Gaza’s devastation is both a humanitarian catastrophe and a crisis for Palestinian self-determination. Israel’s assaults show an international failure and pose questions for Gaza’s political future. In this interview, exclusive for CounterPunch, former UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk focuses on “collateral damage” (and the film, NAZA) and the future of occupied Palestine. Falk looks at the limits of international law and the political economy of occupation and addresses what it would take to move beyond documenting destruction. He discusses a political horizon grounded in promoting Palestinian dignity.
Further, Falk discusses the concept of an erased future, or futuricide, in Gaza. He explains this concept like that of political scientist Stéphanie Latte Abdallah, who brought the term into wider attention in the context of Gaza in Le Monde in 2024. Abdallah explained how collective punishment featured the systematic destruction of Gaza’s ability to determine its own collective future.
Daniel Falcone: In the recent documentary NAZA, the language of “collateral damage” raises an important question about how Palestinian death is normalized. One interviewee stated, “I never thought about what I was doing…these are orders; you must carry them out.”[1] What would it take to move beyond documenting atrocities/condemning violations of international law and move towards a political horizon where Palestinians can achieve self-determination?
Richard Falk: Both Human Rights Covenants, which are the bedrock treaty instruments of international law, have an identical Article 1 text affirming that ‘all peoples have the right of self-determination.’ This is itself of interest as they split into separate treaties when it came to the formulation of human rights reflected in the Cold War ideological confrontation. The first Covenant was devoted to ‘civil and political rights,’ reflecting the values and ideology of market-oriented liberal democracies, while the second Covenant was devoted to ‘social, economic, and cultural rights’ in accord with the values and ideology of socialist and communist governed countries.[2]
It is significant that one point of convergence was the common affirmation of the right of self-determination, perhaps responding to the pressures mounted by the decolonizing Global South. Despite this, the implementation of this right of self-determination has continued to be very uneven and has generally depended on the aspirant gaining such a right through resistance struggles rather than by compliance with the Covenant.
When encountering resistance to their goals of ethnic and exploitative control of political spaces, oppressors resort to all sorts of euphemisms to disguise their genocidal behavior. As NAZA points out, ‘collateral damage’ is a favored Israeli dismissal of criticism about the targeting of civilians (leading to genocide) and civilian infrastructure (leading to domicide) as an elaboration of the right to self-defense arising from the October 7 attack.[3] [In the film, IDF members stated, “We did what we did out of hatred and resentment…everyone is a Naza, even the infants.”][4]
Except in instances where geopolitical ambitions coincide with the pursuit of self-determination, the political will on the part of international society or geopolitical actors to enforce the right of self-determination is absent. There is also an ambivalence embedded in the UN Charter, which prohibits in Article 2(7) the UN from intervening in situations which are “essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”[5] Such forbearance expresses the Westphalian statist ethos of privileging territorial sovereignty.
Most of the sustained struggles to attain self-determination are internal to states, as was the case for instance, in the struggle of the African majority to challenge apartheid racism on legal, moral, and political grounds. The political organs of the UN did give symbolic and psychological support to anti-apartheid activism but stopped short of coercively challenging Pretoria’s sovereignty when it came to domestic governance.[6] With respect to Palestine, the situation would seem internationalized by Zionist tactics of genocide and ethnic cleansing, but Israel enjoys the support of three veto powers in the Security Council that block any anti-Israeli decision, thereby enabling the defiance of international law.
Such comprehensive impunity has allowed Israel to act in a radical fashion over the course of a century to deprive Palestinians of the right of self-determination in their own homeland, and yet at least until the transparent genocide experienced over the last three years, Israel suffered no adverse consequences from its denial of fundamental Palestinian human rights. Whether the growing perception of Israel as an outlier rogue state will alter this long period of impunity will depend on whether civil society activism is strong enough to coerce policy adjustments by Israel. It is presently unknown if this can lead to the abandonment of the settler colonialist framework.
Certain changes on the political horizon shaping Palestine’s destiny could produce a decisive difference in policy initiatives improving the prospects for justice and rights, but from the perspective of the present, it does not seem likely to occur. The most obvious critical change beneficial to Palestine would involve a reorientation of the U.S. relationship to Israel and the region, replacing the primacy of strategic ambition and partnership with support for a law and justice-oriented approach by Israel with respect to Palestinian rights. A second alteration of the political horizon, that would reinforce the resilience of the Palestinian commitment to self-determination, would be an abandonment of Zionist ideology by Israel, whether for internal or international reasons. This could help, if undertaken in a manner that makes Israel more receptive to peaceful coexistence options of living together as neighbors based on ethnic dignity and sovereign equality.
