Hamas Decides to Be Helpful, Illustrates Many Ways International Law is Structured Against Israel
Israel is often accused of hysteria for saying that international law is a rigged game: how can the rule of law (by definition neutral) be biased against a law-abiding state? Turns out, there are at least two ways.
The first, and the topic of what will have to be a much longer post, is the asymmetric way that international law and international agreements plays out even in theory. The fundamental disparity of Oslo is the best example - Israel was expected to give up a tangible (land) and get back an intangible (peace). This disparity had all kinds of cascading consequences in practice: it's much harder to verify whether the Palestinians are giving Israel what they're obligated to give, it's much easier for them to lie about their "efforts", and so on. But even if the Palestinians fulfilled their obligations to the letter, Israel would still have by definition given more than they got - despite the neutrality of the
The real problem with international law, however, is the way that it plays out in practice in the Arab-Israeli conflict. There's an unseemly kind of nudge-nudge wink-wink to the whole sordid affair, in which everybody knows that international law is just a pretense for constraining Israel's actions - but Israel is expected to act as if the situation is otherwise. The examples of this dynamic are legendary, from the ceasefires of the Arab-Israeli wars (which lasted just long enough to save the Arab regimes that had started those wars, until they could try to destroy Israel again) to the charade of the International Court of Justice's anti-Security Fence rulings (as if someone who's a virulently anti-Israel diplomat one month will become a dispassionate judge the next month). No one was surprised when the UN fled in 48 hours from the Sinai Peninsula as soon as Egypt was strong enough to attack Israel in 1967, just as no one doubted what the ICJ's rulings would be in the last few years. There is an open secret that international law is a no-lose proposition for Israel's Arab enemies: they can sanctimoniously demand that Israel adhere to it when it's to their advantage (as Iran does when it demands that Israel assent to the NPT), and they can violate it when they choose because nobody really expects better from them (as Iran does when they threaten to pull out of the NPT). Iran's Manhattan Project is actually a perfect example: nobody really believes that Iran isn't developing a nuclear weapon, but everyone is expected to behave as if they do.
Israeli-Palestinian peace deals are unique, however, in that these two cynical exploitations of international law - in theory, the way that it's stacked against Israel, and in practice, the way that it's routinely violated by Israel's enemies - are dramatically combined:
Hamas's prime minister-designate Ismail Haniyeh said on Friday the militant Islamic group had set out its vision for running a Palestinian government to President Mahmoud Abbas. But it was unclear what response Hamas had made to a formal accreditation letter Abbas gave Haniyeh last month, asking the group to abide by interim peace deals with Israel.
That fact that it is "unclear what response Hamas had made... to abide by interim peace deals" is a scandal that Israel should be screaming about from the rooftops. The entire point of a government that represents a people (rather than a gang that has to be dealt with on a case by case basis) is that there is continuity no matter who is elected. A new government is bound by the decisions made by a previous government - one of the first things that Netanyahu did when he was elected is promise to fulfill Israel's Oslo obligations, because Israel is a nation bound by the rule of law. That Hamas has taken it upon itself to abrogate the Palestinian Authority's treaty obligations should be enough to dismiss the entire Palestinian Authority as any kind of pseudo-government.
The situation is made all the worse, however, by the nature of Israel's past treaties with the Palestinian Authority. If it was Egypt that was officially pulling out of the Camp David Accords (instead of just ignoring all the parts about not undermining Israel's security), then Israel could shrug and say "well, that's too bad". But the fundamental unfairness of the Oslo Accords - the fact that Israel has taken huge risks for peace by giving the Palestinians land, money, and weapons - means that when the Palestinians quite correctly say "well, you knew we were just kidding about the whole thing in the first place", Israel is in an untenable position: not only have they given something for nothing, but that something has endangered the lives of its citizens.
Of course, nobody ever really expected the Palestinian Authority to be a real government. There was always a nudge-nudge wink-wink aspect to the whole charade: the PA has largely been a band of terrorists who the world was willing to treat like a real government. The deal was that, as long as Arafat didn't make it too obvious that he hadn't given up on his dreams of destroying Israel, Israel was expected to play along. Now the Palestinians have stopped even pretending that they're willing to allow Israel to exist... and, in a sign that the world really has gone insane, Israel is still being told to play along.
