The Trump-Netanyahu “Peace” for Gaza does not conform to international law and does not augur well for sustainable regional and international peace and reconciliation.
The Trump-Netanyahu construct is incompatible with the UN Charter and with the erga omnes obligation of all UN member States to ensure the enforcement of Security Council Resolutions, including Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967,[1] which ordered the withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied Palestine territory.
The only hope for durable peace in the Middle East lies in the implementation of the concrete, pragmatic Advisory Opinions of the International Court of Justice of July 9, 2004,[2] July 19, 2024,[3] and October 22, 2025,[4] the implementation of the final report of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry,[5] submitted to the Human Rights Council on September 16, 2025, and the implementation of the detailed reports of UN Special Rapporteurs on Palestine John Dugard, Richard Falk, Michael Lynk and Francesca Albanese.[6]
There cannot be a “separate” peace settlement for the Middle East that ignores binding United Nations pronouncements. It would not only be illegal, but it would be illegitimate. A “fait accompli” does not create international law. It only manifests the lack of effective enforcement mechanisms in the United Nations system.
Accepting the Trump-Netanyahu dictate would entail abandoning the whole body of international law and the international order established at the end of the Second World War. It would mean venturing on the slippery road to World War III.
The United Nations bears particular responsibility for what happens in the Middle East, because it was the mid-wife that facilitated the emergence of a new State called “Israel” and failed to ensure the emergence of a second State called “Palestine.”
The UN could have done it, if the right impulse had come from the great powers. It could have been possible in the early years, before the many wars and the growing hostility between Muslims and Jews.
But what is the United Nations but its member States with all their competing values, conflicting interests and endemic contradictions? Over the past 80 years there have not been great visionaries or leaders. All have watched the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, without adopting concrete measures to prevent the genocide and punish the perpetrators.
Admittedly, some academics did anticipate and condemn the crimes, and there have been dozens of General Assembly and Security Council resolutions but, in the absence of enforcement of international law, genocide has become the “new normal.”
In many ways the United Nations is responsible for the existence of the State of Israel, which emerged from a Zionist project that was already anachronistic when conceived, and which is fundamentally at odds with the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Although rooted in the Jewish experience of persecution in Europe and Jews’ historical attachment to the Holy Land, the Zionist experiment belongs in the imperialist and colonial mentality of the end of the 19th century and the idea that Europeans could settle in other parts of the world and displace the local populations. This latter mindset is responsible for endless wars of decolonization in Africa and Asia and for the unending saga of the Palestinian tragedy.
The establishment of the State of Israel, an Apartheid State for Jews,[7] where other ethnic groups did not enjoy the same rights, was only possible because of the enormity of the Holocaust and the solidarity that the world felt for the Jewish survivors. Solidarity and empathy were legitimate, but should not have been implemented at the expense of the native Palestinians.
The irony of history is that the State of Israel, which emerged from the Holocaust, would soon become a practitioner of ethnic cleansing and genocide, that the horror that Jews endured during the Second World War would be visited upon the Palestinians, who had no responsibility for the Nazi crimes.
On May 11, 1949, by virtue of Resolution 273 (III), the General Assembly accepted Israel to membership “Noting that Israel is a peace-loving State and is able and willing to carry out the obligations contained in the Charter.”[8]
Since the United Nations legitimized Israel’s existence, it also has a special responsibility to monitor what happens to the native populations of the former British mandate.
In a way, it is anomalous for the General Assembly to have granted recognition to Israel notwithstanding the Nakba of Palestinians since 1946, notwithstanding the countless terrorist acts committed by Zionist organizations against Palestinians and against the British mandate-holders, the blowing up of the King David Hotel,[9] the assassination of UN Envoy Folke Bernadotte[10] in 1948, etc.
Nevertheless, we should not forget that GA Res. 273 (III) implicitly conditioned Israel’s UN membership on the declaration made by Israel “that it unreservedly accepts the obligations of the United Nations Charter and undertakes to honour them…”
Indeed, the adoption of the resolution was preceded by negotiations with Israeli diplomats in the course of which a number of conditions for membership were discussed, conditions that have not been met, particularly with regard to Israel’s frontiers, which have been brazenly violated by Israel through its constant aggressions against and land grabbing from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine itself.
The international community knows from experience over the past 80 years: Israel has waged war on all of its neighbors and, thus, has demonstrated in practice that it is not “a peace-loving State.” It has engaged in countless aggressions against Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, thereby violating the Principles and Purposes of the UN Charter.
