The European Union and the United States have presented their defense of Ukraine as a principled stand against an aggressor and war criminal, Russia.
But Israel’s continuation of the war in Gaza undermines its moral authority and weakens criminal prosecutions against Russia, international relations and law experts say.
“When attacks on public infrastructure took place in Ukraine, it led to a debate about how they violated the Geneva Convention,” said Christian Bueger, professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen.
“Now we are faced with a situation where, in the Gaza hospital and so on, we are clearly beyond the boundaries of international humanitarian law,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune, referring to the siege Israeli and the subsequent raid of al-Shifa hospital, where lack of access to electricity, water and medicine puts patients’ lives at risk.
“It opens up a discussion about what justified war looks like in the context of our contemporary times,” he said, and “shatters what we thought was the set of norms for how military operations should be carried out”.
For Ukraine’s Western allies, “moral principles are shrouded in fog,” says an editorial from Chatham House, a British think tank.
This has political and legal consequences, complicating the task of holding Russia accountable for its crimes in Ukraine.
UN and European Union investigators have documented alleged cases of torture, rape and summary executions of civilians in Bucha, Izyum and elsewhere in Ukraine. These alleged war crimes and atrocities will be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose jurisdiction Ukraine accepts.
In March, the ICC indicted Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner for allegedly ordering the kidnapping of Ukrainian children, a war crime.
The ICC is also documenting alleged war crimes in what ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan called the State of Palestine on Friday. Israel does not recognize Palestine or the jurisdiction of the ICC over what it considers its territory.
“The US and UK support the Israeli view. So it would be very difficult for these states to say: “Yes, the ICC has jurisdiction over Russians who commit crimes in Ukraine, but no, it does not have jurisdiction over Israelis who commit crimes in Palestine.” said Marko Milanovic. Professor of Public International Law at the University of Reading.
The view of the United States and the United Kingdom is clearly opposed by several Muslim-majority countries and some countries in the South.
Five of them – South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros and Djibouti – have asked Khan to investigate and prosecute alleged crimes in Gaza.
The more ambivalent view of the South towards Russia’s actions has other consequences for Ukraine.
For the past year, Ukraine has led an international effort to create a special tribunal that will try Russia for its war of aggression – a crime under the United Nations Charter. To create this tribunal, Ukraine must obtain a two-thirds majority in the United Nations General Assembly.
“For this tribunal to have any chance of being legitimate and successful, it must gain the support not only of Ukraine’s Western allies, but also of non-aligned countries and the South,” Milanovic told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“And now, after Gaza, most of these countries will no longer want to play the game… The West has lost whatever moral leverage it had to push for this new institution… the longer the (war) in Gaza continues and the “If the United States supports Israel, the less other states will support it.”
Russian diplomacy
Russia was quick to capitalize on the moral and legal vagueness created by the Israeli counterattack against Hamas.
Two days after Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, Russia refused to approve a U.S.-sponsored United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the attack, which killed about 1,200 Israelis.
“Their goal is to present themselves as peacemakers, and they cannot be seen as following the example of the United States,” said Maxim Alyukov, a researcher at the Department of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Manchester, which monitors Russian official language and propaganda.
Russia’s narrative, he said, is that “terrorists must be punished…but you don’t blame the nation for a few individuals, and you don’t bomb Gaza for an Islamist group.”
This could be seen as an indirect criticism of the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after the al-Qaeda attacks on 9/11.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has blamed the United States for the latest conflict in the Middle East.
“I think many people will agree with me that this is a striking example of the failure of American policy in the Middle East,” Putin said in late October.
“They don’t seem concerned about the deaths of Palestinians”
Russia said it supports “a multilateral approach to the issue of settlements in the Middle East” in a November 7 Foreign Ministry statement that also criticized Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
“No one criticizes Israel, and there is a double standard here, because when it comes to Ukraine, they openly criticize the fact that civilians are dying, but they don’t seem concerned about the deaths of Palestinians “Alyuk said, summing up the Russian position.
He called the war in Gaza a “gift to the Kremlin.”
Russia’s position potentially weakens the rules-based international order that Western states claim to be trying to uphold, experts said, and many countries share Russia’s accusations that there are double standards.
On November 18, US President Joe Biden asked in an op-ed published in the Washington Post: “Will we relentlessly pursue our positive vision of the future, or will we allow those who do not share our values to drag the world towards a better future? more dangerous and more divided place?
Earlier this year, Russia held a summit with African countries, a part of the South it is particularly keen to cultivate with promises of cheap oil and grain, despite the fact that its war in Ukraine has raise the prices of both.
“African nations have made it clear to Russia: ‘Yes, we are interested in cheaper supplies, but we are not willing to play the game of translating that into diplomatic support for Russia,’” Bueger said. “The countries of the South know what game Russia is playing there. »