Summary
Author of Chapter 19 of From the River to the Sea, “What the rules allow” (17 November 2023, first published by The Nation), arguing that the “rules-based international order” is the substitution of international law with the prerogatives of American hegemony (From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine, lines 1451-1486).
Details
- On US diplomats warning that Israel’s war was sowing “doubt in the rules-based international order that we have long championed”: Biden is “not engaging in hypocrisy, exactly” in punishing Russia for acts he materially supports when Israel does them; “He is engaging in exceptionalism.” (lines 1461-1469)
- The order “doesn’t replace the mechanisms of international law; it places asterisks beside them. The rules may bind US adversaries, but the US and its clients can opt out.” (line 1469)
- Of Gaza by early November 2023 — an estimated 180 children killed a day and “dozens” of Hamas commanders claimed out of a death toll of 10,500 — there is no way to square the figures with international law’s demands for distinction and proportionality; the rules-based order’s reality is “not a world of liberty under law, but a mass grave” (lines 1479-1485).
Related pages
From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine, Rules-based international order, International Court of Justice