*The World Court has ended the Oslo ruse, dealing a definitive blow to
decades of Western efforts to situate Israel outside the reach of the law.*
by Craig Mokhiber***, Mondoweiss, August 7, 2024
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/the-world-court-has-ended-the-oslo-ruse
Israel is on trial for genocide in the International Court of Justice (the
ICJ). The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has
requested arrest warrants for Israel’s leaders for crimes against humanity.
Millions of people across the globe, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims,
Christians, students, workers, and others, are mobilized to challenge
Israeli settler-colonialism, apartheid, and genocide. The 76-year-old wall
of impunity, built brick-by-brick by the US, the UK, and other Western
governments, is beginning to crumble.
Further evidence of this came on July 19 when, in a stunning advisory
opinion, the ICJ ruled that international law protects the rights of the
Palestinians, and they need not negotiate with their oppressors for those
rights under Oslo or any other political framework, dealing a definitive
blow to decades of US and Western efforts to situate Israel outside the
reach of the rule of law. With that simple declaration, the Court ended
three decades of Israeli exceptionalism built on the ruse of Oslo as a
barrier to the application of international law.
Still, the cause of human rights for the Palestinian people faces a steep
climb. The Western-supported Zionist project in Palestine has had a
decades-long head start in building its oppressive walls, both literal and
figurative.
. . .
Cracks in Israel’s wall of impunity would emerge especially after a new,
far-right government took power in Israel in 2023. That government, made up
of a hodge-podge of some of the country’s most odious fascists,
supremacists, settlers, and war criminals, would immediately abandon
Israel’s (western endorsed) 75-year policy of incremental genocide, in
favor of one of expedited genocide. It moved immediately to expand
settlements, to increase attacks and carry out pogroms on Palestinian towns
and villages in the West Bank, to evict Palestinian families in East
Jerusalem, to further codify apartheid in law (building on the
discriminatory Nation State Law of 2018), and to arrest hundreds of
additional political prisoners. After the attack on southern Israel by
armed Palestinian resistance groups in October, Israel launched a ruthless
campaign of annihilation on the people of Gaza and increased further its
attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
. . .
... Petitioned by South Africa, the ICJ convened to consider a charge of
genocide against Israel, ruled that charge to be plausible, and ordered
several rounds of provisional measures for Israel to halt its criminal
actions. The ICC Prosecutor, after years of stalling and deflection on the
Palestine file, requested arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister and
Defense Minister for crimes against humanity. Both processes remain
ongoing, raising the specter of real accountability for Israel’s
international crimes for the first time since the Oslo paradigm was
launched.
. . .
Invoking article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Court then put the
matter to rest for good, reminding states that, as a matter of law, “the
protected population ‘shall not be deprived’ of the benefits of the
Convention ‘by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the
occupied territories and the Occupying Power.’” “For this reason,” the
Court continued, “the Oslo Accords cannot be understood to detract from
Israel’s obligations under the pertinent rules of international law
applicable in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
In simple terms, the Court affirmed that Palestinians are human beings with
human rights, that they need not negotiate for their human rights with
their oppressor, and that Israel is not above the law.
The U.S. and its Western allies will undoubtedly attempt to resuscitate the
Oslo ruse in defense of its colonial project in Palestine. In doing so, it
will invoke “the rules-based order” (i.e., US-dictated imperial rule) and
reject international law (codified universal law that applies to all
states). But the shelf-life on those tricks has expired. The movement for
Palestinian liberation, for boycott, divestment and sanctions, and for an
end to colonialism, apartheid and genocide in Palestine, is growing daily.
That movement has been further empowered by recent developments in
international law. And the ICJ has finally driven a stake into the heart of
the Oslo vampire.
# # #
***Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and former senior
United Nations Official. He left the UN in October of 2023, penning a
widely read letter that warned of genocide in Gaza, criticized the
international response and called for a new approach to Palestine and
Israel based on equality, human rights and international law.
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