While the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar could have provided an off-ramp for the conflict in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing vows of “total victory” make this seem unlikely.
The concept of “total victory”, however, is extremely problematic. Every time Israel declares an area cleared of Hamas and then withdraws, Hamas, which carried out the horrific attack on southern Israel on October 7 2023, has quickly returned to reestablish control.
As a result, there has been a marked Israeli escalation in northern Gaza in recent days, and much discussion about a so-called “general’s plan” being pushed by some right-wing members of Netanyahu’s government.
Concocted by a former Israeli general, Giora Eiland, the plan is, in essence, to forego negotiations, bisect the enclave and give northern Gaza’s 400,000 inhabitants the bleak choice between leaving and dying.
We don’t know whether Netanyahu will officially endorse the plan. Israeli leaders reportedly told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week they are not implementing it. However, it nonetheless has broad support among Israel’s political and military elite.
The Israeli military has already issued expulsion orders to the people of northern Gaza. The government has said anyone who remains would be considered a military target and will be deprived of food and water.
While Israel denies obstructing humanitarian aid, the World Food Program said no food aid entered northern Gaza for two weeks in early October. While some aid has been entering since then, thousands are still at risk of starvation and outbreaksMoreover, many Palestinians, including the sick, elderly and wounded, are unable to move and have nowhere to go. The prospect of the overcrowded and unprotected tent cities of the south is hardly enticing.
Israeli human rights groups say the military had been deliberately blocking aid to give the population no choice but to leave northern Gaza. Israel may now be backtracking under pressure from the United States, which has given Netanyahu’s government a 30-day deadline to increase the amount of aid it allows into Gaza or risk losing US weapons funding.
Undermining international norms and rules
Israel’s war against Gaza, and now Lebanon, has repeatedly challenged the foundations of the liberal international rules-based order set up after the second world war, as well as the tenets of international law, multilateral diplomacy, democracy and humanitarianism.
The norms of the liberal world order are expressed in various institutions, such as:
- the UN Charter
- the UN Security Council, with its notionally legally binding resolutions
- the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague
- the Geneva Conventions governing the rules of war
- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), among many others.
Recently, the ICJ ruled Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem is illegal and ordered it to withdraw. In response, Netanyahu said the court had made a “decision of lies”.
In a separate case, South Africa brought a charge to the ICJ, alleging Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinian people over the past year. The world’s top court has preliminarily ruled there is a “plausible” case for a finding of genocide, and said Israel must take measures to ensure its prevention.
At this juncture, however, human rights groups and others have argued that Israel has failed to comply with this order, thereby undermining one of the key institutions of the liberal world order.