Amrisha Tripathi describes how Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine has exposed a foundational crisis within the post-war international legal order, particularly the systematic collapse of jus cogens. Crucially for TWAIL, Tripathi applies her critique to India, considering India’s pivot from anticolonial solidarity to transactional realpolitik with Israel.
TWAILR: Reflections ~ 91/2026
Last December, the world witnessed the people of Gaza decorating a single surviving Roman Catholic church instead of homes, with prayers whispered under the echo of explosions. Months later, as reports began to emerge from Gaza during Eid celebrations, its ground reality remained the same – prayers were offered amid ruins, children held on to fragments of joy, and families shared feasts sitting next to their demolished homes. Amidst the rubble of a manufactured apocalypse, these occasions did more than just preserve the rituals of faith and festivity: they became the ultimate act of defiance against Israel’s genocidal actions.
By mid-2026, the cumulative impact of the military onslaught had resulted in the violent deaths of approximately 90000 people in Gaza, with an additional 12500 dying from indirect effects of the siege, including preventable illnesses, starvation, and a lack of medical evacuations. Approximately 90% of the civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip has been systematically reduced to rubble, leaving the population in a state of permanent displacement. It may be prudent to highlight that, given the thousands of unreported deaths and the collapse of data infrastructure, the above figures may just be a conservative baseline, severely understating the true scale of the loss.
Beyond this staggering human toll, the Gaza offensive has shredded the fundamental precepts of international humanitarian law. The core legal tenets of warfare—distinction, proportionality, and military necessity—were repeatedly violated with systematic impunity. The intentional starvation of civilians has been deployed as a central strategic mechanism, expressly codified as a war crime under Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute. Over 2.3 million Palestinians have been effectively trapped under a total siege: cut off from food, water, medicine, electricity, and fuel from administrative and military orders. By late 2023, United Nations human rights experts who condemned the Hamas attack on October 7 observed that “such egregious violations cannot be justified in the name of self-defence”. Similarly, UN Secretary General António Guterres, in an unusually blunt statement, declared that “nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people”, implicitly identifying the military operations as unlawful retaliatory collective punishment.
This reflection challenges how the deliberate erasure of Palestinian peoples has exposed a foundational crisis within the post-war international legal order, with special attention to the systematic collapse of jus cogens norms. Rather than viewing the atrocities in Gaza as an isolated humanitarian failure, I argue that the ongoing crisis represents a structural unravelling of universal accountability. My argument unfolds in three parts. First, I examine the institutional asymmetries and geopolitical shielding that allow powerful states to bypass binding international mandates with impunity. Second, by drawing on Third World Approach to International Law (TWAIL), I seek to decenter Eurocentric narratives and reveal how colonial hierarchies remain embedded within modern global governance. Finally, I apply this critique to a critical case study: India’s sharp pivot from anti-colonial solidarity to transactional realpolitik with Israel.
Through my analysis, I reveal how localised realpolitik directly erodes the universal enforcement of jus cogens norms, which a country with India’s colonial history ought to champion.
Asymmetries of International Justice and Geopolitical Shielding
Despite the clear violations of international law, particularly of jus cogens norms, accountability within formal international legal bodies has remained elusive. On November 21, 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber I issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes, including starvation as a method of warfare. Simultaneously, the ICC Prosecutor pursued warrants against senior Hamas commanders.
However, the actual enforcement of these warrants was rendered moot after the extrajudicial killings of the key Hamas members, mainly through Israeli military action. Hamas’ political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated during an alleged Zionist attack at his residence in Tehran in July 2024; Yahya Sinwar, the Head of Hamas in Gaza, was killed in Rafah in October 2024; and Mohammed Deif, the Commander-in-Chief of the al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in an airstrike in July 2024. Deif’s death was confirmed by Hamas in January 2025, leading the ICC to terminate proceedings against him in February 2025.
