ICJ orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, stops short of ordering ceasefire

My views on the situation aside, the clearest I saw anyone communicate the issues from a global angle was the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin

Translated here: https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1718201487132885246

Viewed from the angle of the West, I think the message it needs to avoid isolating itself from the world is very unusual for Western media and important.

Quote:

"Westerners must open their eyes to the extent of the historical drama unfolding before us to find the right answers."

And

"This Palestinian question will not fade. And so we must address it and find an answer. This is where we need courage. The use of force is a dead end. The moral condemnation of what Hamas did - and there's no "but" in my words regarding the moral condemnation of this horror - must not prevent us from moving forward politically and diplomatically in an enlightened manner. The law of retaliation is a never-ending cycle."

All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then?

Spend tons of money on iron dome to shoot down the rockets and hope that Hamas won't manage to conduct another massacre, even if "only" half the scope of October 7?

This mess features not one but two parties who currently reject the concept of a cease fire.

Israel must face the reality that is an apartheid state that exists on occupied land. There is no solution until that happens. Just like apartheid South Africa was dismantled, Israel has to face the same fate or forever be locked into warfare and oppressing Palestinians.

> that is an apartheid state that exists on occupied land

I’ve heard this line from people who say the West Bank and Gaza are the occupied land, to those who say all of Israel is occupied land. The former makes sense. The latter is extreme.

> like apartheid South Africa was dismantled

South Africa wasn’t as militarised as the Levant has become, unfortunately. As long as Iran seeks the destruction of Israel, itself and through its proxies, any Mandela-type accounting is probably fruitless. (I am open to being convinced otherwise.)

> to those who say all of Israel is occupied land. The former makes sense. The latter is extreme.

In what way is it not? The state was created by western powers less than 100 years ago and has aggressively pursued European and US immigration since then.

The current state of things is an entirely manufactured situation and it's becoming more and more farcical. There's only so many times you can interview a guy with a British or New York accent talking about his ancestral right to the desert before things start looking a little bit weird.

> The state was created by western powers less than 100 years ago

That's not entirely accurate at all. There was indeed a UN decision to partition the land and to acknowledge Israel, but no one was enforcing it. The Arabs and Jews were left to battle it out in a horrible war. Jews were facing the real possibility of a second extermination only 3 years after the holocaust (I don't think I'm exaggerating the consequences of what defeat would have looked like had the Jews lost that war).

The British policy towards Jews in Palestine was not consistent at all, and at a certain point they sided with the Arabs and banned Jewish immigration to Palestine - even at the height of the holocaust.

> That's not entirely accurate.

It's fair to say that it wasn't directly created by them but their actions in the years prior did lead to the end result. The UK administered the region and had committed to making it a "national home" for the Jewish people. That doesn't necessarily mean a state, but the result was a rapid shift in demographics.

It didn't help that the UK had also made promises of independence to other groups in the region.

> There was indeed a UN decision to partition the land and to acknowledge Israel, but no one was enforcing it. The Arabs and Jews were left to battle it out in a horrible war. Jews were facing the real possibility of a second extermination only 3 years after the holocaust (I don't think I'm exaggerating the consequences of what defeat would have looked like).

I entirely agree with you on the situation that Jews in the region were faced with at the time. One of the depressing things is that despite the proximity to the holocaust, antisemites in allied countries saw the situation as a way to encourage Jews to leave.

I can see how things might have turned out better if there hadn't been so much migration in such a short period of time.

> I can see how things might have turned out better if there hadn't been so much migration in such a short period of time.

Not enough migration if you asked me, millions of Jews could have been saved from the holocaust. If not in Palestine a real effort should have been made to take them in other places, yet no one was doing it - not in Palestine or anywhere else.

I was referring to the period after the war. To be clear, I don't think that having escaped the holocaust is a negative.

> If not in Palestine a real effort should have been made to take them in other places, yet no one was doing it - not in Palestine or anywhere else.

Agreed, the scale of the migration to palestine, even prior to 1945, indicates an abdication of duty by western countries. At the time Palestine was primarily under the control of the UK.

When you mentioned rapid demographic shift, I was assuming you meant the Jewish immigration in the early 20th century that brought bigger numbers of Jews into Palestine and the beginning of the Palestinian rejection of Zionism. There is a popular view that this (or basically Zionism altogether) should have never been allowed to take place because it eventually led to Palestinian displacement.

The early immigration certainly caused issues between two groups and I do think that the decision to support the zionists of the time was incorrect. For many, the purpose seems to have been to reduce their own Jewish populations.

While still a cause of tension, immigration was much lower before the war. The result was just as you said, European Jews were faced with an existential threat a few years after the holocaust.

One of the things I found quite interesting was that Palestine wasn't the only option considered by early Zionists. At some point places like Argentina and Uganda were potential candidates.