It would help if an authentically selected Palestinian leadership was credibly available to endorse such a benign shared future, perhaps preceded by an independently constituted binational Truth and Reconciliation Commission that acknowledges past wrongs and affirms a commitment to be guided in the future by submission to international law, including human rights. To be clear, although such a future would be highly beneficial for both parties, it is highly unlikely to materialize anytime soon, primarily because Israel is neither internally nor externally pushed to redefine its political identity in accord with the dictates of a durable and just peace process. Such a benign future is, at best, ‘a necessary utopia’ of which there are historical examples of fulfillment. They expose the fallibility of experts and rational analysis. Even if not acted upon, it does support an assessment that future expectations can be changed by unanticipated developments.
Of course, the more negative assessments of Palestinian prospects could be effectively challenged if the growing isolation of Israel as a rogue state gained substantial momentum by way of the peoples of the world. Gradually, a transnational civil society movement could produce a transformative change in South Africa. That consisted of the abandonment of apartheid and a transition to constitutional governance premised on ethnic equality and human dignity.
Daniel Falcone: Thinkers like anthropologist Jason Hickel challenge core economic systems organized around accumulation and resource extraction. How should we understand the relationship between “dependency theory” and global capitalism in occupied Palestine?[7]
Richard Falk: There is no doubt that Israel has exploited the resources and cheap labor of the occupied Palestinian population to create a situation of extreme economic dependency. This has been reinforced by the long-term blockade of Gaza and the appropriation of extensive agricultural land and water resources in the West Bank to bring high profits to Israeli capitalist ventures. In this sense, private sector militarism has reshaped Israeli connections with warmaking. It has further impacted geopolitics as global capitalism complements the political realist orientation for foreign policy elites.
The profound adjustment is a matter of a subtle disconnection of national security with real threats rather than with the creation of warmongering opportunities to earn profits, test innovations in weaponry and tactics, and refuse to adapt to the shifts in the balance of asymmetrical warfare — from the militarily superior side to the vulnerable side, that achieves victory in the legitimacy war that has led to controlling the eventual political outcome.
This explains recourse to a series of wars (of questionable relationship to Western national interests), particularly by the United States, ending up with political defeats despite military and battlefield dominance. The striking point is not the exposure of the limits of militarism but the refusal to adapt foreign policy, including national security interests to this lesson of past wars. The Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, and most recently, the Iran War (although not fully resolved yet) exhibited a version of this pattern. Somewhat alarmingly, the only adjustment has been increased investments in weapons innovations and combat tactics, despite the financial strain of increased military budgets to an astonishing peacetime high of $1.5 trillion, with side effects of increasing societal inequalities and societal dissatisfaction resulting in the scapegoating of immigrants and the repression of dissent.[8]
A further dimension is taking proper account of the extraordinary rise of China without relying on military intervention and conquest to extend its influence beyond its borders primarily by win-win economic relationships of mutual benefit. A major challenge for the Atlanticist West is to learn from China’s rise rather than to respond to its expansion as one more national security threat posed by an adversary that calls for a yet even larger military budget aggravating ‘affordability crises,’ fiscally unsustainable burdens, and the tendency to seek military solutions for political challenges.
A crucial takeaway from these concerns relates to the flexibility of neoliberal capitalism, further stressed by the reinforcing impacts of AI in a world of growing unmet non-traditional challenges of global scope. These include human rights violations, climate change, mass migration, and falling standards of living due to a wave of neo-Malthusianism assessments that treat a large portion of humanity as a ‘human surplus.’ This latter demographic turn is associated with AI and robotics, making a large percentage of national populations a non-productive burden if not dehumanized. [As featured in the film, NAZA, when the IDF remarks, “yes, it was easy to make the AI a partner in decision-making…we were listening to them day and night, it felt like you were a king as you eavesdropped on Palestinian conversations.”][9]
There is growing pressure to quietly abandon liberal democracy in favor of what Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor call ‘End Times Fascism’ in their recently published book arguing that the billionaire oligarchy is reconciling itself to an apocalyptic future by building bunkers for itself and allowing terminal catastrophes to achieve a desired downward adjustment of the size of the global human population.[10] Malthusianism is based on threats to demographic sustainability arising from population growth outpacing increases in agricultural output and generating increasing rates of starvation while causing frequent famines.
Daniel Falcone: With the Israeli national elections scheduled for October 27, 2026, attention might turn to whether a change of government can alter Israel’s genocidal campaign. How much can electoral change achieve?
Richard Falk: I have no hope that the outcome of the October elections will have any positive effects on Israel’s Gaza policy. Perhaps, the best outcome after Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement of Netanyahu’s candidacy would be for him to lose and Gadi Eisenkot to win the election and form a government by striking a coalition deal with political forces other than the ultra-religious right. This would be interpreted as a rebuff of Trump. Knowing of Trump’s inability to acknowledge defeats, whether military, political, even personal, such a rebuff could lead to a revision of American foreign policy priorities in the Middle East in ways displeasing to Tel Aviv. This is not likely to happen, in any form, that would have a beneficial effect on Palestinian struggle and lead Israel to adopt a transformed approach to Gaza’s future that was more balanced, less colonial, while not excluding Palestinian representation from the framework of arranging Gaza’s future.