While Israeli forces assassinated Hamas leaders, Israeli state officials have successfully evaded accountability. This evasion is facilitated by specific legal and diplomatic manoeuvres employed by global superpowers to shield Israel from international accountability. First, the United States (US) has consistently exercised its veto power in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to block Chapter VII resolutions that would mandate immediate ceasefires, impose arms embargoes, or initiate economic sanctions. Second, billions of dollars in bilateral military aid and real-time intelligence-sharing between Israel and the US have continued uninterrupted, providing the material resources required to sustain the campaign. Third, many Western states openly expressed reluctance to enforce the ICC’s mandates against Netanyahu. In April 2025, Hungary initiated withdrawal proceedings from the Rome Statute after hosting Netanyahu. However, the new Hungarian government reversed this withdrawal by voting overwhelmingly in favour of remaining a member of the ICC. Peter Magyar, the newly elected Hungarian Prime Minister, clarified that Hungary would execute an ICC warrant against anyone, including Netanyahu.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever publicly indicated that Netanyahu would likely not be detained if he entered Belgian territory. Eventually, he qualified his remarks as “diplomatic consideration” while the Belgian government emphasised its obligation as an ICC member state. This clumsy retreat exposes the asymmetry with which Western nations apply international law. For example, Belgium issued an arrest warrant for Congolese Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Yerodia Ndombasi in 2002, asserting sweeping legal authority over a foreign minister from the Global South. Eventually, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Belgium to cancel the warrant on the grounds that it violated the absolute diplomatic immunity enjoyed by an incumbent foreign minister and heads of state under customary international law.
Furthermore, Israel has openly defied the ICJ’s binding provisional orders (South Africa vs Israel), which mandated urgent measures to prevent acts of genocide and facilitate the entry of life-saving humanitarian aid. This systematic contempt for international law demonstrates how strategic alignment between dominant superpowers allows powerful states to bypass multilateral institutions with impunity.
Decentering Eurocentric Narratives of the “International Community”
This culture of impunity points to a broader systemic crisis where international justice operates on a tilted institutional terrain that structurally favours political hegemony and marginalises vulnerability. TWAIL scholars Antony Anghie and Noura Erakat argue that the post-World War II international legal order did not dismantle colonial hierarchies; instead, it formalised and legitimised them through structural mechanisms such as the UNSC veto and the concept of sovereign equality.
By analysing the Gaza crisis through the TWAIL lens, the failure of international institutions can be seen not as a temporary breakdown of systems but as their natural structural outcome. The legal concepts of “self-defence” are weaponised to immunise state violence, while simultaneously, colonial resistance is criminalised. Gaza thus functions as a diagnostic mirror, exposing how colonial patterns of land dispossession, resource extraction, and population control continue to operate under the guise of modern international legality.
Mainstream commentary frequently laments the “silence of the international community” on the genocide in Gaza. However, this narrative conflates the deliberate inaction of Western capitals with total global passivity. That conflation obscures the sustained resistance of the Global South, whose states consistently voted for immediate ceasefires, supported South Africa’s genocide case before the ICJ, and condemned the collective punishment of Palestinians. Furthermore, UN specialised agencies (UNRWA, OCHA, and WHO) have actively worked to resist the blockades and provide humanitarian relief, paying an unprecedented toll. By the end of 2025, over 388 UN personnel – primarily local Palestinian employees of the UNRWA- had been killed by military strikes, marking the single largest loss of life in the history of the UN. This devastating toll also claimed international personnel, including Waibhav Anil Kale, a retired Indian Army officer working as a security coordination officer for the UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS). Israel killed Kale while he was in his clearly marked UN vehicle in Rafah in May 2024.
