Israel risks pariah status as castigation over Gaza war by its allies, UN members escalates
Concern is growing in Israel and the United States that Washington's long-time ally has become diplomatically isolated over its war conduct in Gaza and could be on a path to becoming an international pariah.
Israel's journey down that road could begin if it launches a full-blown military offensive in the southern Gaza area of Rafah bordering Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, US and Arab ministers have warned.
Since its forces entered parts of Rafah last week, Israel has seen an overwhelming majority of United Nations member states - including key allies in Asia and the Pacific - approve a symbolic resolution earlier this month declaring that Palestine qualified for full membership.
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Australia, another long-standing Israeli ally, has said it is actively considering recognising Palestine as a state. Several European Union members led by Ireland, Spain and Slovenia plan to issue a similar declaration later this month.
As international pressure mounted on Israel to drop its refusal to negotiate a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue, the country was censured by its American allies.
In a report submitted to Congress, the US State Department concluded that Israel had probably violated international humanitarian and human rights laws whilst using American weapons during military operations in Gaza and security crackdowns against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, South Africa asked the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday to order Israel to immediately withdraw and cease its offensive in Rafah, and relinquish control of the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings with Egypt to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Despite President Joe Biden's rare decision on May 8 to block a single shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel, American diplomatic support continues to protect it from international isolation and censure over the tens of thousands of civilian casualties it has inflicted on Gaza.
"Israel has become more isolated globally," said Barbara Slavin, distinguished Middle East fellow at the Stimson Centre, a Washington-based think tank.
The Biden administration voted against the UN General Assembly resolution on Palestine and was still largely shielding Israel in the UN Security Council, she said.
The US Congress last month authorised about US$14 billion in additional weaponry for Israel on top of the nearly US$4 billion annually that the country will receive up to 2026.
And the US State Department "continues to waffle" about whether Israel had violated international humanitarian law, Slavin said.
"So the trend lines, while not good for Israel, still suggest that Israel has a lot further to fall," she told This Week In Asia.
The US State Department's report, issued at the request of Senator Chris Van Hollen of Biden's Democratic Party, did not make the case-by-case assessments he had sought on whether international humanitarian and human rights laws had been violated.
Instead, the State Department said Israel had not provided it with sufficient information to make such determinations. In the absence of this data, it declared that the US government considered Israel's assurances credible that it was using American weapons in accordance with international law.
"This report contradicts itself because it concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe violations to international law have occurred, but at the same time that says they're not finding non-compliance," Van Hollen said.
A group of 176 American lawyers, including 27 working for various US government departments, issued an open letter on May 7, warning that Washington's weapon transfers to Israel during the Gaza conflict "likely" violated the 1948 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
South Africa's latest move at the ICJ followed several provisional rulings ordering Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the Genocide Convention, including blocking humanitarian aid supplies to Gaza's starving population of over 2.2 million.
Pretoria petitioned the ICJ in December to hear its allegations that Israel's actions in Gaza constitute genocide.
Former ICJ lawyer Mike Becker, an assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin's School of Law, said "a near-majority of judges" had expressed support for an order for Israel to suspend military operations in Gaza in March.
"If the new facts [presented by South Africa] persuade another few judges, the ICJ might take this step, which it has been reluctant to take up to this point," he said.
Egypt announced on Sunday it would "intervene" in support of South Africa's case, followed by Nato member Turkey on Tuesday.
Egypt's foreign ministry said its support for the genocide case against Israel came "in light of the worsening severity and scope of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip" and its "pushing Palestinians into displacement and expulsion".
Cairo joined the case following the failure of its recent ceasefire mediation efforts between Israel and Hamas.
Egypt saidIsraeli forces' occupation of the Philadelphia Corridor at the border between Gaza and Egypt and its seizure of the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings last week contravened the 1979 Camp David Accords under which both countries ended decades of hostilities and established diplomatic relations.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's attempts at the outset of the Gaza war to allow the Strip's population to take refuge in Egypt, describing any forced displacement as a "red line".
