UNDER the Geneva Convention, diplomatic missions are sacred territory. The world will have no moments of stability if the police of a host country can barge into a diplomatic mission. It becomes tit for tat and chaos ensues all over the world.

The police waited outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London for years waiting for Julian Assange to come out to arrest him because they could not go in. Diplomatic premises are foreign territory that come under the jurisdiction of the foreign government and not the host country. If a country sends a jet fighter over its neighbour’s territory to bomb a foreign mission then it is bombing that country’s property.

Amidst its six-month-old battles in the Gaza, Israel did the unthinkable and bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria killing 13 persons including people that had diplomatic status thus protected by the Geneva Convention. The bombing is by far the largest extension of the Gaza crisis so far. So why did Israel go in that direction.

The world has not been getting the cluster of hard facts about Israel’s presence in Gaza and the battles between Israel and Hezbollah. The Western media carry reports of Israeli causalities in Gaza and on the Lebanese border from reports issued to them from the Israeli army. But the reporting does not reflect the weakened position of the Israeli armed forces. A reliable source of the fighting in Gaza and on the Lebanese border is from the Hindustan Times out of India.

Israel has lost the battle in Gaza. To date, there are no captured Hamas fighters paraded for the world to see. To date, there have been no pictures of the top Hamas leaders who have been captured. What Israel has done in Gaza is the demolition of the Palestinian world in Gaza. They are simply targeting Gaza as a place where Palestinian live and are destroying the entire place.

It is vendetta for the incursion by Hamas militants in Israel on October 7. On the battle on the ground, Israel has suffered immense casualties but it cannot be reported because it would damage Israel’s credibility in the world (it is already damaged beyond repair) and generate low morale inside Israel. On the Lebanese border, the Israelis have suffered immense casualties too. But that cannot be reported because it would drive fear in the settlements near the border.

What Israel wants is a way out of its defeat in Gaza. The only alternative is to widen the war by dragging the Americans into it and they are about to do that. The American president has said, in anticipation of an Iranian attack, that the US is committed to protect Israel.

If Iran attacks Israel and the US responds, the story of Israel’s defeat in Gaza is removed from the world’s attention. Israel wants a war because it knows that the US would not stand by and allow Iran to pulverize Israel. The statistical differences between the two armies favour Iran.

Here is where international relations enter the picture and graphically so. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Western countries asked the world to condemn the Russia’s violation of international law. The Global South voted against Russia in the UN. During the war, the West kept pressuring the global South to be more proactive in condemning Russia.

It was in this situation, the Indian foreign minister became the darling of the Global South when he noted that Europe does not see the world’s problems as Europe’s problems, but Europe wants the world to see Europe’s problems as the world’s problem. Then came Gaza and the double standards in international relations were so ugly that the Ukrainians lost whatever solidarity the Global South had given.

In the West’s complete and emotional support for what Israel was doing in Gaza including Israel committing genocide, the Global South asked why it must continue to condemn Russia when the West supports genocide in Gaza. The testing point came when South Africa took Israel to the world court accusing it of genocide. All the Western countries rejected the South African accusation.

From here on, the justified plea of Ukraine got lost. Today, sound of Ukrainian plea is confined only to the Western world.
The world has arrived at a debating point. If Ukraine has a right to defend itself from an attack from Russia, isn’t Iran entitled to the same right? How can Israel bomb an Iranian diplomatic mission and Iran cannot and is not allowed to fight back? Why the right to fight back is only granted to the Ukrainians? If Iran fights back and the US enters the fray then you don’t need complex logic to educate you into the knowledge that certain countries have no rights under international laws.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.