The first, and the topic of what will have to be a much longer post, is the asymmetric way that international law and international agreements plays out even in theory. The fundamental disparity of Oslo is the best example - Israel was expected to give up a tangible (land) and get back an intangible (peace). This disparity had all kinds of cascading consequences in practice: it's much harder to verify whether the Palestinians are giving Israel what they're obligated to give, it's much easier for them to lie about their "efforts", and so on. But even if the Palestinians fulfilled their obligations to the letter, Israel would still have by definition given more than they got - despite the neutrality of the
The real problem with international law, however, is the way that it plays out in practice in the Arab-Israeli conflict. There's an unseemly kind of nudge-nudge wink-wink to the whole sordid affair, in which everybody knows that international law is just a pretense for constraining Israel's actions - but Israel is expected to act as if the situation is otherwise. The examples of this dynamic are legendary, from the ceasefires of the Arab-Israeli wars (which lasted just long enough to save the Arab regimes that had started those wars, until they could try to destroy Israel again) to the charade of the International Court of Justice's anti-Security Fence rulings (as if someone who's a virulently anti-Israel diplomat one month will become a dispassionate judge the next month). No one was surprised when the UN fled in 48 hours from the Sinai Peninsula as soon as Egypt was strong enough to attack Israel in 1967, just as no one doubted what the ICJ's rulings would be in the last few years. There is an open secret that international law is a no-lose proposition for Israel's Arab enemies: they can sanctimoniously demand that Israel adhere to it when it's to their advantage (as Iran does when it demands that Israel assent to the NPT), and they can violate it when they choose because nobody really expects better from them (as Iran does when they threaten to pull out of the NPT). Iran's Manhattan Project is actually a perfect example: nobody really believes that Iran isn't developing a nuclear weapon, but everyone is expected to behave as if they do.
Israeli-Palestinian peace deals are unique, however, in that these two cynical exploitations of international law - in theory, the way that it's stacked against Israel, and in practice, the way that it's routinely violated by Israel's enemies - are dramatically combined:
Hamas's prime minister-designate Ismail Haniyeh said on Friday the militant Islamic group had set out its vision for running a Palestinian government to President Mahmoud Abbas. But it was unclear what response Hamas had made to a formal accreditation letter Abbas gave Haniyeh last month, asking the group to abide by interim peace deals with Israel.
That fact that it is "unclear what response Hamas had made... to abide by interim peace deals" is a scandal that Israel should be screaming about from the rooftops. The entire point of a government that represents a people (rather than a gang that has to be dealt with on a case by case basis) is that there is continuity no matter who is elected. A new government is bound by the decisions made by a previous government - one of the first things that Netanyahu did when he was elected is promise to fulfill Israel's Oslo obligations, because Israel is a nation bound by the rule of law. That Hamas has taken it upon itself to abrogate the Palestinian Authority's treaty obligations should be enough to dismiss the entire Palestinian Authority as any kind of pseudo-government.
The situation is made all the worse, however, by the nature of Israel's past treaties with the Palestinian Authority. If it was Egypt that was officially pulling out of the Camp David Accords (instead of just ignoring all the parts about not undermining Israel's security), then Israel could shrug and say "well, that's too bad". But the fundamental unfairness of the Oslo Accords - the fact that Israel has taken huge risks for peace by giving the Palestinians land, money, and weapons - means that when the Palestinians quite correctly say "well, you knew we were just kidding about the whole thing in the first place", Israel is in an untenable position: not only have they given something for nothing, but that something has endangered the lives of its citizens.
Of course, nobody ever really expected the Palestinian Authority to be a real government. There was always a nudge-nudge wink-wink aspect to the whole charade: the PA has largely been a band of terrorists who the world was willing to treat like a real government. The deal was that, as long as Arafat didn't make it too obvious that he hadn't given up on his dreams of destroying Israel, Israel was expected to play along. Now the Palestinians have stopped even pretending that they're willing to allow Israel to exist... and, in a sign that the world really has gone insane, Israel is still being told to play along.
