Rashid Khalidi: “What has been done to Gaza is far worse than what was done to any part of Palestine in 1948, and what is being done to Lebanon is far worse than what was done to Lebanon in 1982 or 2006. This is a war of extermination — it’s a genocide. I was reading a play by Marina Carr talking about the razing of Troy after the Trojan War. Quoting Hecuba, she says, ‘This is not war — in war there are rules, laws, codes. This is genocide. They’re wiping us out’.”
“I think there is a threat to the entire international legal order if this is allowed to continue, as it has been by the United States.”
Unfortunately, it seems that Khalidi, like a few other scholars, believe in international law. Unsurprisingly, the concept has been a powerful one and even sections of the left still believes in it.
Khalidi: “I do think that there has been a major, consequential shift in public opinion; I don’t think there are likely to be consequences on the political level in the short term. Whoever’s elected in November and whatever government we have for the next several years in this country is likely to be as committed as previous ones were to unswerving support of Israel’s basic objectives, even if there are occasionally tactical differences.
That’s because the American elite hasn’t changed one bit. The people who own the politicians — the donor class, the people without whose millions and billions they would not be able to stay in office — haven’t changed. The same people own the big corporations, the media, the foundations, and the universities — who pays the piper, calls the tune. They tell the politicians what’s acceptable and what isn’t.”
No doubt.
Again, and more importantly, Khalidi does not or unable to explain why international law does not work and remains abstract and at the same time a tool in the hands of some powers.
Khalidi: “On the one hand, you’re going to have people who will try to maintain or restore an international legal order — what the Americans keep calling a rules-based international order — while on the other hand, you have the greatest power on Earth and its client state busy demolishing that order and establishing the actual parameters in which they and others will be allowed to operate.”
Khalidi: “The policy of force, which would have worked in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth centuries, and even into the twentieth century, cannot possibly work in the twenty-first century… It can’t work anywhere in the long run…”
It can as long as the very system that riddled with contradictions persists. Force, violence, coercion are part of the existing social structures of the system – capitalism and imperialism. They are necessary for the function of the system and embedded in it. Contradictions are at the heart of the system and violence is used to maintain power structures and capital accumulation. At the same time, violence is used by non-state actors as a weapon of struggle, discontent or against other non-state actors in social conflicts.
Interesting insights about British colonialism, Ireland and a metropole follow. Two words/concepts in all this never come up: capitalism and imperialism. History in Khalidi’s approach look like political science and historical events enmeshed. Political economy, class, imperialism, etc. are not part of the historical process.
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