The US has once again vetoed a ceasefire resolution at the United Nations Security Council to ensure Israel can continue its ground invasion and bombing of Gaza, pushing the besieged and tormented population of Gaza ever closer to the border with Egypt in an attempt to force a mass ethnic cleansing.
Under the rubble of Gaza, there are already over 20 thousand Palestinians killed by the airstrikes as well as the souls of the survivors that at every sunrise have to find the courage to face yet another day in this ongoing horrendous genocide. All UN agencies are alerting that their last efforts to support the population are at the point of collapse.
Israel’s efforts to completely destroy the population and to expel the survivors have been planned for a long time and its resolve to implement this now seems relentless. This does not need to be an inevitable destiny.
Yet, stopping Israel’s efforts at annihilation depends not only on the steadfastness of the Palestinians in Gaza but also on the capacity of the people and governments, especially across the Global South, to challenge the threat that Israel’s genocide and its 75-year-old colonial apartheid regime poses today not only to Palestinians but to humanity.
It is urgent that the Global South build the alliances capable of developing effective action to achieve a ceasefire now and create mechanisms to end the genocide, dismantle apartheid and hold those responsible to account.
An experiment in considering us all dispensable
The two months of unhinged televised genocide, fully backed by the US and Europe, have not only devastated Gaza but have also destroyed the last remnants of the credibility of the safeguards of international law and the so-called global governance system that the West created after World War II, ostensibly to prevent wars and genocide.
The UN Security Council has once again shown its unwillingness and incapacity to do anything useful at all. The International Criminal Court (ICC) and its prosecutor Karim Khan, who is intensively engaged in disaster tourism, travelling across the region without taking any action, have proven that the Court is willing to take action only if this is in the interests of the West. Although one should never give up hope, it is unlikely that the currently ongoing Assembly of State Parties that oversees the ICC will force the change that is needed. The European Union has reconfirmed that it is a pliable accomplice to any US-backed crime.
The veneer of respect for human rights and basic ethics is gone. Up until October 7, when Western powers backed or waged wars across the globe, politicians and mainstream media felt obliged to try to convince us that they were “civilising” those killed by the bombs, that they were liberating women from their oppressors while destroying their families and assassinating their loved ones, or defending minorities or people they didn’t care about until the day before and would forget the day after. This time, we simply have to support a brutal horrific genocide. End of story.
The West is using this opportunity to create a general acceptance that unhinged and unmasked violence and crimes against humanity can be legitimate. Colombia’s president early on in the onslaught on Gaza tweeted that “Gaza is only the first experiment for considering us all dispensable.” Israel’s genocide and settler colonial apartheid regime are to become a model to be emulated by those in power, whenever and wherever needed.
Support without sufficient impact
Over the same period, people have mobilised in international solidarity at an unprecedented scale and a number of states in the Global South have dared to speak out and take action. These are today the potential counter-powers to the colonial overdrive we are witnessing.
South Africa has closed its embassy in Tel Aviv. Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Chad, Türkiye and Jordan have recalled their ambassadors for consultations, and Belize and Bolivia have cut all diplomatic relations. Five states – South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros, and Djibouti – have referred Israel’s crimes to the ICC Prosecutor, citing, among other crimes, genocide and apartheid. Strong statements have been made by many leaders and regional bodies across Africa, Asia and Latin America. The fact that on 27 October, only eight states from the Global South voted against the UN General Assembly resolution for a ceasefire and that over 100 states – mainly from Asia, Africa and Latin America – co-sponsored the second attempt of the UN Security Council to pass a ceasefire resolution, is another indicator of the continuing support.
“Gaza is only the first experiment for considering us all dispensable.”
Global South action in support of Palestinian rights had in fact grown, especially since the beginning of this year as Israel’s far-right government scaled up its aggression on the Palestinian people. This year, Israel’s representative was escorted by security personnel out of the Heads of State summit of the African Union after it was confirmed that the country didn’t have observer status. The under-20 male football world cup was relocated because Indonesia’s governors refused to let the Israeli team play in their states.
Yet, in the face of the genocide in Gaza, this solidarity has so far lacked the necessary impact.
In other times, such as during the processes of decolonisation and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the Global South was able to leverage its power in the UN General Assembly and other UN institutions to defend the principles of anti-colonialism, anti-racism and other shared interests. This time, over the entire period of a two-month-long blatant genocide, the General Assembly has met only once to pass a resolution with little effect. The existing UN Committees dealing with issues of decolonisation, human rights and international security have not produced any relevant outcome.
Regional bodies haven’t dared to take any action.
Plagued by normalisation processes and unaccountable monarchies and dictatorships, the Arab League, which had moved an oil embargo 50 years ago, today seems unable to take any effective action.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has produced a reasonable statement calling on others to stop arming Israel and for the ICC to act but hasn’t committed to any concrete actions its members could undertake. This will continue as long as the debilitating premise that efforts within the OIC are supposedly to be led by the Palestinian Authority and the Arab countries is upheld, even though other nations would have more than enough political, economic or diplomatic muscle to take initiative.
Over the entire period of a two-month-long blatant genocide, the General Assembly has met only once to pass a resolution with little effect.
The African Union hasn’t taken any step to uphold its mandate to eliminate Zionism, colonialism and apartheid.
Regional bodies in Latin America, such as the Mercosur, the UNASUR or the Organization of American States are either debilitated or tools of US Interests. Brazil as a possible ad hoc articulator of coordination and consensus on the continent is glaringly absent. President Lula da Silva has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, but then has met Israel’s president in a business-as-usual approach during the COP28. Although civil society and sectors within his own government circles ask for action to end the genocide, Lula’s famed “assertive and active foreign policy” that characterised his first mandate as president is nowhere to be seen. Regional coordination has simply not taken place.
