By badil.org
States have played a decisive role in the continuation of the Israeli genocidal war in the Gaza Strip. While states’ complicity has enabled the Israeli regime to carry out international crimes in Gaza, it is also states’ performative acts and inaction that have entrenched and expanded Israeli impunity. Symbolic gestures, such as state recognition or targeted sanctions against individuals, serve primarily as a means for states to buy time for genocide and to evade their obligations to take meaningful measures. The minimum obligation of states is to impose diplomatic, economic and military sanctions against the Israeli regime to bring an end to the genocide and hold it accountable for its ongoing international crimes
The genocide in Gaza has now entered its 23rd month, with 62,000 Palestinians killed, over 1.9 million forcibly displaced multiple times, and the entire population facing famine. The need for decisive intervention is long overdue. Yet state rhetoric and symbolic gestures remain the staple of states’ “actions” from the start of the genocide to today, even as the Israeli Prime Minister openly declares plans to colonize the Gaza Strip and forcibly displace its population outside of it.
The United States’ (US) actions have been the most consequential. While sustaining the capacity of the Israeli regime to commit a genocide in Gaza through the continuous flow of arms and political support, it has also prolonged the genocide through false promises and paralyzed the international community from taking meaningful action. It has assumed a false mediator role, posing as a neutral party in the genocide, while posturing that a ceasefire is imminent and promoting the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as a pernicious “solution” to a starvation campaign it helped manufacture. The US has also actively blocked international measures, weaponizing its veto and threatening states, such as South Africa, that are fulfilling their legal obligations under international law to end genocide. This is all part of the machinery that has ensured that the Israeli regime is able to continue committing its international crimes in Gaza with impunity.
Instead of fulfilling their obligations, other states have offered numerous empty, token measures: the European Union (EU) merely “reviewing” rather than suspending the EU–Israel Association Agreement; sanctions limited to individual Israelis, rather than the regime itself; and symbolic moves such as Ireland’s proposed Prohibition of Importation of Goods Bill, which only prohibits products from Israeli colonies and not the entirety of the Israeli regime. Not only are these measures mostly ineffectual, but they cloak states’ inaction and serve to diffuse and placate the international solidarity movement.
States are also using the recognition of a Palestinian state to distract the public, avoid their legal obligations and obfuscate their complicity. France, Malta, Canada and Australia have announced their intention to do so at the September 2025 UN General Assembly. Meanwhile, the UK is using Palestinian statehood as a bargaining chip—threatening to recognize Palestine unless the Israeli regime agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza. The recognition of a theoretical, quasi-state does nothing to end the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip nor ensure the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. In fact, states’ posturing buys time for the genocide through meaningless and time consuming debates and conferences on the merits of a two-state solution, rather on ending Israeli genocide, crimes and impunity.
This follows a pattern used by states to portray a facade of action. For example in February 2024, as the Israeli regime was preparing for a large-scale ground invasion of Rafah, the EU merely “asked” the Israeli regime not to escalate its “military action in Rafah.” The EU and member states’ statements proved to be ultimately useless, unaccompanied by any concrete actions, as the Israeli regime continued to invade and destroy Rafah unabated. Today, in the face of an explicit Israeli colonization plan for Gaza, the EU and its member states are once again issuing hollow appeals for the Israeli regime to “urgently reverse this decision and not implement it.”
Such statements, from the very powers arming and shielding the genocidal regime, are willful attempts to obscure facts and shirk their legal obligations, including to take measures to stop genocide and refrain from being complicit. These states are not powerless bystanders without leverage or political power. In fact, their role has surpassed inaction and even complicity to active participation in genocide. The Israeli regime is not acting in a vacuum; its capacity to commit and sustain genocide exists only because these states provide it with weapons and diplomatic cover.
As the Israeli regime continues to escalate its crimes, complicit states like Germany are attempting to distance themselves from the genocidal war. However, Germany’s announcement – that it will stop supplying the Israeli regime with weapons for use in Gaza – does not erase 23 months of military and political complicity, and is not nearly sufficient in fulfilling its obligations to stop genocide. Anything less than the imposition of blanket sanctions is inadequate and ensures that the Israeli regime remains belligerent in the commission of genocide and international crimes against the Palestinian people.
States have also taken no actions beyond generic statements and condemnations against Israeli imposed starvation in Gaza, the operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and the ongoing dismantlement and replacement of the UN-led humanitarian system in the Gaza Strip. In terms of language, these states have avoided acknowledging the reality of deliberate starvation, refusing to use the term famine and instead reducing it to the depoliticized label of a “humanitarian crisis.” Months ago, several states issued warnings and threatened measures in response to these conditions, yet no concrete steps have followed. This calculated inaction has ensured the uninterrupted continuation of policies that deprive the Palestinians in Gaza of life-sustaining aid and services, thereby entrenching the mechanisms of genocide and maintaining its status quo.
Since the Nakba has been ongoing for 77 years, and the genocide for 23 months, it is undeniable that past and present state “actions” are wholly insufficient and ineffective in ending Israeli crimes. States must stop the provision of unconditional military and diplomatic support to the Israeli regime and the imposition of unsolicited political solutions on the Palestinian people. To abide by their obligations under international law, including the Genocide Convention, states must adopt decisive measures, including at the very minimum, the imposition of military, economic, and diplomatic sanctions against the Israeli regime.
15 August 2025
Source: badil.org