Biden has previously said Israel would cross a red line if it were to mount a full-fledged military assault in Rafah. According to Washington's most recent assessment, Israel has not crossed the threshold as yet.
Because of the Rafah operation, the threat of an influx of Gazans into Egypt had "never been more real", said Ahmed Aboudouh, an associate Middle East fellow of British think tank Chatham House.
"Cairo showed it means business" by announcing it would support South Africa's genocide case against Israel, he said, adding Egyptian officials also understood they had "another leverage card over Netanyahu" because of backing by the US of its mediation efforts.
"This is the first time since the [1956] Suez War that a US administration's public views align with Egypt's and Arab interests: to restrain Israel and stop the war," Aboudouh noted in a research paper published by Chatham House on Monday.
Gulf monarchies have also ratcheted up their rhetoric against Israel since its forces entered Rafah last week.
The United Arab Emirates, Israel's top regional trade partner, on Sunday "denounced" Netanyahu's suggestion, in an interview a day earlier on US talk show Dr. Phil, that the UAE and Saudi Arabia could help Israel run Gaza after the war.
UAE's Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan said Netanyahu "does not have any legal capacity" to take charge of Gaza's civil administration.
Abu Dhabi "refuses to be drawn into any plan aimed at providing cover" for the Israeli presence there, he said.
Led by the UAE, the 22-member Arab group at the United Nations General Assembly sponsored a resolution calling on the UN Security Council to reconsider its previous decision to deny full membership to Palestine.
The resolution calls for a seat in the UN General Assembly to be given to Palestine, an observer member of the UN since 2012 represented by the Fatah faction-led Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank.
The US has said that it would again veto the move.
"But interestingly none of the Arab countries that have recently normalised relations with Israel have broken ties," the Stimson Centre's Slavin said.
"These are autocratic Arab governments that do not respect popular opinion. They hate Hamas and Iran and value security cooperation with the US," she added.
Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank since October threaten to unravel years of US diplomatic efforts to integrate Israel with Washington's Arab partners into a regional political, security and economic framework against Iran, Russia and China. The UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan normalised relations with Israel in 2020 under the US-sponsored Abraham Accords.
"I would not say the US efforts are doomed," Slavin said.
To succeed, Washington's diplomatic push would require a "post-Netanyahu Israeli government that is at least willing to give a fig leaf to the notion of Palestinian statehood and at a minimum, a revived Palestinian Authority", she said.
Otherwise, Israel's increasing diplomatic isolation in the Global South and growing pressure from many Western countries for its government to accept a two-state solution threaten to corner it in the coming years.
The UN General Assembly resolution on Palestine's membership was approved by 143 votes to nine against, with 25 abstentions.
It was supported by practically all countries in the Indo-Pacific region, including key Israeli allies Australia, India and Asean member Singapore, none of which are among the 140 countries which currently symbolically recognise a Palestinian state.
Japan and South Korea, all other members of the Association of Southeast Asian States and the countries of South Asia also voted in favour.
China has supported the Arab group's position throughout the Israel-Gaza conflict with its heft as a permanent UN Security Council member.
Having initially supported UN resolutions criticising Hamas for carrying out the unprecedented attack which killed some 1,200 Israelis, Australia, India and Singapore have shifted their positions in response to the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths caused by its military campaign in Gaza.
The three countries have backed several UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire that were opposed by Israel and ultimately vetoed by the US.
So "there is concern" that Israel's actions could now make it an international pariah, Slavin said - a concern she said "is reflected" in Biden's suspension of a bomb shipment to Israel, as well as Egypt's decision to support South Africa's case before the International Court of Justice.
If Donald Trump wins the US presidential elections in November, Israel will "probably get a four-year breathing space", she said.
"I think the threat of pariahdom is not imminent but if Israel does not change course, it will become so in a few years."
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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