The destruction of Gaza is not just a humanitarian catastrophe — it is a legal and moral reckoning for the global order. Far from being a remote conflict, Israel's war on Gaza has become the ultimate stress test for international law, humanitarian norms and the credibility of the so-called rules-based order the West claims to uphold.
For decades, the United States and its allies have championed this order — an architecture built on the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter and the Genocide Convention, meant to constrain state violence after the horrors of World War II. But since October 7, 2023, these norms have unraveled, not simply through Israeli actions, but through Western complicity, selective enforcement and political paralysis.
The facts on the ground are irrefutable — over 52,000 Palestinians killed, including more than 18,000 children; over 90% of Gaza's homes destroyed; 84% of hospitals and virtually every school obliterated; and two million forcibly displaced. The United Nations has warned of impending famine, with Israel's deliberate obstruction of aid delivery under review at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case brought by 45 countries. These are not unfortunate byproducts of war — they are large-scale, systematic violations of international humanitarian law.
And yet, instead of enforcing accountability, the West has enabled impunity. UN resolutions have been vetoed, International Criminal Court (ICC) investigations delayed or undermined, and military aid continues to flow. As the Atlantic Council has pointed out, Israel's claim to have withdrawn from Gaza is legally irrelevant — what matters is effective control, which it continues to exercise, rendering it bound by the full scope of occupation law.
Even Israel's closest allies are increasingly uneasy. The UK, France and Germany have warned that Israel's aid obstruction "could breach international law". The UN Human Rights Office has repeatedly cited violations involving forced evacuations and targeting of civilian infrastructure. Amnesty International's 2024 report calls this moment a "watershed" for international law — one marked by flagrant rule-breaking by both governments and corporate actors, threatening the entire legal order.
This is not just hypocrisy, but a systemic failure.
Legal scholars like Rebecca Ingber and Harold Koh have charted how the US has dismantled its own relationship with international law — courts refuse to recognise it, and the executive invokes it selectively. In Koh's words, the collapse in war powers oversight and treaty obligations reveals a country now wielding law as a tool of power, not principle. In Gaza, that collapse is not just visible — it is deadly.
Even Israel's domestic legal maneuvers deepen the crisis. Amendments to its "Unlawful Combatants Law" now allow for indefinite detention without trial, with detainees denied access to counsel for up to 75 days — violating both international law and Israel's own constitutional standards. As UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese warned, the label "unlawful combatant" has no meaning under international law, it only opens the door to arbitrary detention, torture and abuse, especially against children.
Legal language itself is straining to describe the scale of destruction. South Africa's ICJ genocide case has led scholars to invoke terms like "domicide" (the destruction of home) and "spacioicide" (the systematic erasure of habitable space). As contributors to EJIL:Talk! noted, international law is faltering not just in enforcement but even in its ability to name the atrocities it purports to prohibit.
And even when mechanisms exist, they are paralysed by politics. The ICJ's provisional measures to prevent genocide remain unimplemented. Arrest warrants sought by the ICC have stalled. The ICJ's earlier Advisory Opinion declaring the occupation illegal remains ignored. As one UN panel put it, the "international legal order is breaking down in Gaza."
The erosion is compounded by the media. Research by Natalie Khazaal shows how US media systematically centre Israeli suffering while erasing Palestinians. Military claims are repeated without scrutiny, Palestinian responses are omitted or delayed, and pro-Palestinian solidarity is framed as extremism. The Wall Street Journal even labeled Dearborn, Michigan — home to many Arab-Americans — a hub of "antisemitic terrorism sympathizers". These narratives distort public opinion and narrow the scope for legal action.
Still, resistance persists. Across the globe, students, unions, lawyers and activists are invoking international law where institutions have failed. From legal petitions and boycott campaigns to campus protests and court challenges, civil society is stepping in. And governments are responding — with surveillance, doxxing, deportations and criminalisation. The crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices in the West reveals how threatening legal accountability has become to those in power.
Yet something is shifting. Despite its limitations, the ICJ proceedings have reignited global debate, while countries like South Africa, Bolivia and Ireland are modeling how transnational solidarity can revive the law's relevance. This is not merely a legal struggle, but a moral one too.
What's needed now is transformation.
Western governments must stop enabling war crimes by cutting arms transfers and supporting independent legal processes - without exception. Legal institutions must be reformed to withstand geopolitical interference, recognise new modes of violence — including digital targeting, infrastructure collapse and forced displacement — and accelerate access to justice. Media must be held accountable for bias. And legal education must decolonise, centring perspectives from the Global South that have long warned of these failures.
As I and many others have argued, Gaza may well be the graveyard of Western ideals. But it can also be the birthplace of a reimagined international legal order — one rooted not in alliances, but in accountability. Not in geopolitical calculus, but in justice. Not in the protection of the powerful, but in the dignity of the vulnerable.
Whether law survives this moment — and emerges stronger — will not be decided by states alone. It depends on those who refuse to let it die in the rubble of Gaza.
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