Israel’s brutal violence against Palestinians is often defended indirectly in public debate by suggesting it represents a short-term breach of international law – a regrettable exception to the rules, a momentary lapse in global justice.

But what if this isn’t about failure at all?

What if international law is doing exactly what it was built to do? What if its double standards are not bugs in the system, but deeply rooted features designed to support geopolitical, economic and racial power structures that benefit Israel and its Western allies?

Israel doesn’t operate outside the law; it moves within a legal framework that quietly permits its actions. The ongoing violence is not happening in defiance of international law, but thanks to it. The impunity Israel enjoys, the unwavering backing of the United States and European Union, and the language of diplomacy that avoids calling genocide by its name – these aren’t signs of the law being ignored. They’re signs it’s working as intended.

Taking cues from the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, we might say what looks like an exception is actually the rule. For colonized and marginalized people, what we see in Palestine is not a legal anomaly. It’s where the Western colonial legal machine shows its true face.

This calls for a deep rethinking of international law. We can no longer pretend it’s a space of justice for all. It’s a tool designed to uphold power imbalances. The genocide of Palestinians, aided by liberal democracies either willfully ignoring or helping directly, is not indicative of the system’s failure. It is its blueprint. That system needs to be dismantled.

To stop saying international law is “failing” is to take a political stance. It means admitting the law is part of the problem. Any true anti-colonial or liberation movement must challenge the very structure of the legal order, and start building new forms of justice based on solidarity, resistance and the power of communities on the ground.

Colonialism wrapped in liberalism

The core principle of international law – state sovereignty – has always worked two ways. It protected European states while denying that same sovereignty to regions labeled “uncivilized.” It created a line between those who get rights (European states) and those who get ruled over, displaced, or even eliminated.

The idea of “civilization” has long been the moral shield of international law. Colonial wars were sold as efforts to bring order and progress. Today, that same logic continues: humanitarian wars, foreign interventions and selective human rights campaigns all follow this pattern. Western power is presented as legitimate, while resistance is dismissed as terror or extremism.

The post-World War II era, with the birth of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, seemed like a turning point. But in reality, it was a makeover. The old colonial system was wrapped in the new language of liberalism. International law still works selectively.

In this setup, Israel isn’t breaking the mold. It’s continuing the colonial project. Israel is the modern entity that most clearly exposes how colonial law lives on. Political Zionism shares roots with European imperialism: a chosen land to reclaim, a barren space to develop and native people to remove, confine or erase.

Postcolonial theory tells us that international law rarely protects those outside its moral circle. That’s why we must stop framing the Palestinian tragedy as a legal failure. It isn’t. It’s the law doing what it’s made to do. Palestinians are treated as outside the community of those whose lives matter. Their deaths are “collateral.” Their resistance is criminalized.

So, Palestine is not an exception. It’s where the exception becomes normal. A permanent state where legal rules are swept aside so a sovereign power can unleash unchecked violence. Israel acts in a legal gray zone that’s been made permanent, where law and crime, war and peace, occupation and security blur into one. Here, legal tools are used to make injustice seem legitimate.

From Gaza to the West Bank, refugee camps, military checkpoints, home demolitions, mass arrests and targeted killings – every part of the system adds to a space where law allows the unthinkable. As Achille Mbembe puts it, this is “necropolitics”: the power to decide who gets to live and who must die.

Even in this climate of death, law isn’t missing. It’s still present as a symbolic shield. It’s pulled out when needed, to justify or delay criticism. War crimes are denied, watered down or buried in endless diplomatic channels. UN resolutions are ignored. Legal proceedings are blocked by powerful states. This selective weakness doesn’t show law failing; it shows law maintaining the current world order. Some states face justice. Others don’t.

Israel fits into this system perfectly. It uses international law to its advantage, backed by Western powers. The colonial mindset – where non-Western bodies and lands are disposable – is alive and well. Western leaders know what’s happening but use watered-down terms. Not “genocide,” but “conflict.” Not “illegal occupation,” but “self-defense.” Not “apartheid,” but “ethnic tension.” The exception becomes a permanent legal structure.

People often respond to Israel’s impunity by pointing to ignored laws: Geneva Conventions, UN resolutions, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. But even with the best intentions, this view keeps alive a myth: that international law is fair and neutral but just not being used properly. Maybe it’s that very idea that’s the problem.

Power and domination

International law was never just about justice. It’s always been about managing global power. Its rules, exceptions and institutions are built around the interests of dominant states. There’s no law separate from politics, only laws that serve certain political agendas.

Israel’s impunity isn’t a gap in the legal system. It’s part of the system’s design. The very idea of “crime” becomes flexible, delayed, displaced. Legal statements without enforcement, trials that never come, diplomatic talks that go nowhere – these all pretend to hold power accountable while doing the opposite. Impunity isn’t a glitch; it’s the main feature.

With Israel’s strategic importance, US protection and ideological alignment with Europe, legal consequences are off of the table. The West claims to uphold international law while breaking or ignoring it when it suits its allies. It becomes the exception that writes the rules. What we need isn’t a better version of this system. We need a complete break from it.

This starts with disillusionment. Justice won’t come from courts or resolutions. Law isn’t neutral, and it can’t lead to liberation unless we rethink it completely from the ground up, from the perspective of those who have been silenced. We don’t need to abandon law, but we do need to stop worshipping it. To be a tool for freedom, law must be torn down and rebuilt.

That doesn’t mean giving up on legality. It means taking it back. Turning it from a gatekeeper into a tool for justice. A law that demands action, not recognition. Justice that acts, not begs. In this view, international law isn’t where Palestinian freedom will be granted, it’s one of the places where the fight is happening. The genocide of Palestinians doesn’t show us where law fails. It shows us what law truly is. And it challenges us not to fix it, but to transform it.

A version of this op-ed was originally published in Italian by L’Antidiplomatico.

Pasquale Liguori is an independent writer, urban photographer and pharmacologist.

Tags

• Impunity
• international law
• colonialism
• imperialism
• zionism

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