A real change in approach by Israel would need to be deeper, and most obviously depend on an Israeli rejection of Zionism as its touchstone of governmental identity, when it comes to policy toward the Palestinians. This is a highly improbable development in the short run, given the outlooks of both leading candidates, further reinforced by Trump’s reassuring endorsement of Netanyahu, and his overall approach to regional stabilization. Even if Eisenkot should prevail, the resulting Israeli government would almost certainly remain dedicated to prolonging the unlivable conditions existing in Gaza until a substantial portion of the estimated two million Palestinians left in anguished frustration, or were pushed out, paving the way for Israeli sovereign reoccupation.
Palestinian sumud or resilience is certainly being severely tested by Israel’s almost daily violations of the October 10, 2025, ceasefire and so far, tolerated by the diplomatic monstrosity called ‘The Board of Peace,’ the centerpiece of Trump’s plan for Gaza’s future.
Daniel Falcone: You have cited the United Nations founding principles of sovereign equality and international peace. Is the Security Council’s power to veto substantive resolutions an existential barrier to peace in Palestine?
Richard Falk: The fundamental issue raised by the question is best understood in relation to the design of the UN entrusted to the winners of World War II in 1945. It was not established with an unambiguous commitment to the public good relating to war prevention. It was also made unrealistically dependent on responsible statecraft of the principal winners of World War II to uphold the vision of peace, justice, and development projected by the Preamble to the UN Charter. Reliance on prudence, designed above all to minimize the risks of major warfare, was not sufficient to ensure the winners of control of world order that they sought, or to induce the kind of restraint in the pursuit of strategic ambitions that responsible statecraft presupposed. The drafters of the UN Charter, for understandable reasons of self-interest, opted to give the winners control rather than giving priority to sovereign equality and international peace.
It is doubtful that the UN is susceptible to reform by voluntary action, particularly with respect to eliminating or even curtailing the right of veto. It may become feasible to add two or more countries from the Global South to make the geopolitical role in the UN less Western-dominated and more reflective of civilizational diversity in the world. From the perspective of present future horizons, the overall peace and justice roles of the UN seem to be diminishing with little geopolitical interest in reversing this trend. The UN Security Council unexpectedly supported Trump’s leadership with respect to shaping the future of Gaza in its nearly unanimous resolution 2803 of November 2025. It is most unusual, even unprecedented, to allow the perpetrators and enablers of major criminality to benefit diplomatically and materially from their wrongdoing. That is evident in this latest phase of the Gaza genocide.[11]
As the recent events in Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran have demonstrated, the veto has a paralyzing effect on the implementation of UN principles, including encouragement of the pacific settlement of international conflicts and the avoidance of all recourses to international force that fail to meet the strict standards of self-defense. The complicity of the leading Western political democracies is a definitive indication that despite the escalation risks of present military engagements, and the neglect of global ecological and technological challenges, there is no reason to believe that geopolitical management of global security will uphold reasonable, law-abiding standards of responsible statecraft.
Daniel Falcone: Molly Crabapple has recently written a wonderful book on the Jewish Labor Bund’s idea of doikayt (“hereness”) highlighting figures such as Vladimir Medem, Henryk Erlich, and Marek Edelman.[12] She argued that it is important to look at the alternative political traditions in which socialist Jews favored universal human rights over Zionism. How might this type of work help shape a better understanding of Palestine’s political horizon?
Richard Falk: I have not read Crabapple’s book. Based on what I have learned about the evolution of Zionist ideology, however, I have little hope that the ideological dominance found in Israel’s foreign and domestic policy can be transformed — even if by its reinterpretation from within through progressive thinkers or advocates of a binational state like Martin Buber and Albert Einstein. Liberation for Jews has been imagined in other ways, but the present stance of Zionism enjoys the backing of Israel’s mainstream, and a diverse elite consensus in total agreement regarding the continuing development of conditions. These link grandiose Zionist ideas about Israel’s destiny to Palestinian erasure and the pacification of regional threats.
There are fundamental tensions in Israel resurfacing around the deep conflict in policy and governance priorities between the secular core of Israeli society and its increasingly aggressive and influential religious ultra-right personified by such figures as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, but when it comes to Palestinian victimization and regional warmongering, there is scant space between the ultra-right and the Zionist future envisioned by Netanyahu/Eisenkot.
Even so, we can rule out some radical shift in the Zionist stance in the face of continuing isolation of Israel. It is internationally unpopular and being relegated to rogue status. What happened in South Africa in terms of regime change, however, is a reminder that in international history, the impossible can happen.