This open rebellion against the UN Charter and international law would justify the expulsion of Israel from membership, as envisaged in Article 6 of the Charter, which stipulates: “A Member of the United Nations who has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.”
Here lies the problem of UN inefficacy: the structural inability to enforce its decisions, because of the frequent abuse of the “veto” power by the Permanent members of the Security Council. We observe that the Security Council does not always act within its terms of reference laid down in Article 24 of the Charter, and allows the five permanent members to act contrary to the purposes of the organization, which are to promote peace, development and human rights.
The abuse of the “veto” power contained in Article 27, paragraph 3, of the Charter sabotages the potential of the United Nations and allows war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide to go unpunished.
The egregious dysfunction of the system results from the bad faith of certain members who consider themselves as legibus solutus, that is, above the Charter and above international law.
It is a disgrace that a State like the United States can abuse the veto power to shield Israel from accountability, to veto resolutions calling for a cease-fire, and to veto resolutions providing for the recognition of Palestine as a member State of the organization.
Under normal circumstances, the Security Council would be expected to ensure the implementation of the Advisory Opinions of the International Court of Justice, but the United States blocks enforcement action against Israel and, thus, becomes complicit in the genocide.
This has had a detrimental impact on the credibility of the Organization.
At the very least a total arms embargo should have been imposed against Israel, sanctions under Chapter VII should have been put in place, as well as monitoring mechanisms. All of this has been frustrated by the United States.
On August 22, 2025, the United Nations declared a state of famine in Gaza.[11] This was overdue, because thousands of children and elderly had already died not only from bombs and bullets but also from malnutrition and the lack of medical assistance and equipment.
Trump-Netanyahu “Peace Agreement”
Navi Pillay, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Chairperson of the International Independent Commission on Palestine, stated that the so-called Trump-Netanyahu “Peace Agreement” breaches international law.[12]
This commission of inquiry was established in 2021 and its 72-page report to the Human Rights Council concluded that Israel had committed genocide.[13] In her comments about U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, Pillay said “Israel has committed genocide and is continuing to do so….The conclusions of the commission still stand.”
While the international community welcomes the return of the Israeli hostages and the liberation of Palestinian political prisoners by Israel, it cannot undo the material and moral damage caused by the illegal occupation of Palestine and the illegal blockade of Gaza since 2007.
Israel has demonstrated that it is a terrorist state that makes pagers into indiscriminate weapons, targets peace negotiators for annihilation—and not only in Doha—bombs hospitals and schools, kills civilians who are trying to access humanitarian assistance, and intercepts international flotillas attempting to bring humanitarian aid to the beleaguered Gaza civilians.
While we accept the partial cease-fire as a first step toward justice and peace, the priority now must be to ensure that humanitarian assistance enters Gaza and the Occupied Territories immediately and in sufficient amounts, and that the recipients can safely access this humanitarian assistance.
Under no circumstances should it be administered by the United States or by the pseudo-NGO Gaza Humanitarian Foundation[14]–it should only be distributed by a UN agency like UNRWA,[15] the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine.
In an interview in September 2025 Philippe Lazzarini, Assistant Secretary General, UNRWA Chief and former head of communications at the International Committee of the Red Cross, referred to this so-called foundation as mercenary, whose employees are highly paid former soldiers who come to Gaza to carry out supposed humanitarian activities without knowing what humanitarian work is.
The goal of this foundation was to force the Palestinian population in the north and center of the Gaza Strip to go south to get food. The number of local distribution centers went down from 400 to just a few, forcing the most vulnerable to move.
The end of the daily massacres does not erase the genocide already perpetrated and does not end the genocide—the dying—because of the long-term sequels and trauma. A true peace agreement must be crafted that recognizes that genocide has occurred and there must be accountability. Whatever peace agreement is eventually crafted, it must vindicate international law, international human rights law and international humanitarian law. It is impossible to turn the page, call for tabula rasa and go back to “business as usual.”
Genocide is not “business as usual”—it is the ultimate crime, and any State, government, or individual complicit in it must be held to account.
Thus, the arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Minister of War Yoav Gallant must be followed by the indictment of many other Israeli officials and military, as the International Military Tribunal for Nuremberg indicted 22 German leaders and six Nazi organizations.
Seven Nuremberg Principles were formally adopted by the General Assembly and the International Law Commission in 1950. These principles apply to the Israeli leadership as well.
Enforcement
Enforcement is key to the authority and credibility of any institution, including the United Nations, which has steadily lost authority because judgments and advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice, arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court, and Resolutions of the Security Council and General Assembly have been violated with total impunity.
