In the Gaza genocide, UN has suffered an irreparable loss of reputation

Legality is a matter of power, not justice, and it is the adage that Benjamin Netanyahu has imbibed far too deeply, writes Shubham Sharma.

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THE visuals of Iranian missiles lighting the sky over Israel and Occupied Palestine are still fresh in the public memory.

The stated goal of these missile attacks was to avenge the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah— the Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militia— as well as other leaders of Hamas and Iranian military who had been assassinated by Israel earlier this year.

There are also videos of some of the missiles hitting their targets on the ground, resulting in a memefest on the 'failure' of Israel's expensive and purportedly impenetrable Iron Dome missile defence system. Israel vowed reprisal. It seemed that the gates of hell had been opened.

While Israel is still preparing its response to Iran, the US and its North American Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies have given it a stern warning that it should show restraint while attacking Iran and spare the latter's nuclear power facilities.

Western powers are particularly apprehensive of Iran going overtly nuclear in response to any attack by Israel. The Sunni monarchies of the Gulf region are ill-disposed towards a Shia Iran but are wary of a wider regional war if tensions escalate.

After a recently held emergency meeting in Doha, Prince Faisal Bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign affairs minister, wrote, "Palestinian Statehood is the [prerequisite] for peace and not its byproduct."

The Gulf monarchies have stood by their stance of not supporting Palestine 'materially' in any manner, and it does not seem that this stance is not going to change anytime soon.

Thus far, the Gulf monarchies have been able to contain public pressure on the issue of Palestine. Gulf monarchies will not move in support of Palestine because they see Israel as a trade partner and a permanent sentinel watching over their main adversary in the region— Iran.

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As Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was quoted as saying, "For most of [my country's 70 percent population that is younger than me], they never really knew much about the Palestinian issue.

"And so they're being introduced to it for the first time through this conflict. It's a huge problem. Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don't, but my people do, so I need to make sure this is meaningful."

The killing of Nasrallah by Israel has shown the world how far Israeli intelligence has penetrated Hezbollah and other parties in the 'Axis of Resistance'. The Financial Times has reported that Israel's technical advantage lies in spy satellites, sophisticated drones and cyber hacking capabilities that turn mobile phones into listening devices.

Israel collects so much data that it has a dedicated group called Unit 9900 which writes algorithms that sift through terabytes of visual images that catch even the slightest of changes, hoping to identify an improvised explosive device by a roadside, a vent over a tunnel or the sudden addition of a concrete reinforcement that might hint at a bunker.

Once the target is identified, their daily patterns of movements are fed into a vast database syphoned off from devices that could include their spouse's mobile phone and even their car's odometer. The database of the targets is so vast that in the first three days of its air campaign, the Israeli air force tried to attack three thousand Hezbollah targets.

Israel's killing of Nasrallah was not a knee-jerk reaction. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has engaged Hezbollah in low-level warfare. Nasrallah had hoped to drive Israel into a stalemate in the same manner as 2000 and 2006, but this was not to be. Israel had other plans. It waited until its intelligence on Nasrallah's whereabouts was concrete and complete, then struck him down. 

Nasrallah's death marks a watershed, comparable to the assassination of Yasser Arafat, in the history of West Asia. Arafat and Nasrallah's approach to the problem was different with the latter carrying a deep sectarian and loosely Islamist streak.

Despite this, ''Nasrallah understood that Lebanon's people were not religious zealots, including its Shia population, and that an Islamic State was not on the agenda.

"He never tried to impose sharia, women in his fiefdom were free to dress as they pleased … after Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon, Nasrallah made it plain that there were to be no extrajudicial reprisals against Christians who had collaborated with the Israelis. Instead, they were taken to the border and handed over to Israel," writes Adam Shatz. Shatz also reminds us that Nasrallah had taken part in the killing of Lebanese communists in the 1980s.

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On the whole, Nasrallah's death will have two major consequences for the region. Firstly, Hezbollah and its cadres will be more radicalised than before, and this radicalisation will show on the ground as the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) invade their territory.

Wary of this, Israel has already announced that its operation is 'limited' and aimed at returning the roughly sixty thousand displaced people in Israel's northern parts.

Such a strategy of assassinating leaders of radical organisations has seldom worked. In 1992, Israel assassinated Nasrallah's predecessor Abbas al-Musawi, but that did not stop the organisation from becoming the powerful force to reckon with that it is today.

Some reports suggest Nasrallah's apparent successor Hashem Saffiedine has already been killed by Israel. That too is unlikely to make much of a difference in an organisation of motivated, trained and disciplined soldiers.

Secondly, the axis of Shia resistance will receive a fillip in the region. The Sunni monarchies are coming to terms with this. As Israel was preparing to enter Lebanon, the Jordanian foreign minister questioned if Israel was seeking security or military supremacy.

It must be remembered that Jordan shares a border with Israel and was the first to normalise diplomatic ties. In April, Jordan joined the military coalition defending Israel from Iranian missile attacks.

Despite provocations, Iran is well aware of the pressing realities on the ground. Brinkmanship can lead to disaster for the country which is already crippled by economic sanctions.

The Syrian government, Iran's closest ally in the region, has chosen to keep quiet. Historically, when it comes to Israel, Syria has been risk-averse. Syria is afraid that any activation of the Golan front could spell the end of Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Iran also knows that if Syria crumbles or, in the worst case, silently defects to the other side, supplying weapons to Hezbollah via Syrian territory will become impossible.

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In all this, the international legal regime and institutions such as the United Nations have suffered an irreparable loss of reputation. Israel's incursion into Lebanon has raised concerns about civilian casualties.

The United Nations has declared: ''We firmly condemn Israel's use of the same destructive violence that was applied in Gaza to its attacks on Lebanon, suggesting that attacks on civilians are justified because Hezbollah members allegedly hide among them and use civilians as human shields.''

Unfortunately, Israel is far too importunate to heed any such demands. Legality is a matter of power, not justice, and it is the adage that Benjamin Netanyahu has imbibed far too deeply.