International law was designed to restrain power. But when legal institutions apply their principles selectively, they risk undermining the very legitimacy on which the system depends.
Few conflicts generate as many legal arguments as the Israeli–Palestinian one. The questions are familiar: occupation, settlements, blockades, proportionality, humanitarian law. These issues are debated in courts, universities, and international institutions precisely because they raise real legal concerns.
At the same time, critics of the international legal system increasingly argue that the scrutiny directed at Israel reveals something else – not merely legal engagement, but a pattern of political selectivity that threatens the credibility of the system itself.
Both possibilities must be taken seriously.
International law does not operate outside politics. It never has. The modern legal order emerged from a particular historical experience – European attempts to regulate interstate conflict after centuries of religious and imperial wars. Thinkers such as Hugo Grotius articulated early theories of legal restraints on sovereignty and warfare. After the catastrophes of the twentieth century, these ideas were institutionalised through the United Nations and a network of treaties governing armed conflict, diplomacy, and human rights.
The ambition was extraordinary – that states themselves could be bound by law.
Yet the system now faces two intertwined challenges.
The first is the instrumental use of legal language by states that do not accept the system’s underlying premises.
The ideology of the Islamic Republic of Iran illustrates the tension. The revolutionary doctrine articulated by Ruhollah Khomeini and maintained by Ali Khamenei has long portrayed international institutions as tools of Western domination — part of what Iranian rhetoric calls “global arrogance.” Within that worldview, international law is not primarily a shared moral framework but a political instrument.
Yet when conflicts arise, the same legal language is often invoked to condemn adversaries.
This pattern extends well beyond Iran. Russia invokes legal claims of self-determination while violating Ukraine’s sovereignty. China appeals to principles of territorial integrity while rejecting international arbitration rulings in the South China Sea. States across the geopolitical spectrum selectively deploy legal norms when doing so advances their strategic interests.
International law therefore functions not only as a system of rules but also as a field of political contestation.
The second challenge lies within the institutions tasked with interpreting and applying those rules.
Within the United Nations Human Rights Council, Israel occupies a singular position. It is the only country assigned a permanent agenda item devoted exclusively to its actions. Between 2006 and 2023, the council adopted more country-specific resolutions condemning Israel than those directed at Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Russia combined.
Supporters of this focus argue that Israel’s prolonged control over Palestinian territories raises uniquely persistent legal questions. Critics counter that geopolitical coalitions within international institutions have created patterns of scrutiny that exceed purely legal considerations.
Both explanations may contain elements of truth. Genuine legal disputes can coexist with political incentives that shape how institutions prioritise their attention.
This tension reflects a deeper intellectual debate about the nature of international law itself. Many scholars argue that the modern legal system reflects its origins in European political thought and imperial expansion. Movements such as Third World Approaches to International Law contend that the system historically embedded Western assumptions about sovereignty and governance.
Yet the same legal framework later became a tool through which newly independent states asserted sovereignty and resisted external domination. Principles such as territorial integrity and self-determination were frequently invoked by weaker states against stronger ones.
International law therefore carries a dual legacy. It reflects both the historical power structures from which it emerged and the universal aspirations that later expanded its reach.
That tension is unlikely to disappear.
What matters is whether the institutions responsible for maintaining the system can sustain confidence that its principles are applied consistently enough to remain credible.
Rebuilding that confidence does not require eliminating politics from international law — an impossible task. But it does require greater institutional discipline. Agenda structures that single out individual states for permanent scrutiny should be reconsidered. Resolution practices could be tied more closely to objective thresholds such as the scale and persistence of humanitarian crises. And international institutions must demonstrate that legal priorities are shaped by consistent principles rather than geopolitical coalitions.
Without such reforms, the credibility of the system will continue to erode.
Legal systems survive not because politics disappears, but because political actors continue to believe that rules are applied consistently enough to be worth respecting.
If that belief collapses, international law will not vanish overnight. It will slowly lose the authority that once allowed it to restrain power.
And when law becomes widely understood as merely another language of geopolitical struggle, it ceases to be law at all.
