Another day, another tragedy in Gaza. At the time of writing, rescuers were pulling bodies from the rubble following an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in the southern Gaza town of Rafah. Meanwhile, a few miles away in Khan Younis, the grisly effort to unearth bodies buried in mass graves on the grounds of Nasser Hospital continues. The Palestinian death toll now exceeds 34,000 and 1.1 million people in Gaza suffer from catastrophic food insecurity.
The world is also on edge, with many fearing a larger regional war after Iran sent a retaliatory drone and missile attack on Israel following Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate building in Damascus. Since then, Iranian air defenses have shot down three suspected Israeli drones over downtown Isfahan. Ignoring calls for caution from around the world, including its closest partner and protector, the United States, Israel remains committed to carrying out a costly ground operation in Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of civilians are seeking refuge. Commentators and political figures have declared that Israel is a “liability” and that its leaders have “lost their way.”
Isn’t it time then to declare Israel a rogue state?
The label “rogue state” has a sordid history. It has long been used as a weapon against states perceived as opponents of Western political interests. The label’s heyday was during the Clinton years, when it was used to describe countries that were seen as unpredictable, stubborn and generally unwilling to follow international norms.
Eventually, the Clinton administration abandoned the label “Rogue States” and gave it the more politically correct label “States of Concern.” But as the U.S.-led “war on terror” divided the world into good and evil, the term “rogue states” was revived by the Bush administration as a catch-all term for countries that constituted the “world of evil.”
Undoubtedly, this designation contributes to the West’s self-perception as a “force for good” in the world. But it also provides a justification for the contemptuous treatment and isolation of rogue states – presumably to prevent them from “destroying public order, starting wars and undermining entire areas of the world”.
The irony now is that Israel, often seen as a bridgehead for Western interests in the Middle East, appears to have all the familiar characteristics of a rogue state.
In fact, it violated all international norms and laws during its genocidal war against Gaza.
For example, under international humanitarian law, states and non-state groups involved in an armed conflict have an obligation to protect civilians, medical personnel and humanitarian workers and to ensure the unrestricted passage of humanitarian assistance.
Israel has not followed any of these rules. We know that the vast majority of Palestinians killed since October 7th have been civilians. These include more than 14,000 children. Back in January, Oxfam International reported that the daily death toll in Gaza was higher than any other major conflict in the 21st century.
Israel’s tactics on the battlefield were indefensible. Israeli forces insist on targeting medical facilities in the Gaza Strip. Over the course of the campaign, Israel carried out more than 900 attacks on health facilities, killing at least 700 medical workers. Currently, only 10 of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are partially functioning.
Israeli authorities have claimed that hospitals in Gaza are being used as military bases by Hamas. This was the official justification for Israel’s two-week siege of al-Shifa Hospital, the enclave’s largest and most modern medical facility.
When Israeli forces finally withdrew from the complex, witnesses described dystopian scenes with “human heads eaten by crows, unidentified and rotting body parts, and hundreds of corpses piled up and buried in mass graves.”
Israeli forces have also specifically targeted aid workers. There was global outrage and condemnation in early April after seven workers at food charity World Central Kitchen were killed in a “targeted Israeli strike”. But this attack was simply one of many. Gaza has been the most dangerous place for humanitarian workers for more than six months, and nearly 200 aid workers have been killed so far.
Contrary to all rules and norms, Israel has also restricted the flow of aid to Gaza – despite warnings from aid organizations that there is a risk of famine. It has systematically attacked journalists and media personnel in Gaza, including their family members, in violation of Article 79 of the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, which requires journalists to be protected like civilians in a war zone. In fact, 75 percent of all journalist murders in 2023 occurred in Gaza as a result of the Israeli military campaign. Israeli forces have also reduced all Palestinian universities in Gaza to rubble.
Israel has also been keen to keep the front line open with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran, hoping that a regional war would force the direct involvement of the US and other Western allies. On the Lebanese front, 4,733 attacks occurred between Israel, Hezbollah and other armed groups from October 7, 2023 to March 15, 2024. Israel was responsible for 3,952 of these incidents. In addition to Hezbollah activists, these attacks also killed many civilians, including children, as well as journalists and medics.
When Israel carried out its attack on the Iranian mission in Damascus, it killed Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Zahedi was the highest-ranking Iranian official assassinated since the US assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani in 2020. Iran’s retaliation also marked the first time a foreign country has directly attacked Israel since 1991.
Ironically, Iran – often treated in the West as a prototypical rogue state – has insisted on a restrained approach, declaring that “the matter can be considered closed.” But it took some diplomatic wrangling to persuade Israel to keep its response muted. US President Joe Biden has reportedly urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to simply “achieve victory” after Israel “thwarted” Iran’s attack. In exchange for a limited Israeli response, Biden has reportedly greenlit the Israeli ground invasion of Rafah, even though every actor in the region opposes the operation. Cairo has warned that the invasion of Rafah could even jeopardize the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.
Numbers don’t lie either. The fact that Israel is largely isolated was already evident in December when the United Nations General Assembly voted on a resolution calling for a ceasefire. While 153 countries voted for the resolution, only ten, including Israel and the US, voted against it. In the last vote in the UN Security Council on March 25, 2024, 14 out of 15 members voted in favor of the resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. What’s notable is that the US decided to abstain from voting instead of doing what it normally does: vetoing any resolution aimed at restricting Israeli actions against Palestinians.
Israel is able to persist in its rogue behavior and persistent evasion of international laws, regulations and norms because it has strong, everyday allies like the United States in the West. But labeling Israel a rogue actor and treating it as such is an essential prerequisite for any punitive measures the international community can take against a country that has violated Palestinian rights with complete impunity for 75 years.
As countries such as Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, Spain and Belgium suspend arms sales to Israel, it appears their rogue nature is becoming increasingly recognized. Ultimately, one would hope that supporting Israel would become too much of a burden even for the US and this would pave the way for the liberation of the Palestinians.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.