As a result, the widespread opposition in Africa, Asia and Latin America to Israel’s crimes and the normalisation of violations of international law by US allies, has remained ineffective. Neither Israel nor the US is feeling significant pressure.
In unity lies power
There are a myriad of reasons why the Global South has so far been unable to find unity and have the necessary impact in the face of Israel’s genocide.
One of the reasons is that during his first mandate in 1996, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the genocide, had already started intensifying relations with non-Western countries. Over the decades, Israel was able to create ties of complicity, especially across Africa but also in Asia. These countries are today beholden to the allure of weapons and spyware tested on Palestinians, and to Israeli schemes of corruption and propaganda. Netanyahu’s normalisation efforts with the Arab world have borne some fruits with the so-called Abraham Accords.
A second element is the overarching mantra across foreign policy circles in the Global South that their policy has to be driven by “pragmatic” approaches as their countries don’t have the luxury of doing “ideology”. While it has never been clear how contempt for international law, the right to self-determination, anti-colonial struggles and human rights in general should be pragmatically beneficial to states without overwhelming military power, it is now more evident than ever that this false dichotomy has to come to an end.
The African Union hasn’t taken any step to uphold its mandate to eliminate Zionism, colonialism and apartheid.
The lack of Palestinian leadership at an official level is clearly also playing a role. The Palestinian Authority is going along with US caucuses. Intent on profiting from Israel’s genocide, it hopes this will give them a way back to power in the devastated Gaza Strip, while governments across the globe are left to discuss among themselves what to do. This is a problem but not a good enough excuse for inaction; faced with crimes against humanity, every state is under obligation to prevent and put an end to them.
At the same time, it has become evident that the spaces for coordination in the Global South all share the same weakness in the face of a crisis of humanity such as Israel’s genocide in Gaza; they are built around regional and economic considerations, while political aspirations and questions of peace and international law are left to the side.
At the time the Non-Aligned Movement was created, the fight against colonialism was a political common ground that enabled states to act together. It allowed the Global South to successfully push for the establishment of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development to address the urgent need for economic decolonisation. The states that came together in the Organization of African Unity with the declared aim of eradicating colonialism and racial discrimination played a major role in driving UN action against apartheid, including through the UN Special Committee against Apartheid. There was a time when Mercosur had political aspirations to use regional economic integration to build autonomy and finally stop being the US’s backyard.
Many of the multilateral groupings led by the Global South today – from the G77 to the BRICS and other regional bodies – have been effective in derailing devastating WTO negotiations, preventing crippling free trade agreements and building financial alternatives.
At the time the Non-Aligned Movement was created, the fight against colonialism was a political common ground that enabled states to act together.
Yet, in front of a political challenge such as Israeli apartheid and genocide, they do not serve the purpose. The extraordinary meeting of the BRICS on the question of Palestine ended without any proposal for action. When the war in Ukraine started, the Global South was able to avoid being pushed into the US-NATO camp. This was easier. It was about a basic refusal. What is needed now is proactive action.
It seems that there simply isn’t the infrastructure of diplomacy to enable effective action in this moment of crisis.
Cracks in the Wall
In the face of the new paradigm Israel is shaping for the West at the expense of the Palestinian people, we need more impact, more action, more unity. Now. We need to find a way forward through the cracks in the wall of injustice in front of us and create the power we need.
Today, Western elites aim to destroy the global system that is based on international law and inaugurate an era where “might makes right” and overwhelming atrocities serve as a deterrent. They do so because their grip on power is fading, not because their dominance is assured.
The US is in the midst of a financial and social crisis, risking a financial default every six months, unable to deal with the ever-widening gap of inequality and slowly but consistently losing hegemony. Less than two years ago, the US suffered a profound military debacle when it withdrew its troops from Afghanistan. It had to accept that China successfully brokered the reestablishment of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, shaping new dynamics in the Middle East that are opposed to American interests.
Israel’s current far-right government has thrown the country into a socio-political and economic crisis that pits one part of the society against the other and risks spelling the end of the “startup nation”.
Neither the US nor Israel have an exit strategy from the genocide, let alone a plan for the future.
As painful and infuriating as it is to think that this horrific genocide against the Palestinian people is being carried out without any clear, achievable objective but rather as a kneejerk reaction of colonial supremacy to a faltering grip on power, it leaves space for new initiatives and hope that eventually justice can prevail.
At a time when human rights and international law are at stake, we need more political leadership and carefully coordinated initiatives. Challenging the existing power structures is crucial but this doesn’t respond to the need to activate effective political mechanisms that can hold those regimes and actors accountable that today are intent on burying international law and human rights under the rubble of Gaza. The governments in the Global South that are ready to stand up for Palestine will have to initiate and advance these actions.
Today, Western elites aim to destroy the global system that is based on international law and inaugurate an era where “might makes right” and overwhelming atrocities serve as a deterrent.
Only then may they find wider support among the growing number of Western officials and politicians that are starting to break ranks with the policy of unconditional support for genocide, because it risks being unsustainable for their own colonial hegemony in the medium and long-term.
While on issues of economic neocolonialism and globalisation governments of the Global South can count at least partially on the support of national capital, many of the financial and economic elites in Latin America, Africa and Asia have bought into Israeli propaganda that it will be a partner in development or simply don’t see how defending international law could bring them benefits.
Ensuring that governments nevertheless move in the right direction – using existing mechanisms or exploring new avenues – lies more than ever with the people on the ground, in the streets and in the fields. The people are the hope that remains for Palestine.
We will build the power we need only if the climate justice networks, the anti-debt campaigners, farmers, indigenous coalitions, feminist movements, and all the other movements that push and support their governments to challenge our exploitative world order and end injustices within their countries, come together to defend humanity against Israeli genocide and apartheid.
If not now, when?