Why was the genocide possible? Because governments and the media have created a manufactured perception of who are the victims and who are the perpetrators. Because we are surrounded by fake news, fake history and fake law, massive public relations and relentless propaganda have turned the victims into terrorists, and the perpetrators of genocide into leaders entitled to the right of self-defense.
The media have whitewashed Israeli Apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and daily atrocities and humiliations committed against the Palestinians. The Western media dehumanized the Palestinians, not unlike the Nazis dehumanized the Poles, the Czechs, and the Jews. The Western media disseminate a manufactured image of Israel as a country under the rule of law, as the only democracy in the Middle East.
In the conflict with the native population, the Palestinians are depicted as terrorists, while the Israelis are celebrated as good democrats.
The conditio sine qua non for the State of Palestine, for a return of the Palestinians to their homes in Gaza and in the Occupied Territories is a gradual but thorough change of mindset. Governments and the public must acknowledge the enormous crime committed against the Palestinians over the past 80 years.
Since October 2023, we have been witnessing the ongoing genocide, made possible only because of the media brain-washing, the inversion of roles: Israelis as victims; Palestinians as barbarians.
Back in 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote in his book Why We Can’t Wait that “our country was born in genocide”—meaning not the Afro-Americans, the slaves and the discriminated and humiliated blacks—what he meant was the first Nations of the American continent, the Algonquins, Crees, Cherokees, Dakotas, Iroquois, Mohawks, Sioux.
Tough words about our own American history—but true.
I have heard UN colleagues say that “Israel was born in Terrorism”—with reference to the countless terrorist acts by the new colonizers, the settlers that expelled the native Palestinians from their olive orchards, destroyed their houses, forced them into exile.
This, however, is not perceived by everybody, because of the hijacking of the mainstream media by the globalists and the public relations and propaganda campaigns of the “collective West.” In a very real sense, we are surrounded by fake law, fake history and fake law…
Concrete Actions Today
What can be done today to save the Palestinians and to reaffirm the continued validity of the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and international law? Here are a few scenarios:
- Expel Israel under Article 6 of the UN Charter. Even if the U.S. vetoes Israel’s expulsion in the Security Council, a strong message will be sent.
- Alternatively, the General Assembly could withdraw the accreditation of Israeli diplomats, as was done in 1974 with the diplomats of the then Apartheid South African regime.[16]
- The General Assembly should adopt a Uniting for Peace Resolution, which would allow the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect[17] doctrine – specifically to protect the Palestinians from further depredations by Israel. The R2P doctrine is enshrined in General Assembly Resolution 60/1, paragraphs 138 and 139.[18]
- The General Assembly should call on member states immediately to stop all military and economic relations with Israel—and impose a total arms embargo.
- The General Assembly should call on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction within their territorial jurisdiction and arrest any Israeli military or official linked to the genocide against the Palestinians.
- The international community should cooperate in ensuring the enforcement of the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.
Some diplomats whom I know here in Geneva consider that GA Resolution 3379—“Zionism is Racism”[19]—could and should be reissued.
This resolution of November 10, 1975, was lifted 16 years later in 1991, when Israel was showing the olive branch, and it seemed that a Palestinian state was finally a real possibility.
Zionism is in its very essence based on concepts of race, religion and exclusion. It reflects a colonialist mindset, worse than just racism, but a denial of the common dignity of all human beings, and a source of Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and a justification for murder.
The Geneva International Peace Research Institute has submitted two legal briefs to the International Court of Justice demanding an investigation into the issue of complicity in genocide,[20] Article III e of the Genocide Convention, by European institutions and officials including Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas.
Undoubtedly, they have become complicit because they have provided military, economic, political, diplomatic and propagandistic support to the genocidal state.
Associations of lawyers in France have submitted to the ICC prosecutor a request for investigation of France’s complicity in the genocide.[21]
Associations of lawyers in Italy have done the same with regard to Giorgia Meloni.[22]
Associations of lawyers in Germany are currently preparing a legal brief concerning the German government and Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
The case of Nicaragua v. Germany is still pending before the International Court of Justice precisely on the issue of complicity.
Other cases could be submitted to the ICJ and ICC concerning incitement to hatred and violence.
The media in most Western countries have engaged in such incitement, contrary to Article III c of the Genocide Convention.
Such actions also contravene Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Cases should also be submitted to international and domestic tribunals against banks and transnational corporations, in particular weapons manufacturers, who have aided and abetted in the genocide.
