While the assassination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar could have been a catalyst for the Gaza conflict, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued promises of “total victory” make this seem unlikely.

However, the concept of “total victory” is extremely problematic. Every time Israel declares an area liberated from Hamas and then withdraws, Hamas, which carried out the horrific attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, has quickly returned to reassert control.

As a result, there has been significant Israeli escalation in northern Gaza in recent days and much discussion of a so-called “general’s plan” pushed by some right-wing members of the Netanyahu government.

The plan, hatched by a former Israeli general, Giora Eiland, is essentially to forego negotiations, cut the enclave in half and give the 400,000 residents of the northern Gaza Strip a grim choice between flight and death.

We do not know whether Netanyahu will officially support the plan. Israeli leaders reportedly told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week that they would not implement it. Nevertheless, it enjoys broad support among Israel’s political and military elite.

The Israeli military has already issued expulsion orders to the population in the northern Gaza Strip. The government has said that anyone who remains will 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 reached the northern Gaza Strip for two weeks in early October. Although some aid has since arrived, thousands are still at risk of starvation and outbreaks of preventable diseases.

Furthermore, 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 not very appealing.

Israeli human rights groups say the military deliberately blocked aid to leave the population no choice but to leave the northern Gaza Strip. Israel may now back down under pressure from the United States, which has given the Netanyahu government a 30-day deadline to increase the amount of aid it allows to the Gaza Strip or risk losing U.S. arms funding .

Undermining international norms and rules

Israel’s war against Gaza and now against Lebanon has repeatedly challenged the foundations of the liberal international rules-based order established after World War II, as well as the principles of international law, multilateral diplomacy, democracy and humanism.

The norms of the liberal world order find expression in various institutions, such as:

• the UN Charter
• the UN Security Council with its fictitious legally binding resolutions
• the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague
• the Geneva Conventions regulating the rules of war
• the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and many others.

Recently, the ICJ ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem was illegal and ordered its withdrawal. In response, Netanyahu said the court had made a “lying decision.”

In another case, South Africa filed a complaint with the International Court of Justice over allegations that Israel committed genocide against the Palestinian people last year. The world’s top court has provisionally ruled that there is a “plausible” case for a finding of genocide and said Israel must take measures to ensure its prevention.

At this point, however, human rights groups and others have argued that Israel has failed to comply with this order, undermining one of the key institutions of the liberal world order.

Making matters worse, few major democratic states have been prepared to condemn Israel’s non-compliance with international law in Gaza in the strongest possible terms – or have been slow to do so – let alone take concrete action.

In addition, the UN Security Council has failed – largely due to US veto power – to take concrete measures to enforce its own resolutions against Israel and the rulings of the International Court of Justice.

This fuels widespread perceptions of hypocrisy regarding the accountability of supposedly democratic states for alleged violations of humanitarian law compared to other non-major power nations.

In the early 1990s, the UN Security Council unanimously passed several resolutions against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, followed a decade later by resolutions calling on Saddam Hussein’s regime to comply with weapons inspection mandates. The United States and its allies used these resolutions as legal justification for their invasion of Iraq. Ultimately, no weapons of mass destruction were found. Then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan later said the invasion of Iraq was illegal and violated the UN Charter.

However, dozens of UN Security Council resolutions affecting Israel have been passed and not enforced. Many others were rejected by the USA.

International Criminal Court prosecutors have also requested arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity (along with several now-deceased Hamas leaders). The arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant were met with outrage from some Western politicians. Still, the West generally praised the ICC’s arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In addition, the US Congress attempted to sanction the court over the arrest warrant against Netanyahu, once again underscoring the often selective way in which nation states apply international law.

A crisis of legitimacy of the world order

Democratic states like to portray themselves as protectors and sometimes enforcers of the liberal world order, ensuring lasting international peace and security.

Indeed, Israel and its supporters often describe its military actions as a forward defense of the democratic world against tyrannical great powers, a means of protecting themselves from adversaries who seek to destroy them. The problem is that Israel’s actions often directly contradict the liberal world order it claims to defend, thereby undermining its legitimacy.

The failure to curb Israel’s actions has led to accusations of “double standards” regarding international law. The US and Germany provide Israel with 99% of its arms imports and diplomatic protection. Although Germany has stopped approving new arms exports to Israel, both countries certainly have more influence to stop the carnage in Gaza if they wish.

The West’s self-defeated moral superiority appears to be in tatters as it continues to undermine the principles of the liberal world order. The question is: What will the new world order look like if this world order collapses?