Late 2025 offered a glimmer of hope and moral clarity from the UN member states amid this bleak landscape. In September 2025, at a high-level conference in New York, an overwhelming majority of states adopted the New York Declaration – a landmark resolution aimed at reviving the two-state solution and ending the Gaza war. The vote was resounding: 142 countries in favour, 10 against, and 12 abstaining. The New York Declaration 2025 explicitly calls for “collective action to end war in Gaza” through “tangible, time-bound, and irreversible steps” towards establishing a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel. In the same breath, it demands that Hamas release all hostages and disarm in Gaza, acknowledging that Palestinian militancy must yield to a legitimate Palestinian Authority presiding over a future state.
Courtesy: Middle East Monitor (MEM)
This UNGA initiative, co-led by France and Saudi Arabia, signalled a rare moment of unity in global diplomacy. Secretary General Guterres reminded the world that “statehood is a right, not a reward” – a powerful rebuttal to those who might argue that Palestinians must earn their freedom by some grace. Within days of the UNGA vote, a wave of long-overdue recognition of Palestine’s statehood occurred as France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and several European states recognised the State of Palestine at the UN summit. The Global South, however, had recognised Palestinian statehood as early as 1988, with 147 UN member states already extending recognition decades before the 2025 conference. Whether the delayed 2025 Western recognitions were a consequence of a sudden moral awakening or a strategic and defensive adjustment could be debated. However, this renewed multilateral resolve may represent one of the few hopeful developments to emerge from the carnage in Gaza, notwithstanding Israel’s characterisation of the effort as a “political circus”. Though belated, the initiative offers a possible path toward restoring the international legal order, halting the ongoing genocide, and advancing a genuine political solution.
India’s Geopolitical Pivot and Strategic Realignment
India figures as a telling case study in the global response to the Gaza genocide. As a country with a proud anti-colonial legacy (this global stance co-exists with a more complicated domestic reality of state-backed violations of human rights, particularly in Kashmir and the North-East), India has long championed the Palestinian cause in international forums. It was the first non-Arab state to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organisation and among the first to recognise the State of Palestine in 1988. It is also one of the 142 countries to vote “Yes” to revive hopes for a Palestinian state. Yet, for all these principled positions, India’s stance during the height of the attacks on Gaza was disappointing. In October 2023, India abstained from a UN General Assembly resolution calling for an “immediate humanitarian truce” in Gaza. This abstention marked a departure from India’s original stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Modi government was one of the first to unequivocally condemn Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, as terrorism, but hesitated to condemn Israel’s ferocious assault on Gaza. This asymmetrical response illustrates the extent of India’s strategic, economic, and ideological realignment with Israel.
Beyond the standard arms purchase, the transactional relationship between India and Israel has evolved into a strategic partnership anchored in joint defence production under the Make in India initiative. For instance, the Adani-Elbit Joint Venture manufactures carbon-composite aero-structures for the Hermes 900 Medium Altitude Long-Endurance (MALE) UAV. These Indian-produced components are exported directly to Israel for military assembly and deployment.
Another joint venture between Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) provides comprehensive life cycle and maintenance support for India’s Medium-Range Surface-to-Air Missile (MRSAM) systems.
This economic interdependence extended to labour policy during the conflict. Following the October 2023 escalation, Israel suspended the work permits of tens of thousands of Palestinian construction and agricultural workers, creating a severe labour shortage. To sustain Israel’s wartime economy, the Indian government utilised a bilateral labour mobility agreement signed in May 2023 to fast-track the recruitment and dispatch of thousands of Indian workers to Israel, effectively replacing the besieged Palestinian workforce.
India also systematically imported Israeli military tactics and domestic security technologies. Under a series of bilateral agreements, Indian armed forces trained in Israel, with Israeli military generals also providing tactical guidance at bases in Jammu and Kashmir, framing these operations within a shared counter-insurgency paradigm. Furthermore, India has acquired advanced Israeli surveillance tools, such as the Pegasus spyware developed by the NSO group, allowing it to monitor journalists, political rivals, and domestic dissidents. In short, narratives on realpolitik and the “war on terror” seem to have pulled India’s policy compass away from its post-colonial ethical bearings.