On October 20, 2025, the French Bank BNP Paribas was ordered to pay $20.45 million for its complicity in the genocide in Sudan.
This creates an important precedent that should be replicated with regard to Western banks that have financed Israel, to the military-industrial complex that have delivered the weapons that have killed and continue to kill Palestinians.
Make America Great Again by Returning It to the Rule of Law
Some 80 years after the entry into force of the UN Charter, it is crucial to reaffirm the purposes and principles of the organization, to return to the spirituality of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If President Trump wants to “make America great again,” he should start by respecting the UN Charter and international law, and reviving the legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt.
On September 12, 2025, the UN General Assembly’s 80th session, by an overwhelming majority, endorsed a declaration on the peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine and implementation of the two-state solution with Israel.
In conclusion, let me repeat that the UN has lost much of its authority and credibility. The U.S. and Israel are in open rebellion against the UN Charter and international law in general.
The EU states are complicit in the genocide in Gaza.
It is time for the Global Majority—sometimes called the Global South—to make their numbers felt in the General Assembly, to adopt the Uniting for Peace resolution and to demand accountability from Israel and all complicit States.
As has been stated by the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Professor Francesca Albanese, Israel could not perpetrate the genocide without the active support of the United States and many European powers.
Naming and shaming does not impress Trump, Starmer, Macron or Merz. Relentless Western propaganda and the formidable public relations machinery have succeeded in legitimizing Western support of Israel, no matter what. UN Resolutions or ICJ judgements will not result in a change of Western policies of continued complicity in the genocide.
Trump, Starmer, Macron and Merz are all in denial. Perhaps the only policy that would make them reconsider is a coordinated boycott of Western industries.
It is time for the Global South to cease buying U.S. and European weapons and luxury products. No more purchases of F-35, F-16, Raytheon missiles, Lockheed-Martin arms, drones, ammunition, “patriots”, Boeing aeroplanes, Airbusses, cadillacs, Fords, Rolls Royces, Austin Martins, Mercedes, BMWs, no more luxury cars, trucks, busses, tractors, Caterpillars, trams, high-speed trains, etc.
Instead, the Global South should understand that the West remains fundamentally imperialist and colonialist. Why buy from the U.S. or Europe, when you can buy from China, India, Russia?
These countries economies have caught up and are technologically very advanced. It is time for the Global South to rethink and reorient trade and stop buying from U.S. and Europe. This is the only language the West will understand.
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/90717?v=pdf ↑
https://www.icj-cij.org/case/131 ↑
https://www.icj-cij.org/case/186https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/07/icj-opinion-declaring-israels-occupation-of-palestinian-territories-unlawful-is-historic-vindication-of-palestinians-rights/ ↑
https://www.icj-cij.org/case/196
https://opiniojuris.org/2025/10/25/obligations-of-israel-in-relation-to-the-presence-and-activities-of-the-united-nations-the-international-court-of-justices-advisory-opinion-in-a-nutshell/ ↑
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds ↑
https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-palestine ↑
Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006). ↑
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/210373?v=pdf ↑
https://warhistory.org/@msw/article/bombing-of-king-david-hotel ↑
https://www.juancole.com/2025/09/assassinating-bernadottes-palestine.html
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230917-remembering-the-assassination-of-count-bernadotte/ ↑
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/08/1165702 ↑
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/trump-gaza-plan-breaches-international-law-un-commissioner-navi-pillay ↑
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/16/middleeast/israel-gaza-genocide-un-commission-report-intl ↑
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/08/un-experts-call-immediate-dismantling-gaza-humanitarian-foundation ↑
https://www.unrwa.org/ ↑
https://media.un.org/photo/en/asset/oun7/oun7593912 ↑
https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/responsibility-protect/about ↑
https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_RES_60_1.pdf ↑
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-181963/ ↑
https://www.counterpunch.org/author/gnvntpc9211/
https://gipri.ch/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Press-Release-GIPRI-CJRF-ICC-Ursula-von-der-Leyen.pdf ↑
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/over-100-french-lawyers-call-icc-investigate-france-complicity-genocide-gaza ↑
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/italys-meloni-reported-to-icc-as-lawyers-cite-complicity-in-gaza-genocide/ ↑
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About the Author
Alfred de Zayas is U.S. and Swiss citizen, residing in Geneva, Switzerland, where he is Professor of Law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy.
De Zayas is a former senior lawyer with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and former UN Independent Expert on International Order (2012-18).
He is author of 12 books including “Building a Just World Order.”
Alfred can be reached at alfreddezayas@gmail.com.
