As 2026 begins, the events of the past year demand more than remembrance — they require reckoning. Throughout 2025, Gaza did not simply endure another chapter of devastation; it became the most uncompromising mirror of the contemporary global order. What unfolded over those twelve months was not only sustained violence, but the exposure of a deeper truth: the fragility of a system that claims to be governed by law, morality, and universal norms.

By the end of 2025, Gaza was no longer discussed merely as a humanitarian catastrophe — that reality was beyond dispute. The more unsettling question concerned what Gaza revealed about how global power actually operates when legal principles collide with strategic interests. The answer was increasingly difficult to avoid. The international system was not malfunctioning; it was behaving precisely as its historical design allowed.

One of the defining features of 2025 was the relentless invocation of international law alongside its systematic neutralisation. Courts issued provisional measures, UN agencies released urgent warnings, and diplomatic language remained saturated with expressions of concern. Yet none of these mechanisms altered the lived reality of Palestinians in Gaza. Law was visible, but protection was absent.

This contradiction is not accidental. Since its post–Second World War emergence, international law has rested on a structural tension between universal principles and unequal power. While it promised restraint, it never fully escaped the dominance of those capable of enforcing — or........

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