In the domestic context, this narrative serves a vital securitisation function. By framing its own complex territorial and self-determination disputes, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir, through a shared vocabulary of combating Islamic extremism, the Indian state legitimises highly militarised policing, administrative detentions, and the suppression of local political dissent. This shared security narrative has forged a deep sense of solidarity between the two nations.
Domestic Ideological Convergence and Majoritarian Statecraft
It is argued that the shift in India’s policy is deeply connected to domestic political transformation. The ascendancy of Hindu nationalist politics under the BJP administration has fostered a profound ideological synergy with Zionism. Both are exclusionary, ethno-religious, and majoritarian ideologies that seek to align citizenship and national identity with a dominant religious group, while viewing minorities as existential threats to the state. This majoritarian outlook has striking parallels in domestic policy as well.
For instance, India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 established a religious test for fast-tracking citizenship that mirrors Israel’s 2018 Nation-State Law, which declares that only the Jewish people have a right to national self-determination. Similarly, TWAIL scholars compare the 2019 modifications to residency and land-ownership laws in Jammu and Kashmir to the demographic and territorial strategies used in the West Bank. By abusing constitutional mechanisms, India and Israel systematically strip native populations of their self-determination to engineer majoritarian supremacy.
State authorities across India detained student activists participating in public demonstrations of solidarity with Palestine, filing criminal charges against individuals waving Palestinian flags, demonstrating how domestic politics suppresses pro-Palestinian voices to safeguard geopolitical alliances. Additionally, several high-profile academic events, seminars, and guest lectures featuring pro-Palestinian perspectives were abruptly cancelled. For instance, following a lecture on Palestine at the O.P. Jindal Global University by former Delhi University professor Achin Vanaik, the university administration faced external pushback, including a formal letter of objection from the Israeli Ambassador to India, Naor Gilon. The university subsequently asked the academic to express regret, triggering a petition signed by over 400 scholars worldwide condemning the institutional silencing. In November 2024, Jawaharlal Nehru University’s (JNU) Centre for West Asian Studies abruptly cancelled a series of seminars scheduled to host official ambassadors of Palestine, Iran, and Lebanon to discuss geopolitical developments. University sources later indicated internal apprehensions regarding potential student polarisation and campus protests. These developments show that the India-Israel alliance is not just a strategic convergence but a transnational project of majoritarian statecraft that sustains through the suppression of minority rights, academic freedom, and democratic dissent.
In parallel, in Gaza, the systematic campaign of “scholasticide” —defined by Karma Nabulsi as the systematic destruction of educational institutions and the targeting of academics to suppress education as a site of resistance— has reached unprecedented levels. By late 2025, Israeli bombardments had destroyed 22 out of 38 of Gaza’s universities, severely damaged nearly 98% of its schools, and its Central Archives, which housed 150 years of historical documents. Over 120 academics and 270 journalists were killed in an attempt to control the narrative and suppress evidence of war crimes.
Decolonial Internalisation and Anti-Apartheid Precedent
As such, Gaza stands as a sobering test not only of the international legal order, but of India’s own professed commitment to jus cogens. Over the past two years, the core promises of international humanitarian law have been violated not at the margins, but at their core. The Geneva Conventions impose non-derogable restraints on warfare, particularly the protection of civilians and medical infrastructure. The Genocide Convention 1951 goes further, imposing a positive obligation on states to prevent genocide once the risk becomes foreseeable. Gaza demonstrates how these obligations unravel when states confine their commitment to rhetoric rather than enforcement – an uncomfortable reality for a country like India that has long claimed normative leadership in global justice.
