As the 18-month-long turmoil in Gaza is paused by a precarious ceasefire arrangement, the factors and interests prolonging the devastating campaign ought to be scrutinised by the international community. With mounting evidence of genocide as defined under international law – or, at the very least, severe war crimes – the international legal order and human rights system has come under scrutiny for bending to the will of Western interests. The steadfast support of the US and other allies despite the risk of legal complicity seems at least partly attributable to the influential military-industrial complex.
Israel’s actions following October 2023 have been widely condemned by several governments, NGOs, UN agencies, and legal experts as amounting to genocide. In a December 2023 application, South Africa sought the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to find Israel responsible for perpetuating the genocide of the Palestinian population and order interim measures halting its military onslaught. The South Africa v Israel case was given preliminary approval in early 2024, and is officially supported by several other countries such as Spain, Türkiye, Mexico, and Colombia. In its January ruling, the ICJ found jurisdiction to hear the case pertaining to the Genocide Convention, and entertained the possibility that Israel’s actions amount to genocide in Gaza. Whilst a final judgement cannot be expected for years, the acceptance of the complaint adds plausibility to a genocide being committed as defined under international law. The ruling ordered Israel to ensure an adequate supply of aid to Gaza and comply transparently with the investigation of war crimes.
‘In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
– Article II, Genocide Convention 1948
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.’
Furthermore, in separate international criminal law proceedings the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan announced in May 2024 that he sought arrest warrants for both Israeli and Hamas leadership for potential war crimes and crimes against humanity. The action was decried by Israel, the US, the UK, and several other European countries for suggesting the actions of Israeli leadership were equatable to those of Hamas. US Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken suggested he would pursue sanctions against the ICC, with the House of Representatives passing a motion to bar ICC investigators from entering the US. Russia condemned such rhetoric as ‘absurd’, as the US, being a non-signatory of the Rome Convention and thereby not bound to the ICC, had strongly supported the arrest warrant issued for President Putin for his role in the Ukraine War. In any case, the issuance of any warrants pertaining to the conflict in Gaza has been considerably delayed with Israel lodging an official challenge in September 2024.
‘Are you seriously asking me about Palestinian civilians [suffering]? What’s wrong with you?’
– Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet (2023)
In previous applications of the Genocide Convention, however, the ICJ has required specific intent (dolus specialis) of the perpetrator to find genocide. In the cases arising from the 1990s Yugoslav War, Serbia was ultimately not found to have committed genocide in part due to a failure of the court to assess that ‘[genocidal intent] was the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question’. The UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese has called for the finding of genocidal intent and enacting an arms embargo in response to Israel’s failure to adhere to the ICJ ruling. However, it has been recognised that the leading definition of genocide as endorsed by the Yugoslav War Tribunals may favour Israel’s argument that its actions were only intended to exercise its right to self-defence after the events of October 7th.
Nevertheless in support of the ICJ and ICC cases the NGO Law for Palestine has maintained a database evidencing hundreds of examples of genocidal rhetoric by the Israeli regime. President of Israel Isaac Herzog stated: ‘It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true.’ among other quotes by leading officials. Despite claims circulating that videos of injuries and fatalities of Gazan civilians were staged and that the Gazan Health Ministry was inflating statistics, reports from independent parties are shocking:
- A November 2024 UN OHCHR report found 70% of verified killings in Gaza to have been of women and children.
- A July 2024 report suggested that an additional 150,000 incidental deaths caused by illness and other non-violent factors brought the estimated death toll to 186,000 or almost 8% of Gaza’s population.
- Furthermore, UN experts have expressed concern over a concerted ‘scholasticide’ underway in Gaza, with some 625,000 students now lacking access to education as Israel destroyed Gaza’s last-standing university in January 2024.
- Human Rights Watch and other agencies consider Israel to be using starvation as a form of collective punishment, with the vast majority of Gazans expected to be suffering from lack of sufficient food.
- Over 90% of the Gazan population, particularly from the north, have been displaced at least once by evacuation orders or destruction of their properties.
- Hundreds of international aid workers have been killed, including those in marked vehicles sharing their location with NGOs, suggesting many such attacks were intentional.
Consequently, independent assessments of the situation in Gaza seem to heavily suggest that Israel has knowingly gone beyond the realm of self-defence and into collective punishment. The country has continued to secure billions worth of weapons imports despite mounting evidence they are likely used to violate international law.
