{"id":6102,"date":"2026-05-19T11:25:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T09:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lmatmp.zeddine-ifri.org\/index.php\/2026\/05\/19\/the-silence-governing-gaza\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T11:25:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T09:25:15","slug":"the-silence-governing-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mezghena.org\/index.php\/en\/2026\/05\/19\/the-silence-governing-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"The Silence Governing Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gaza is no longer only the name of a catastrophe. It has become the harshest test of what international law is worth when it meets the strategic interests of the powers that claim to defend it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview published on 18 May by La Presse de Tunisie, former Palestinian diplomat and writer Ali Abdallah accused the international community of letting Gaza pay the price of global silence. He placed the current war within a longer history: the Nakba, the right of return, colonization, Oslo, impunity and promises never kept. His words are political, direct, rooted in an injured national memory. They must be read as such: a Palestinian voice, situated and accusatory, not as a final judicial ruling. Yet the force of the interview lies in a question no one can evade: why does law suddenly become slow, hesitant, cautious, almost mute, when Palestinians are concerned?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The official answer is familiar. States speak of complexity, security, hostages, terrorism, negotiations and regional balances. These realities exist. The attack of 7 October 2023 opened a sequence of extreme violence, including crimes committed against Israeli civilians and captives. No serious law can erase that. But no serious law can turn that initial violence into a permanent licence to destroy an entire society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The law exists, but it does not bind everyone in the same way<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gaza forces us to look at international law not only as a text, but as a balance of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The International Court of Justice was seized by South Africa under the Genocide Convention. It has not delivered a final judgment on the merits. It did, however, consider that rights invoked on behalf of Palestinians under that convention were plausible and ordered provisional measures against Israel. The International Criminal Court, for its part, issued arrest warrants in November 2024 for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant in connection with alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. These proceedings do not say everything. They do not replace political decisions. They do not rebuild a single destroyed home. But they prove one thing: Gaza is not outside the law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem lies elsewhere. The law is present, but its enforcement depends on states. An order without pressure, a warrant without arrest, a ceasefire without a binding mechanism, humanitarian aid without guaranteed access: all this creates a legal theatre in which the norm exists while civilian life remains suspended from the will of the powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where silence becomes method. It does not always mean saying nothing. On the contrary, much is said about Gaza. Governments express concern, call for restraint, demand humanitarian access, regret civilian losses and reaffirm their attachment to law. Then the same sentence begins again. Diplomatic language circles around itself. It absorbs horror, makes it administrable, and returns it to the flow of communiqu\u00e9s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humanitarian language as a substitute for politics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Humanitarian language is necessary: feeding, healing, sheltering, documenting, warning. But it can also become a screen. When everything is reduced to food access, convoys, distribution points and tents, the political core disappears: occupation, blockade, forced displacement, colonization, the right of return, self-determination and Palestinian sovereignty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is precisely what Ali Abdallah recalls. Gaza cannot be reduced to a supply crisis. Hunger is not a logistical accident when it forms part of a system of war, territorial control and political fragmentation. Destruction is not merely collateral damage when it makes social, school, hospital and municipal life impossible. Displacement is not merely population movement if return becomes materially impracticable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent reporting from displaced persons\u2019 camps describes a space where survival itself becomes a struggle against waste, disease, rats, overcrowding and the lack of adequate health structures. This level of degradation is not abstract misfortune. It is produced by decisions, blockages, bombardments, bans, military priorities and diplomatic complicities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question is therefore not only: how much aid enters Gaza? The question is: who decides that more than two million people must depend on aid in order to remain alive?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hierarchy of lives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Double standards are not a slogan. They are a historical experience. Palestinians experience them in the difference of speed between the condemnation of crimes committed against Israelis and the endless caution when naming crimes committed against them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This asymmetry does not mean that suffering should be compared in a macabre accounting exercise. It means that some lives immediately receive a universal political status, while others must constantly provide additional proof of their humanity. Palestinian deaths must be counted, verified, disputed, cross-checked and then often relativized. Survivors must explain why they refuse to leave, why they hold on to their land, why they demand return, why they ask for a real state rather than an autonomy under surveillance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this machinery, global silence is not only Western. It also involves Arab states, emerging powers, multilateral institutions and governments that condemn without acting. Declared impotence can become a form of comfort. It allows injustice to be denounced without paying the political price of confrontation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Gaza reveals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gaza reveals that international law is not dead. It is worse than dead: it is selectively alive. It breathes when power relations allow it. It runs out of air when a strategic ally is involved. It becomes vocabulary, procedure, caution and delay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is why the Palestinian question remains central. Not because it explains every crisis in the Arab world, but because it exposes the fundamental contradiction of the contemporary international order: an order that proclaims the universality of rights while tolerating their suspension when a population stands on the wrong side of alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ali Abdallah speaks from a Palestinian memory that refuses erasure. Some of his formulations may be debated, some readings challenged, further evidence demanded. But no one can pretend that Gaza has not shifted the moral centre of the world. Every institution that observes without compelling, every state that deplores without acting, every power that arms while calling for restraint, helps turn law into scenery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaza does not ask only for emotion. It demands consequence. That is precisely what global silence refuses to produce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nadir Amrouche<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sources utilis\u00e9es<\/h2>\n\n\n

Press:<\/p>\n\n\n\n