Daniel Falcone: In the context of Gaza, this brings us to consider futuricide, a term advanced by Stéphanie Latte Abdallah.[13] Is this concept somewhat similar in a legal/moral sense to ecocide or omnicide?[14] She states, “This erasure of people, places, the past, the traumatic effects on generations and the ecological disaster constitute a ‘futuricide’, when everything that allows us to envisage a future in Gaza has been targeted.”
Richard Falk: Futuricide is at the outer edge of normative speculative thought. While futuricide has no claim to being a binding norm, and obviously not an international crime, it does have excellent grounds to be considered a moral and political imperative that expresses an ethos of responsibility. The formulation of the UN Declaration of Responsibility of Present Generations towards Future Generations (1997) and the Declaration on Future Generations as adopted at the 2024 UN Summit for the future comes closest to a formal recognition of “futuricide” in the context of ecological responsibility. This came as an aspiration rather than any legal obligation.
We have reached a stage in the Anthropocene Age, where the menace of human activity has the capability to destroy the future life prospects, not only of the human species (omnicide), but of all living species and plant life. Responsible standards of governance should take this into account, at least to the extent of influencing public discourse and the adoption of the so-called ‘Precautionary Principle’ toward contemplated actions that contain environmental risks. This has been incorporated into several international treaties devoted to environmental protection but could be extended to other substantive areas.
There are illuminating comparisons with the origins and evolution of the idea of ecocide. It first gained attention as a combat tactic in the Vietnam War when the U.S. Government extensively used pesticides to remove plant coverage that concealed hostile activities of Vietnamese nationalist forces. Such toxic environmental encroachments also inflicted genetic damage to humans and animals exposed to the soil and water near contaminated vegetation. Ecocide was later employed as justification for opposition to environmentally destructive practices of corporations and private entrepreneurs.
Ecocide activists have lobbied vigorously for the adoption of norms that would enhance the weight of their public advocacy and influenced corporate actors to adopt policies more responsive to environmental norms. Those advocating more responsible corporate and governmental behavior through the concept of futuricide could improve upon the experience of opponents of ecocide.
Notes:
1. Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, dirs., NAZA (United Kingdom: The Guardian and JW Films, 2026), documentary film. ↑
2. United Nations, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted December 16, 1966, entered into force March 23, 1976, 999 U.N.T.S. 171, art. 6; United Nations, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted December 16, 1966, entered into force January 3, 1976, 993 U.N.T.S. 3, art. 11. ↑
3. Becky Sullivan, “What Is ‘Domicide,’ and Why Has War in Gaza Brought New Attention to the Term?” NPR, February 9, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/02/09/1229625376/domicide-israel-gaza-palestinians. ↑
4. Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, dirs., NAZA (United Kingdom: The Guardian and JW Films, 2026), documentary film. ↑
5. United Nations, Charter of the United Nations, June 26, 1945, 1 U.N.T.S. XVI, art. 2(7). ↑
6. United Nations, “The United Nations in South Africa: The UN—Partner in the Struggle against Apartheid,” accessed October 26, 2026, https://southafrica.un.org/en/about/about-the-un. ↑
7. National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), The BIG Thinkers: Leaving Certificate Politics and Society—André Gunder Frank, https://www.ncca.ie/media/2831/andre-gunder-frank.pdf. ↑
8. Steven Kosiak, “Trump’s $1.5 Trillion Defense Budget Request: Unhinged, Unaffordable, and Unnecessary,” Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, April 14, 2026, https://quincyinst.org/research/trumps-1-5-trillion-defense-budget-request-unhinged-unaffordable-and-unnecessary/. ↑
9. Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, dirs., NAZA (United Kingdom: The Guardian and JW Films, 2026), documentary film. ↑
10. Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026). ↑
11. United Nations Security Council, Resolution 2803 (2025), S/RES/2803, November 17, 2025, https://docs.un.org/S/RES/2803(2025). ↑
12. Molly Crabapple, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (New York: One World, 2026). Also see: Benjamin Balthaser’s Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left, where he looks at the radicalism of the American Jewish left, along with their own commitments to internationalism/anti-Zionism. ↑
13. Stéphanie Latte Abdallah, interview by Renaud Duterme and Manouk Borzakian, “À Gaza, futuricide en cours” [“Futuricide Underway in Gaza”], Géographies en mouvement, April 17, 2025, https://geographiesenmouvement.com/2025/04/17/a-gaza-futuricide-en-cours-entretien-avec-stephanie-latte-abdallah/. ↑
14. Chris de Ploeg, The Exterminating Empire: Capitalism’s War on Life from Palestine to the Burning Planet, foreword by Jason Hickel (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2026). ↑
No comments:
Post a Comment