India’s constitutional and diplomatic tradition has consistently endorsed the universality of international law and the moral necessity of preventing mass atrocities. Yet Gaza exposes the limits of a posture that champions principle abroad while remaining cautious about its legal internalisation at home. India has historically supported anti-genocide norms in the abstract, while resisting their translation into binding obligations – whether through treaty ratification, domestic criminalisation, or acceptance of international jurisdiction. This selective engagement risks reducing jus cogens from a peremptory legal norm to a mere moral aspiration, undermining the very preventive logic on which it rests. India has often emphasised sovereignty, consent, and non-intervention, but the Gaza crisis raises a hard question: At what point does principled restraint become complicity through inaction? If India treats genocide prevention as discretionary, it cannot plausibly claim moral authority.
There is a further lesson in institutional credibility. India is not a member of the ICC and has yet to fully incorporate core peremptory norms, such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and torture, into its domestic law. While its current position preserves strategic flexibility, the absence of these laws has left an expanding chasm in the Indian legal system and weakened India’s ability to speak consistently when addressing mass atrocities elsewhere.
However, normative leadership can neither be sustained simply by formal inclusion nor declaratory commitments alone; it requires a domestic and international legal architecture capable of giving effect to universal prohibitions, even when politically inconvenient. Thus, India must move beyond lip service and adopt a consistent domestic legal and economic architecture. This must begin with the enactment of enabling legislation to criminalise genocide under its municipal law and the codification of universal jurisdiction over jus cogens violations. India could also implement economic and military boycotts on foreign firms complicit in war crimes and halt joint ventures that supply military hardware to occupying forces.
This principled approach is deeply rooted in India’s own diplomatic history. In 1946, under Jawaharlal Nehru’s interim government, India became the first country to impose a unilateral trade embargo and sever diplomatic relations with apartheid South Africa. India raised the issue of institutionalised racism at the first session of the UNGA, leading the global anti-apartheid movement decades before Western powers agreed to impose similar sanctions. Reclaiming this decolonial heritage provides a legitimate, historical roadmap for modern engagement with the Palestinian struggle.
This diplomatic inheritance has an important jurisprudential legacy in Justice Radhabinod Pal’s dissenting opinion at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), constituted in 1946. While the British Government of India nominated Justice Pal to address the conspicuous lack of Asian representation, his uncompromising anti-imperial stance remains a striking colonial irony. His dissent challenged an international legal order in which the victorious imperial powers prosecuted Japanese aggression while insulating their own wartime conduct from equivalent scrutiny. Pal’s objection was directed at the form of international law being advocated as universalist while preserving the privileges and immunities of those with the power to define and enforce it. Applied to India’s present position, this inheritance demands more than rhetorical solidarity: it requires India to apply the principles it consistently invokes, even in the face of diplomatic or economic costs.
Conclusion: Reclaiming Decolonial Solidarity
The Palestinian struggle for self-determination cannot be reduced to a localised modern security dispute; it must instead be situated within a longer history of resistance to settler-colonialism and imperial expansion—forms of domination that India’s own independence movement fought to overthrow. By prioritising economic, ideological, and political relations over the enforcement of jus cogens norms, India risks complicity in preserving the imperial structure.
In this light, Gaza is not merely a humanitarian catastrophe, but a mirror held up to India’s long-standing dilemma between principle and pragmatism. The post-war international legal order was built on the premise that some crimes are so grave that sovereignty cannot excuse silence. Pal’s dissent reminds us that this premise loses legitimacy when its application is determined by geopolitical power. To that extent, India’s 2025 vote in favour of Palestinian statehood shows that it has not completely abandoned its commitment to jus cogens. However,while trying to walk a tightrope between moral responsibility and strategic interests, India cannot sustain this balance indefinitely. Its latest stance in favour of the two-state solution offers hope that it will defend and uphold its historical commitment to justice with greater strength and confidence. To be viewed as a credible defender of a rules-based international order, it must step out of its comfort zone and stop choosing caution over prevention. For India, the challenge is no longer rhetorical alignment with jus cogens but the willingness to internalise and act upon these norms. Remaining on the fence in the face of genocide risks staining a legacy forged in resistance to imperial tyranny and colonial violence.