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........

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