The words and deeds of Israel’s right-wing government to the horrific attacks on its population on October 7, 2023 including the hostage taking, did not surprise the international community, nor has it so far caused the same level of outrage in the West as it has in what is widely called the Global South.  

Putting Gaza, a city of more than two million inhabitants under siege, relentlessly bombing it from the air, and destroying all infrastructure and access to water and electricity along the way, is considered a war crime for its indiscriminate killing of civilians, for causing starvation as a form of collective punishment, and for possibly preparing the stage for genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Still, Western leaders are lining up to meet with the leaders of Israel, thereby showing some form of solidarity with it after the horrendous crimes committed by Hamas and allied groups.

It may very well be that the West’s diplomatic posture has so far secured some diplomatic successes in marginally tempering Israel’s response (allowing some aid convoys to cross into Gaza from Rafah). It may also very well be that the moving of two US aircraft carriers and the US promises of extensive military support to Israel, has restrained Iran and its allies from attacking Israel in a way that would lead to all out war.

However, one ought to consider Israel’s response not just in terms of its current military objectives, nor simply as a response to an unprecedented attack on its own population, but as a reflection of three systemic features of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the rules of the game that the state of Israel has imposed on the Palestinians.

1. The killing of Palestinian civilians and military personnel has always been disproportionate and part of Israel’s defence doctrine. Believing that Arab populations in general and Palestinians, in particular, would not accept the creation of a Jewish state on their land regardless of any concessions, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, believed that Arab people would unconditionally accept Israel once it has proven to be invincible and if they were to be taught that challenging it would incur disproportionate punishment. Since the early 1940s up to the 2020s, Israel’s Defense Force has reacted to incursions of displaced Palestinians, armed or not, with massive cross-border retaliations and brutal tactics, including against civilians who were considered harboring Palestinian guerilla.
2. Indiscriminate targeting of civilians has been a hallmark of Israel’s response to protests and armed insurgencies alike, in part because it inherited from the mandate era (1920-1948) a civil war in which its Jewish immigrants fought against the existing Palestinian population over control over the territory and the security of their respective communities. The mandate power, Great Britain, together with the World Zionist Organization, armed the Jewish settlers and organized them into defence groups, until the mandate power was itself subjected to their militancy and attacks including the assassination of Minister Resident Lord Moyne in 1944 outside his residence in Cairo by Lohamei Herut Yisrael otherwise known as the Stern Gang. Once the war of independence broke out in 1948 with the creation and recognition of the state of Israel as a member of the UN, the state did not cease to fight its wars as a continuation of a civil war against populations, including the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land in 1948 and the expansion of the borders beyond the UN partition plan.  Dayr Yasin and the massacre of Tantura committed in May 1948 by the Israeli Defense Force are two early historical examples of the state of Israel engaging in war crimes that are on par with those committed in a civil war.
3. Whilst Palestinians never had a sovereign state to call their own that was bound by international law in return for getting the legal protection it confers (including treating combatants as soldiers and, if captured, as prisoners of war), Israel’s engagement with its neighbours attempted to evade international law by emphasizing its size, the hostility of its state neighbours, and Palestinians’ lack of desire to live in peace and security with Israel.  However, whilst it obtained a de facto right to self-defence as a UN member state in internationally recognized borders, it has also been under international obligations as an occupying force in the territories that it occupied since 1967.  Whilst Israel claimed the rights of a UN member state to self-defence, it only paid lip service to its international obligations. It went as far as annexing territories that it occupied, creating settler communities in the Palestinian-occupied territories, bulldozing houses and acres after acres of land for settlements, highways, walls, or as punishments against Palestinian militants. It also allowed armed militiamen to enter civilian areas it controlled to commit barbaric atrocities, such as the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut during Israel’s occupation of Lebanon in the early 1980s.    

The current destruction of Gaza and the indiscriminate killing and punishment of civilians across the occupied territories under the guise of waging a war on Hamas is not a novel reaction to violence, protests, and atrocities committed by Hamas and allied groups. It is part and parcel of a systematic violation of international humanitarian law, the laws of warfare and the Geneva Conventions, to which the State of Israel only feels selectively bound whenever it seeks diplomatic support for its cause or military assistance.

From its inception, the Jewish state has used the cover of statehood to continue to seek objectives of a militia during a civil war against Palestinians over land that both claim to be theirs, using as a pretext that Palestinians did not recognize Israel’s right to exist. Cosmetic, conditional, and retractable concessions to Palestinians (such as those of the 1993 Oslo Accords) would only be granted if its unrivalled supremacy over most if not all of the land could thereby be secured.

Officially, it yearned for peace with its neighbours, yet in reality it reacted in the words of one of the most distinguished Professors of Modern Middle History Carl L Brown with “bristling aggressiveness” to any hostility against its claims to the land, unconstrained by international law or any agreements struck with the Palestinians.

So far, Israel’s “bristling aggressiveness” has utterly failed to deliver what it allegedly aspires to achieve, that of living in peace and security with its neighbours. There is no reason to believe that it will be successful in the future. 75 years since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, it is time to change the rules of the game forever.

Western leaders should reconsider if showing so much solidarity with Israel does not do more harm than good, in that such a show of solidarity lends support to Israel’s rules of the game. Israel is not an ordinary state and comparing the October 7 attacks on its population with the Russian attack on Ukraine or 9/11 is misleading at best.

Dismissing the framework for negotiating peace and allowing the tools of modern warfare to inflict so much human suffering on one’s adversary, Palestinians, Gazans, West-Bank residents, and Hamas alike, will only drift the world more towards unregulated and open conflicts, at a time when cooperation and diplomacy are more needed than ever.

James Sater is professor and head of the Department of International Relations, University of Malta.