than this, trust Israel to suddenly behave differently after 75 years of violating international human rights and humanitarian law?
Israel is the only state with unique interpretations of international humanitarian and human rights law. Alone in the international community, it denies the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to the occupied Palestinian territories, and has daily violated human rights treaties to which it has committed itself. All one has to do is research the myriad reports over the years, not only by Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights organizations, but by U.N. investigations and study missions and commissions of inquiry, and even by the U.N. State Department’s own annual reviews (soft pedaled as they are). These reports go back decades and are not the product of post-Oct. 7 history. Israel’s response? The U.N. is “biased.”
The human rights violations documented by these reports are daunting. They include: illegal settlement in occupied territory; confiscation and wanton destruction of property; punitive home demolitions and other collective punishments; long imprisonment under administrative orders without charge or due process based on “secret evidence”; detention of children; torture and ill-treatment. This is only a partial list and does not include violations in the conduct of hostilities.
Shall we talk about decades of excessive, indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force? The bombing of hospitals and attacks on medical personnel and the impeding of ambulances? The use of food and basic necessities as weapons of war? For years, consecutive American administrations have shielded Israel from these reports and their fallout.
It’s important to note here that Israel is a legalistic and law-abiding society. The problem is that if a provision of the Geneva Conventions is not to its liking, then surely it doesn’t apply. In the 1980s, Israel denied that it practices systematic torture and claimed to interrogate prisoners using “moderate physical and psychological pressure.” Very easy – change the words then fight over interpretations.
Such leeway can never be given the Palestinians, of course. Their right to resist their occupation is not mentioned, let alone acknowledged, whether they do so in non-violent or violent ways. It is almost always referred to as “terrorism.”
So when Hamas does so in abhorrent ways that violate the laws of armed conflict and rise to the level of war crimes, the answer is ready and very simple: They’re blood-thirsty terrorists who want to annihilate the Jewish state. This makes it easy for the U.S. to tout Israel’s “right to self-defense,” giving it carte blanche to annihilate Gaza Palestinians, and to triple the annual military aid to help it do so.
The question that begs an answer from Maine Rep. Jared Golden and Sens. Angus King and Susan Collins is one of cold calculating logic: How many dead civilians would be an acceptable price for the defeat of Hamas or for you to demand a ceasefire? We’re now above 17,000, about 70% of whom are reportedly women and children.
Would you accept 20,000? 30,000? Approximately half of Gaza’s buildings are destroyed and its vital infrastructure is rubble. Would you settle for 75% destruction before you demand that Israel stops?
After World War II and the Holocaust, the U.S. invested decades in helping construct the edifice of international humanitarian and human rights law so that those horrors would never happen again. Now it shamefully joins Russia and Israel in helping to discredit the international legal and humanitarian order.
Our representatives have a legal, political and above all a moral responsibility to call for a ceasefire now, not only to save what remains of Gaza and its people, but to save what shred of credibility the U.S. still has.
Editor’s note (Dec. 14, 2023): This op-ed has been updated to reflect the fact that Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree called for a permanent bilateral ceasefire on Nov. 21.
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