aquascoot wrote on Dec 22^nd, 2023 at 6:18pm:

It is an illusion to believe that ceasefires invariably, or even usually, save lives. Rather, ever since the newly established UN issued its first demand for a ceasefire on August 1, 1947, calls for ceasefires have become an ­essential part of combatants’ armoury, to be deployed as strategically as any other weapon – not for the purpose of making peace but of better pursuing a war they would otherwise lose.

As Clapham argues in reviewing their role in Africa, Western governments, who regularly seek to impose those agreements, act as if the participants in every conflict “share a common value framework, within which differences are ultimately negotiable”.

Additionally, vocal domestic constituencies and “external human rights monitoring organisations, led by the long-established Amnesty International”, fuel the demands for a ceasefire while aggressively tilting “the balance of moral advantage” from governments to insurgents who pose as victims worthy of being protected.

But as these insurgents’ “willingness to resort to systematic murder on a large scale in order to maintain their own power” shows, they “are fundamentally irreconcilable to any resolution of the conflict through a negotiated settlement”.

Blissfully ignoring that fact, Western governments hold to the “tragically mistaken” assumption that a pause in hostilities “can only have a positive or neutral impact”: “if it succeeds, it does good; if it fails, it does no harm”. The grim reality, however, is that the pauses have repeatedly acted as little more than a way of preventing a definitive military solution, condemning conflict zones to “forever wars” and bloodshed without end.

The ancients would not have been surprised. Diodorus, in one of the earliest compendiums of the laws of war, included the ­precept that a “truce may not be broken”; but precisely because respect for that precept required a degree of civilisation, and the trustworthiness that accompanies it, the Greeks thought there was no point in entering into truces with barbarians, who understood nothing but brute force.

And when Plato suggested, in The Laws, that the rules of warfare should apply equally to Greeks and barbarians, his contention was ridiculed as absurdly naive.

Now, the same Western governments that helped engineer one disastrous ceasefire after the other are placing mounting pressure on Israel to commit to a pause which would allow Hamas to regroup. They have, it seems, forgotten absolutely everything and learned absolutely nothing.

HENRY ERGAS 

Frank wrote on Dec 23^rd, 2023 at 3:01pm:


Of course: even Ben Gurion said he would not recognize Israel if he was an Arab.

Which proves the need for interntional law to adjudicate such conflicts.

Frank wrote on Feb 7^th, 2024 at 12:30pm:


er...remember my comment about an advancing human civilization?

International law - to which all nations are (nominally) signed up - has only existed since 1946.
Moslems certainly haven't conquered anything since then...

thegreatdivide wrote on Feb 7^th, 2024 at 1:11pm:

NorthOfNorth wrote on Jun 9^th, 2021 at 6:35pm:


No, its about international law after 1946.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Jun 9^th, 2021 at 6:35pm:


No, its about international law after 1946.