“These attacks [on universities] are not isolated incidents. They present a systematic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the very foundation of Palestinian society.”
– Joint UN Expert Press Release (April 2024)
Who is Supporting the War in Gaza?
Although the UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy derided the notion that the situation in Gaza amounted to genocide, the country earlier halted 30 of 350 arms export licences to Israel for ‘offensive purposes’ to avoid potential complicity in ‘a serious violation of humanitarian international law’. The decision was widely criticised by both Israel for impeding its military objectives, as well as NGOs such as Amnesty International for failing to sincerely comply with international obligations. Whilst seeming to admit concern that war crimes are being committed in Gaza by the IDF, the UK has refused to halt the supply of F-16 fighter jet parts used heavily by the Israeli military in airstrikes. The UK Government has also refused to comment on dozens of undisclosed flights from its Akrotiri Airbase in Cyprus to Israel, including on whether or not they involved the transfer of arms.
Whilst the US, which accounted for 69% of Israel’s arms imports from 2019 to 2023 (a figure that is likely now higher), has outright refused to reduce its support for Tel Aviv, leading figures such as former Vice President Kamala Harris have expressed concern for the upholding of humanitarian law in Gaza. In any case, the US committed to $3.8 billion per annum of military aid from 2019 to 2028, including a commitment to ensure aid and sales to neighbouring Lebanon and Egypt would not deprive Israel of maintaining a ‘qualitative edge’ in technological terms. This grew to over $22 billion from 2023 to 2024 as the Biden administration passed further aid packages.
DC has also provided unwavering diplomatic support in international forums – the US representative at the UN Security Council (UNSC) vetoed 3 resolutions for a ceasefire in Gaza, claiming this would interfere with Israel’s right to self-defence, before a 4th was rejected by China and Russia for remaining dubious in relation to a potential incursion into Rafah. A fifth UNSC Resolution in June 2024 was successfully passed, but due to disagreements over the extent of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the permanence of any truce, it failed to achieve a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. President Biden himself seemed to concur that Prime Minister Netanyahu is prolonging the war in Gaza to avoid Israeli elections and his ongoing corruption trial, whilst many spectators consider the increased arms supply and diplomatic effort to resist any intervention in Gaza as Washington DC also prolonging the conflict.
Israel’s second-largest supplier of arms Germany has faced several legal cases, including a now-rejected ICJ case forwarded by Nicaragua, due to its potential complicity in violations of humanitarian law. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Germany provided some 30% of arms imported by Israel from 2019 to 2023, particularly for its navy. By mid-2024, it was announced that Germany would no longer approve new export licenses in the face of mounting legal action, but was not outright supporting an arms embargo. Germany declared intervention as a third party to the South Africa v Israel case on the side of the latter, claiming that the definition of genocide was being politicised. In stark contrast to much of the rest of Europe, Spain has refused to allow ships carrying arms to Israel from docking at its ports, with its Defence Minister condemning Israeli actions as ‘a real genocide’.
In any case, whilst an official declaration of genocide has not yet been found, the staunch refusal to press for a ceasefire begs the question: what benefits could anyone receive from such a drawn-out campaign devastating civilians in Gaza and exhausting the Israeli economy?
Following the Money
Global defence spending surpassed $2.2 trillion in 2022, with some $85 billion worth of arms imported by militaries across the globe. With the market largely limited to state acquisitions, the relationship between arms development companies and governments has been scrutinised in the case of countries such as the US. Defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin have spent a total of $2.5 billion lobbying DC to adopt pro-industry policies since 2001. Up to half the annual US military budget – the world’s largest at almost $900 billion – is devoted to private defence contracts. As a result of this huge source of expenditure such companies’ financial performances are closely tied to US foreign policy.
Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defence contractor with a revenue in excess of $70 billion in 2024, saw its stock prices spike 18% in the days after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and more than 10% the week following the October 7th attacks. RTX stocks have also reached a historical high since the outbreak of these conflicts, as well as the third-largest contractor Northrop Grumman. It was reported that around 60% of the $113 billion worth of military aid pledged to Ukraine would be invested in US defence contractors, meaning further taxpayer money was effectively being funnelled into the defence industry. No doubt, a similar rate of return is expected on US military aid to Israel.
