What a difference even just a
month can make. On 11 May, 2026, the E.U. enacted sanctions against “Israeli settlers
over their violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, a move enabled by
backing from Hungary’s incoming government.”[1]
A month earlier, Viktor Orbán was the sitting prime minister of the E.U. state
of Hungary. As a supporter of U.S. President Trump, who in turn supported
Israel even in its decimation of Gaza razing entire cities into leveled ground
for real estate “properties,” Orbán would have wielded Hungary’s veto in the
European Council.
Kaja Kallas, the E.U.’s
foreign minister, marveled at the time, “We move from political deadlock that
was there for a long time. Violence and extremism carry consequences.”[2]
The long time is likely a reference to Orbán’s 16 years in power in the E.U.
state of Hungary, and her point overall is that with that governor out of the
European Council, the E.U. can inflict consequences on foreign actors who
engage in violence under the aegis of some extremist ideology. In the case of the
Israeli settlers, the ideology is Zionism, which in coming from a religious
text has overreached into the political domain, even circumventing
international law.
That the violence occurred in
the occupied West Bank renders Israel itself especially culpable, for under
international law, “all settlements are considered illegal, with the International
Court of Justice describing the State of Israel’s ‘continued presence in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory’ as ‘unlawful.’”[3]
Both the unprovoked violence of the settlers and the Israeli government’s
attempted holocaustic genocide of the population of Gaza are on top of the fact
that Israel has no justified basis internationally to even be in Gaza and the
West Bank. In other words, Israel is two degrees of separation from being a
lawful state in terms of international law. That the Netanyahu government was
able to ignore that law so easily suggests that there is no such thing as
international law—that only guidelines were by then operating in the collapsed
post-World War II global order. In a Hobbesian state of nature, no law exists
because no international or global government exists. No world federation
certainly, which Kant admitted in Perpetual Peace would only make world
peace possible but not probable.
The recurrent violence and
theft was being committed even in broad daylight by Israeli settlers against defenseless
Palestinians—even walking into their houses and nonchalantly taking appliances
and furniture!—because impunity must surely have been assured by means of the
tacit approval of a government that, after all, had been determined by the UN
to have committed a genocide in Gaza. The violations of human rights occurred
on both the societal and interpersonal level. A counter-move international
could therefore be expected beyond the E.U. sanctioning individual settlers and
related organizations.
Given the harm that was being unleashed
directly or indirectly by the Israeli government, Kallas’ claim that violence
and extremism abroad would trigger negative consequences by the E.U. rings
hollow because those consequences are so inadequate to meet the magnitude and
depth of the suffering, both interpersonally and at the societal level (i.e.,
an entire people). So even though a month made a difference in the European
Council, the global “community” was still holding back from enforcing
international law. With no other enforcement mechanism, can such law even be
called law?
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
