Israel, before international courts

History is prolific in cruel ironies, which turn victims into executioners, the oppressed into oppressors and anti-fascists into fascists, disturbing metamorphoses that are not usually accepted willingly by those who suffer them, since they see their good conscience attacked and the angelic aura of the initial condition under which they have always acted.

Now weighing on Israel, a country founded by the victims of the most characteristic genocide of the 20th century, is the suspicion that it may have committed crimes such as those that gave it deserved legitimacy in its aspirations for a safe homeland where they could live in peace.

And it weighs in the highest courts, not in the crude and almost always despicable trade of political rhetoric.

There are two processes underway before the International Court of Justice, urged by overwhelming majorities of the United Nations General Assembly, in which the aim is to determine whether a genocide is being committed in Gaza and in the occupied Palestinian territories as a whole. crime internationally classified as

apartheid

.

Although they are merely advisory resolutions, their political and, above all, reputational value is beyond discussion.

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After the first hearing, held in January, although the court imposed precautionary measures to prevent genocide from being committed, it did not go into the merits of the lawsuit.

There is no data to corroborate compliance with the orders of the court, to which the Netanyahu Government must report at the end of February.

The second hearing, now underway, with oral intervention from 51 countries, responds to the request for an opinion on the legal consequences of the violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, the occupation and annexation of territory and the modification of the composition demographic and status of Jerusalem.

Israel attended the first public hearing motivated and outraged by the accusation of genocide, but did not deign to appear at the second.

The United States did want to attend, a few hours after its veto of the Security Council resolution that demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

This time also to oppose an immediate end to the occupation if Israel's security is not guaranteed at the same time.

It was not a closed defense of Israel's position, as it showed its rejection of the permanent occupation of territories by force and defended a negotiation that leads to two States.

Palestine has become the touchstone of the United Nations system and international law.

There is no way to justify this increasingly visible and stark double standard without being ashamed.

There is an abyss that widens with the war and the repeated boycott of compliance with international resolutions on Palestine by Israel and the United States, two countries considered by many to be exemplary.

Only the most tyrannical regimes can rejoice in such impotence.

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