A rules-based international order is a refrain we often get to hear of these days. And what precisely is that order? Or go, more specifically, into the question of what constitutes genocide. That question now assumes critical importance with South Africa filing a case against Israel over Gaza in the International Court of Justice. Both Pretoria and Tel Aviv have made their representations before the ICJ, which could deliver a judgment in months or even years.
Now, where an ordered world is the issue, there are too the contradictions which often come from the very people or governments repeatedly emphasizing rules of globally accepted behaviour by nations. The United States and Britain have been bombing Houthi targets in Yemen. These two countries, along with others, have been vocal in their censure of Vladimir Putin’s military action in Ukraine, condemning it, rightly, as an infringement of Kyiv’s sovereignty.
Has the same standard been applied to the Yemen situation? Neither Washington nor London has chosen to remember, or perhaps deliberately set the truth aside, that their bombardment of Houthi targets in Yemen was a blatant violation of a rules-based world order. In the recent past, Israeli missile strikes on Hamas figures in Lebanon were no respect for international order. Neither was the American missile attack which four years ago left Iran’s Qassem Soleimani dead. More than a decade ago, NATO air strikes on Libya forced Muammar Gaddafi from power and to death. George W Bush and Tony Blair followed no rules in militarily destroying Iraq.
International order runs counter to the violence perpetrated by powerful nations. That truth is often pushed under the rug by men who have remained upset, and rightly too, at the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. But these men have not had the moral clarity to inform themselves or their people that the retribution the state of Israel goes on inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank is the sadder truth today, outstripping the Hamas violence of early October. It is this truth which South Africa, which knows the meaning of suffering through apartheid, has held forth before the ICJ. The pity is that no other nation has been able to gather the boldness to haul Netanyahu’s government to court.
Cyril Ramaphosa and his administration are deserving of the world’s appreciation in much the same way that the government of the Gambia was the recipient of global appreciation when it took Myanmar to court over the Rohingya issue. South Africa today plays a role which all those conscientious people who regularly remind the world of the importance of rule of law have shied away from. The judicious thing for these men ought to have been an affirmation of support for Pretoria’a action or a keeping of silence, which is what they have not done. Britain’s Lord Cameron, the new foreign secretary, could not hold himself back from terming South Africa’s case as nonsense. That was an undiplomatic term inasmuch as it was a deliberate closing of the eyes to the ground realities in Gaza.
Cameron, in his dismissal of the South African move in the ICJ, went on to refer to Israel as a democracy, a country which practises rule of law. He said nothing, though, of the glaring absence of rule of law in Gaza, where 24,000 Palestinians have perished in Israeli bombing raids. As many as 10,000 of these dead were children. It is ironic that western governments keep stressing the need for humanitarian aid to Gazans but stay away from calling for a full and comprehensive ceasefire in Gaza. So where has the rules-based international order gone missing here? The bombing of Gaza into the stone age does not worry the powerful men in western capitals. The dead and the dying evoke not a word of sympathy from them.
When Anthony Blinken tells the world that the South African petition against Israel at the ICJ is a distraction, he is shockingly undermining the principles of diplomacy. The murder of 1,400 Israelis by Hamas was an outrage and the world condemns it. But, in equal measure, the killing of 24,000 Palestinians calls for severe condemnation. When Fareed Zakaria, on his Global Public Square (GPS) show on CNN, lets his audience know at the outset that the South African case at the ICJ is invalid, there is hardly any reason for people to stay with him throughout the programme. Zakaria has made his judgment, which is fundamentally a repeat of western policy on the Gaza situation.
A rules-based world order is a difficult proposition, based as it should be on ethics. It is easy to mouth such phrases, but where is the evidence that those who keep drawing attention to a rules-based world are themselves adhering to the spirit of it? The International Criminal Court is quick to issue a warrant of arrest for President Vladimir Putin, with the West, including governments which have for years have been disdainful of the ICC, applauding the move. Pretoria has based its case on incontrovertible evidence, namely, the pronouncements of Israeli government figures about Palestinians since October 7. Israel’s friends look away from that evidence. The conclusion for the world is then self-evident: in the interest of a rules-based global order Putin is taken to task, but that same interest is pushed aside even as genocidal action is being committed in Gaza.
It is, therefore, a misnomer, this much-touted idea of a rules-based world. If rules had been followed, all occupied Arab land would be free, no illegal Israeli settlements would be there, an independent Palestine would today be governing its people on the basis of democracy and rule of law. When the descendants of Palestinians forced from their homes in the 1948 Nakba are not permitted to go back to their ancestral homes, when all occupied Arab land is transformed into a ghetto under occupation, when Palestinian homes are searched and Palestinian men and women are carted off to Israeli prisons, the idea of a rules-based world order evokes a mix of laughter and indignation around the globe.
Had a rules-based global order been a purposeful objective on the part of the world’s powerful nations, the United Nations would be a reformed organization, with a Security Council that would not be straitjacketed by the veto, with a General Assembly whose resolutions would be binding on all member-nations. A rules-based world would not have NATO come stealthily close, through patronising Ukraine, to Russia’s borders. Such a world, having abandoned SEATO and CENTO years ago, would not go confrontational with China through the Quad.
A world inhabited by more than eight billion people is in a state of grave disorder. Rules of global behaviour do not exist. Or they are observed more in violation than in observance. It is these rules South Africa seeks to re-emphasise and restore as it wages its legal battle against the state of Israel at the International Court of Justice. Political leaders, those with an understanding of history and an adherence to morality, need to rally behind President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune.