People have been asking “What if…” forever. Over the next few months, Al Jazeera will explore some of the biggest challenges of our time and ask leading experts: “What if…”
United States President Donald Trump has given the Palestinian group Hamas a deadline of Sunday to agree to a deal that he says would end Israel’s war on Gaza, but also allow Israel to remain in some parts of Gaza in the short term.
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Critics, pointing to Israel’s continued attacks on Lebanon following a ceasefire deal agreed there last year, and its ongoing raids on the occupied West Bank, are not sure whether the deal will actually stop Israel and bring peace to Gaza.
If it fails, many expect Israel to continue with a military campaign that has decimated Gaza, killing more than 66,000 Palestinians.
That’s despite global condemnation of Israel.
In mid-September, a United Nations commission echoed the conclusions of rights groups in Israel and abroad that Israel’s war was genocidal. Soon after, the European Union proposed suspending Israel’s trade concessions with the bloc. And a UN-backed body concluded in August that Israel had inflicted a man-made famine on the enclave.
Several of Israel’s traditional allies – including France, the United Kingdom and Canada – also recognised Palestine as a state in September, following others, including Norway, Spain and Ireland, that recognised Palestine last year.
Individual lawmakers have also condemned Israel. Last month, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called for Israel to be expelled from global sporting bodies “until the barbarity ends”. In May, Slovenia’s president, Natasa Pirc Musar, used the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions.
So what if these countries took this further – could they cooperate and force Israel to stop attacking and withdraw from Gaza, even without support from the US?
What could the United Nations do?
“The UN remains the most viable path to halt Israel’s actions in Gaza, and there’s precedent for this.
“Israel is in breach of the UN Charter, the 1948 UN Convention against Genocide and the 1998 Rome Statute, which many members signed up to. All of these agreements place a legal obligation on states to intervene in the face of atrocity or genocide.
“So far, through its use of drones, cutting cables and blocking shipping, only [the Houthis in] Yemen – one of the poorest countries in the world – is doing that.
“In 1950, the UN General Assembly passed the Uniting for Peace Resolution to intervene in Korea. Every previous attempt to take action through the Security Council had been vetoed by the USSR. The Uniting for Peace resolution, after gaining the strong support of the General Assembly, allowed for a legal pathway for the United Nations to intervene in the Korean conflict, restore South Korea’s independence, and help to secure an armistice, if not a lasting peace.
“Seventy-five years later, that precedent can still be used. It could grant the UN the authority to dispatch a military force into Gaza: A place, remember, where the UN has previously ruled that, like the other occupied territories, Israel has no place to be in. Once in, a UN force would be able to begin humanitarian relief, begin reconstruction, restore utilities such as water and electricity and negotiate some kind of interim governance.
“It is also possible for the UN, under Article 6 of the UN Charter, to eject members who have persistently violated its principles, but that requires the support of the Security Council (and the United States). In the 1970s, there were repeated attempts to expel South Africa from the UN; these efforts were vetoed by the US, France and the UK.
“However, the General Assembly passed a resolution declaring that it simply wouldn’t recognise South Africa’s credentials, effectively banning it for 20 years. It is time for the Assembly to consider undertaking the same action with regard to Israel.”- Michael Lynk
What could individual states do without the UN?
“There are no good answers here. Concepts like humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect have generated a lot of interest since the 1990s, but it remains the mainstream view that the lawful use of force requires UN Security Council authorisation or a valid claim of self-defence.
“The 1948 Genocide Convention obligates all parties to prevent genocide, but this does not provide a standalone legal basis for forcible intervention.
“Another consideration is collective self-defence or the similar concept of ‘intervention by invitation’. This possibility depends on Palestine being recognised as a state that can exercise its sovereignty by inviting third states to participate in a campaign of self-defence against Israel.
“Most examples do not concern state-to-state armed conflict but instead refer to non-international armed conflicts (i.e. where State A invites State B to undertake military operations within its territory against an insurgent group).
“This happened in the 1990s, when the DRC invited Uganda into Eastern Congo – but it then led to a dispute between the DRC and Uganda when the DRC withdrew its consent (i.e. the DRC rescinded the invitation and Ugandan troops did not leave).
“More recent examples include the US-led coalition against ISIL (ISIS) in Iraqi territory; the US-led coalition operated with the consent of Iraq. The same did not apply in Syria, where the legal basis for action against ISIL was much blurrier.
“Could Palestine invite a state to come to its aid tomorrow? I suppose it could if Palestine itself claims to be acting in self-defence under Article 51.
“But there are some complicated issues here. For one, it is not clear who speaks for the State of Palestine. If this is the PA in Ramallah, a declaration by Hamas (a non-state actor that exercises governmental authority in Gaza) that it is engaged in self-defence may not carry legal weight. I am not actually sure how the law of occupation might also play into this.” – Michael Becker
What could sanctions and trade embargos achieve?
“Think of Russia; the world has already imposed sanctions upon it, but, with China’s support, it’s surviving. I imagine that sanctions on Israel would be similarly undone by the US.
“The reality is that, without the support of the US, which is Israel’s largest export partner, sanctions or trade embargos might hurt Israel, but not stop it.
“If you perhaps combined China, the EU and possibly India, you’d be able to inflict some damage on the Israeli economy, but you’d be unlikely to stop it.
“You also need to look at the type of exports Israel relies upon. It doesn’t really export commodities, which can be boycotted, but items like tech, which aren’t so easily replaced.
“Even after 22 months of war, Israel’s economy is still doing well. Debt is a problem, and the economy is not growing at the rate it was, but all those people, including me, who predicted its collapse look to have been off the mark.” – Daniele Bianchi
What could the public do?
“Cultural and sporting boycotts work to both change public opinion in their subject country and rally opinion against it.
“Cultural boycotts are a way of making it clear to a country and everyone in it that their behaviour is so out of line that they are not to be dealt with. It’s a way of denying them the illusion that they’re ‘just another country’ or that every other country has problems with human rights.
“For South Africa, the idea was first proposed by a man called Trevor Huddleston, who suggested a cultural boycott in 1954, but it was the UN General Assembly that established it a decade later in 1968.
“Culture is a slow and steady dimension of international relations. Scholars know that national reputations typically build and decline over many years or even decades, which is not the pace that either most people or governments imagine.
“Cultural boycotts operate according to the same rules. They work over years, as a drag on a national reputation, denying the veneer of normality and marking a place as a pariah.
“Mandela himself referred to the Apartheid state as the world’s skunk.
“The cultural boycott of South Africa delivered four decades of pressure, but the extra blow of comprehensive economic sanctions from the United States finally forced first Apartheid South Africa’s business leaders and then its political leaders to negotiate.” – Nick Cull
