Gaza has become more than a battlefield. It has become the world’s moral ledger, where promises of international law, civilian protection, and collective responsibility are audited in real time. What is unfolding is not merely a humanitarian disaster, though it is that on a staggering scale. It is also a stress test of the global order, and so far, the results are confronting.

I call this the collapse of instrumental multilateralism — a moment when international institutions function only to the extent the powerful allow them to, and Gaza exposes that instrumentality as a political choice, not a legal inevitability.

More than 71,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to figures collated by UN agencies and humanitarian organisations, with women and children forming the majority. Entire neighbourhoods have been levelled. Gaza’s health system has collapsed under repeated strikes on hospitals, electricity grids and water infrastructure. The numbers are no longer disputed; they are documented, verified and widely known. What is in question is not knowledge, but resolve.

Put another way: UNICEF warns that only 1 in 10 Gazans can currently access safe drinking water, the World Bank’s rapid damage assessment says restoring the economy could take over a decade, and UN analysts have warned that under a continued blockade reconstruction might stretch into centuries.

Around the world, Gaza is being read as a signal. From Southeast Asia to Africa and Latin America, it has become the reference point through which millions assess whether international law still functions as law, or whether it has been reduced to rhetoric, selectively applied. The principles invoked with conviction in Ukraine — sovereignty, territorial integrity, civilian protection — appear negotiable in Gaza. Ceasefire resolutions are vetoed. Accountability mechanisms are deferred. The message received is stark: the rules bend when the politics demand it.

The European Council on Foreign Relations and ODI have warned that this double standard is accelerating a collapse in Western credibility across the Global South. Polling by

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