Image by Dylan Shaw.

On February 22, 2024, China’s Ambassador to The Hague, Zhang Jun, uttered the unexpected.

His testimony, like that of a number of others, was meant to help the International Court of Justice (ICJ) formulate a critical and long-overdue legal opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Zhang articulated the Chinese position, which, unlike the American envoy’s testimony, was entirely aligned with international and humanitarian laws.

But he delved into a tabooed subject—one that even Palestine’s closest allies in the Middle East and Global South dared not touch: the right to use armed struggle.

“Palestinian people’s use of force to resist foreign oppression and complete the establishment of an independent state is an inalienable right,” the Chinese Ambassador said, insisting that “the struggle waged by peoples for their liberation, right to self-determination, including armed struggle against colonialism, occupation, aggression, domination against foreign forces should not be considered terror acts”.

Expectedly, Zhang’s comments didn’t reverberate much further: neither governments nor intellectuals, including many on the left, used his remarks as an opportunity to explore the matter further. It’s far more convenient to assign Palestinians the role of the victim or the villain. A resisting Palestinian—one with agency and control over his own fate—is always a dangerous territory.

Zhang’s remarks, however, were situated entirely within international law. Thus, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to discuss the topic in a recent interview we conducted with Professor Richard Falk, a leading scholar in international law and former UN Special Rapporteur for........

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