BRICS and Palestine: From law in theory to action in practice

The reaffirmation of the two State solution and of a sovereign Palestinian State on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital is important.

The recent BRICS meeting in New Delhi deserves to be approached first with appreciation. India deserves sincere thanks for the hospitality, organization and diplomatic effort that went into hosting a gathering of such scale and diversity. The meeting also reflected India’s increasingly important role as a leading voice of the Global South and as one of its influential champions in international and multilateral diplomacy.

For Palestinians, there was much in the language adopted in New Delhi that deserves recognition. We appreciate India and the participating BRICS countries for preserving important principles concerning Palestine at a time when those principles are being subjected to an extraordinary test.

The reaffirmation of the two State solution and of a sovereign Palestinian State on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital is important. So too are support for Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations, support for UNRWA, the rejection of forced displacement and demographic or geographic changes in Gaza, the protection of holy sites, the demand for full and unhindered humanitarian assistance, and the reaffirmation of international law and relevant international judicial decisions. These are meaningful positions and should be acknowledged as such.

Words adopted collectively by important states help define what the international community accepts and rejects. They preserve principles against attempts to erase or normalize their violation. When such language comes from BRICS, representing a substantial part of the Global South, it carries particular political significance. But precisely because language matters, we must also confront its limitations.

The international community continues to operate largely with the same diplomatic vocabulary: we “call upon”, we “urge”, we “appeal”, we “demand”, and occasionally we “condemn”. Another violation occurs and essentially........

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