International Law

Legal frameworks and the discourse of legality are used to maintain systems of oppression by both Israel and the United States. History proves that legality is not a guide for morality. Laws are dictated by politics and governments, and thereby should not be perceived as objective or as some indication of justice. Western Imperialism perpetuates the illusion of a rule-based international order in which international law is the guiding principle. However, this is precisely an illusion because there has never been an equal playing field when it comes to who is held accountable by international legal systems. The US and Israel are prime violators of International law, as the Israeli Human Rights organization B’Tselem highlights, detailing all the ways Israel undermines International Law. Israel continues to commit war crimes and export colonial violence without any repercussions. They use notions of ‘security’ and ‘democracy’ to sustain their colonial projects all while pretending to abide by international laws. 

The weaponization of international law is made visible when it comes to Palestinian refugees. As a direct result of Israeli interference, the United Nations’ Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951 does not classify the Palestinians who were exiled because of the Nakba in 1948 as refugees. (The Nakba, meaning catastrophe in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians because of the ‘founding of the state of Israel.’) In addition to this exclusion of Palestinian refugees from the refugee convention of 1951, Israel does everything in its power to prevent the legal right of return that exiled people have to their homeland. Additionally, the Oslo Accords are prime examples of how Israel uses the legal frameworks to further entrench its policies of land annexation. Through dividing the West Bank into different Areas (A, B, and C – each with different degrees of Israeli control), Israel ultimately solidified its occupation of Palestine and weakened the prospects of a Palestinian state. Thereby depicting how Israel not only uses a domestic legal system of apartheid to discriminate against Palestinians, but also uses international legal apparatuses to further advance its colonial agenda. 

Similarly, the United States uses the guise of promoting law and democracy to advance its imperialist political interests – whether it be in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other country the US has invaded. Even domestically, racialized people in America are disproportionately persecuted by the ever growing capitalist prison industrial complex and systems of mass incarceration. Here in Philadelphia, the US has waged a war on any form of resistance. This can be especially seen in the 1985 MOVE Bombing, in which the Philadelphia Police department bombed the home of Black liberation and environmentalist group MOVE in the predominantly black neighborhood in West Philly. 

 As a result of legal systems being weaponized to advance imperialism and colonial agendas, organized resistance also has to work outside the confines of the legal system. Organizations like the Black Alliance for Peace, which has an active chapter in Philly, work towards pushing the world in an anti-imperialist direction. Similarly the Palestinian led organization International Solidarity Movement is committed to resisting the systematic oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian people and all colonized people. These interconnected struggles paved waves of solidarity between the Black Lives Matter movement and the struggle for anti-colonial liberation in Palestine.