Lhe Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing war have taken center stage internationally, relegating almost the entire non-European world to the background. A naive observer might rejoice, given the vigor of Western reactions to this aggression, that international law is progressing, and therefore respect for sovereignty in what is unassailable, namely the territorial integrity that is supposed to protect the Charter of the United Nations.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has also dispatched, with unusual speed, a team of 42 investigators to collect evidence of war crimes. If he shifts his gaze a little towards the Middle East, our observer will quickly be disappointed, even shocked. What is rightly worth reprobation, disgrace and multiple counter-attacks in the case of Russia attracts, at best, only soft protests in the case of Israel.
Here, invasion, dispossession, annexation do not lead to sanctions. The military occupation, the colonization of occupied territories, a war crime on a daily basis and in slow motion, has only been the subject of timid steps by the ICC. Here, angry words are avoided by Western governments in favor of formulations worn to the point of becoming anachronistic: faced with the abuses of the Israeli army and the settlers it protects, people pretend to worry about the in danger of a “peace process” dead and buried for more than twenty years, we mumble our wish for a “two-state solution”, a dry ritual invocation, and we move on.
Second class citizens
Note, however, that the word “apartheid” has made its appearance in Western diplomatic vocabulary in recent years. Not as an applicable qualification, but as a risk in the event of continued colonization. As if to respond to these warnings, the Israeli government voted [en juillet 2018] the “Nation-State of Israel” law, which creates second-class citizens and provides that “The state considers the development of Jewish settlements as a national value and will encourage and promote it”. What the Netanyahu government had passed, formalizing a de facto situation dating from the 1970s, the Bennett government is implementing without fail. Let us remember this sentence, pronounced by the current Prime Minister of Israel [en 2013]in the course of an interview: “I’ve killed a lot of Arabs in my life, that’s no problem. » Or else, elsewhere [en 2012] : “I will always do everything in my power to obstruct a Palestinian state in the land of Israel. » We could not be clearer.
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