Suchergebnisse

This article delves into the legal discussions surrounding the crisis unleashed by the military operation launched on October 7, 2023, in Southern Israel by Palestinian forces of the resistance based in Gaza. Israel considered this a "terrorist attack," asserted the right of self-defense, declared war on Gazans, and started the continuous and indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza. As a result, Gaza has become the new Dresden, in which thousands have been killed and tens of thousands injured. This article is an attempt to answer the following questions to illuminate the legal issues surrounding the current crisis and the broader context of Israel's legal status as a state and its territorial claims: Was the Palestinian offensive in Southern Israel an instance of terrorism and/or an act of aggression? Which side of the conflict can rightfully claim the right of self-defense? Did Israel commit genocide in Gaza? Do Israel's statehood and territorial claims rest on firm legal grounds? Is it legally sensible to argue that Israel is a threat to international peace and security?

The Palestinian tragedy is not simply a matter of one nation-state suppressing another nation that has been deprived of its legitimate right to establish its own state. It is also an 'international problem' granting that it has regional, international and global dimensions which implicate the hegemonic world system. Besides, Israel's aversion to a peaceful posture vis-à-vis the outside world is a threat to international peace and security as defined in the Charter of the United Nations. An emancipatory approach to the Palestinian problem requires that the narrative about the 'two-state solution' be abandoned given that it has become a rhetorical shield for international society's silence in the face of the Israeli fait accomplis in occupied territories. The Arab and the Muslim world, alongside the rest of international society, should no longer view Israel as a 'normal' state. Rather, the world ought to consider acting collectively to impose economic, financial, military, political/diplomatic, and cultural embargo against this aggressive, expansionist, and racist state through the United Nations and a host of other international and regional organizations, as was the case vis-à-vis the Apartheid South Africa during the Cold War.

The scholarly discourse about Israel has at least two defects. First, although it is a colonial-settler state that has occupied the entirety of the former British Mandate of Palestine, it is still by and large treated as a "normal" state in the literature; and secondly, even the progressive scholars – who are very critical of Israel for is subjugation of Palestinian rights and massive breaches of human rights – have mostly confined their critique to the Palestinian territories occupied during the 1967 War. Therefore, the progressive scholarship ought to adopt a wider view of Israel's irregular practices by extending its focus to the entirety of territories corresponding to the former Mandate of Palestine and the entirety of the history of the state of Israel in the context of its occupations, colonial policies, ethnic cleansing, population transfers, systematic racism and massive human rights violations against the Palestinian people. This "new" approach also requires, at least in the context of critical academics, an advocacy for multiple sanctions by international institutions, first and foremost, by the United Nations (UN), to be imposed against Israel as was the case with the Apartheid state of South Africa during the Cold War.

Today, the Zionist occupation of Palestine and the continued dislocation of Palestinians for nearly a hundred years through brute force – combined with the former's discursive hegemony over its victims – remain as major obstacles to the construction of a peaceful and stable international political order in the Middle East. The so-called Palestinian problem remains the key to understand the failure of the Middle Eastern sub-system to produce sustainable peace in the region. This brief introduction to the special issue seeks to explain the general perspective and summarise main arguments of the contributors who have approached the issue of Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lenses of various fields of study such as international law, foreign policy analysis and discourse analysis. As will be seen, all the authors offer notable critical reflections that challenge established understandings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within the mainstream Western media and scholarly literature.