Congressional stockholding, especially by representatives working on the administration’s defence policy, has been condemned by several publications and politicians. Insider trading using non-public information was only banned in the US as of 2012 by the Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act. Despite coming again to the forefront of discussion in the wake of the 2020 Congressional Trading Scandal, no senators were ultimately penalised for profiting by the millions from stock dealings related to US Covid-19 policies. A separate analysis of financial disclosure reports required by the STOCK Act indicated half of all congress members or their immediate family members hold stocks in major defence companies. The largest investments were in Honeywell, a leading supplier of sensors and missile guidance technologies to Israel, and RTX, which supplied interceptors for Israel’s Iron Dome System among other devices. Other stocks were held in companies with longstanding Pentagon contracts, such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing. A report by The Sludge slammed senators for apparent war profiteering in supporting record defence bills that would lead to larger defence contracts.
‘It’s abjectly terrifying that the personal benefit of any member of Congress is factored into decisions about how to wield and fund the largest military in the world.’
– Public Citizen’s People Over Pentagon Advocate Savannah Wooten (2024)
The US has approved a record military budget of $886 billion in the 2024 fiscal year with separate pledges to support Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. A $105 billion package for such US allies was rejected by Congress in December 2023, with Senator Bernie Sanders decrying the attempt to further aid the ‘extremist’ Netanyahu Government’s ‘inhumane war’ in Gaza. The Biden administration still oversaw a record $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel the year following October 2023 under both pre-existing agreements and new packages. Another $4.86 billion was spent on US military operations supporting Israel in the region, such as by targeting Houthis in Yemen, meaning a total expenditure of over $22 billion. Whilst Israel maintains a robust domestic defence industry, the intense bombardment of Gaza has required greater reliance on imports to sustain its campaign.
‘For four of the five permanent members of the Security Council to top global arms sales that fuel wars around the globe is hypocritical, complicit and immoral.’
– Brenda Mofya, Oxfam’s Head of New York Office (2022)
Despite multiple US agencies urging the suspension of arms supply to Israel upon concluding that Israel deliberately withheld aid for Gazan civilians, interviews and leaked government memos indicate a general policy of shielding Israel from any criticism based on human rights concerns. Such unequivocal support is bipartisan, with President-elect Donald Trump having promised to be the greatest ‘protector’ of Israel upon assuming his position in the White House. The revival of American industry and competitiveness of its exports has been a major concern of the Trump campaign, whose pro-market premiership did see robust overall economic growth before the Covid-19 pandemic.
The US Green Party’s 2024 Presidential Candidate Dr. Jill Stein has deplored both Democrat and Republican foreign policy which she claims is driven by the interests of the military-industrial complex, and it certainly does not seem far-fetched that the US Government is hesitant to end hostilities at least in part due to the record financial windfall for its defence contractors. Since the end of World War II, commentators have warned of the reliance on endless stockpiling and foreign interventions in order to prop up American industry, such as that which occurred during the Cold War. In the absence of effective sanctions or restrictions regarding congressional stock trading, the US legislature remains openly linked to big business.
The Profits-Human Rights Equation
Well before the current escalations in Gaza, commentators have discussed whether the US now constituted an oligarchy – a state in effective control of an elite minority economic class – rather than a true democracy. Whilst Western governments have gradually recognised that civilian structures appear to have been intentionally targeted to promote the depopulation of Gazan neighbourhoods, the pace at which acknowledgment of complicity is growing is far slower than the rate of destruction. The Netherlands, a country which constitutionally allows for the direct application of international conventions upon ratification, prohibited the export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel in February 2024 with the court conducting judicial review citing viable evidence of war crimes. In doing so, it became among the first to recognise that it may have been profiting from genocide.
‘It is undeniable that there is a clear risk that the exported F-35 parts are used in serious violations of international humanitarian law.’
– Presiding Judge Bas Boele, The Hague Court of Appeals (2024)
Although the Biden administration formerly threatened to withhold arms if sufficient humanitarian aid was not delivered to Gaza within 30 days, the sincerity of that statement has been questioned by many. The US, as the leading arms supplier, has evidently been keen to bend international law and exert pressure through its permanent UNSC seat to ensure its ally continues to evade any meaningful sanctions. With domestic US legislation such as the Leahy Law prohibiting the supply of arms to militaries implicated in ‘gross violations of human rights’ based on ‘credible information,’ being flagrantly disregarded, it appears likely that US foreign policymakers are prepared to continue overlooking substantial evidence of international humanitarian law violations in favour of financial interests. Whilst Western credibility on the global promotion of human rights is in tatters, business is booming for the arms industry.
