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International Law: A Tool of Imperialism?
An Interview with Sara Troian on International Law’s Colonial Roots and Role in Enabling Genocide in Palestine
The Israeli genocide in Palestine—backed by the West and live-streamed before the eyes of the world over the past two years—is not an exceptional episode in Palestinian history. What has unfolded since October 7, 2023, is part of a much longer trajectory of dispossession, displacement, and genocide targeting the Palestinian people and their land, dating back to the 19th century.
The scale of atrocities committed in Gaza has prompted waves of global condemnation and acts of solidarity. Within this context, international law has repeatedly been invoked as a potential tool to end the genocide. Yet, despite South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the issuance of international arrest warrants against Israeli political and military leaders, the genocide continues unabated.
[comra] spoke with Sara Troian, a PhD Scholar in the Department of Law and Criminology at Maynooth University, whose research explores the relationship between international law, settler colonialism, and liberation in Palestine.
In this interview, we discuss the role of international law as a mechanism of imperial power—how it has been used to legitimize and sustain a colonial and capitalist order in Palestine, and the rest of the world, rather than dismantle it. Troian argues that international law cannot serve as a tool for Palestinian liberation because it has historically enabled, legalized, and strengthened the intersection of Zionism and imperialism in Palestine.
We also examine the recent moves by Western powers to recognize the so-called “Palestinian State,” unpacking how such gestures ultimately serve to preserve the structure of Zionist settler colonialism rather than dismantle it.
[comra]: Could you explain the colonial foundations of international law? How do these foundations continue to shape contemporary international relations and perpetuate the systems of power and privilege associated with the Global North?
Sara Troian: International law emerged around 500 years ago to regulate the discovery of the “New World.” Precisely, it started to develop to sanction the enslavement of millions of Africans, the conquest of new lands “discovered” by European nations, and the subjugation of Indigenous peoples living in these newly “discovered” and conquered lands. International law served to legitimize all these practices, as well as to mediate the competing interests and ambitions of territorial expansion among European states.
There are a few foundational works of international law from the so-called founding fathers of the discipline, such as Francisco de Vitoria and Hugo Grotius, which exemplify this dynamic. They developed a concept called “natural law,” whereby they established a “standard of civilization” based on European benchmarks, to advance territorial conquest and the oppression of non-European peoples.
In this framework, the so-called “civilized” had the right to conquer, while the “uncivilized”—a term used to describe Indigenous peoples—were to be enslaved, exploited, subjugated, and even subjected to genocide for the purpose of developing these new territories. Any form of resistance by these peoples against European encroachment on their lands was labeled as “uncivilized” and gradually became synonymous with “savagery and terrorism.”
The “standard of civilization” consisted of the institutionalized power to colonize. From 500 years ago to today, international law has evolved and adapted to the different historical phases the world has witnessed. When I say “evolved,” I mean it has adapted to new forms and methods of colonialism.
The system we live in—regulated by international law—was, in fact, designed, defined, and established by Western colonial states. This happened in a moment when, in the aftermath of World War II, more than three-quarters of the world was still waking up under the yoke of colonial rule.
All the norms that emerged from World War II were rooted in the maintenance of colonial interests and imperial domination, with the purpose of institutionalizing these modes of power.
The United Nations emerged as a super-partes institution tasked with guaranteeing the universality of law and justice. However, both in explicit and more subtle ways, we still see the persistence of colonial ideology—and colonial practices—within international law.
For instance, the UN Charter enshrines the Trusteeship System, legitimizing a structure that allowed colonial powers to administer their colonized nations under the pretext that they needed help to develop and reach Western standards.
Then there is the configuration of the UN Security Council, the only UN body with the authority to make binding decisions. It is composed of 15 members: five permanent and ten rotating. The permanent members—France, the US, Britain, China, and Russia—are the so-called winners of the Second World War. The UN Security Council is ultimately managed according to the competing imperial interests of these superpowers. It lends itself to their agendas and has little to do with fairness or equality.
The “standard of civilization” coined by De Vitoria and Grotius 500 years ago has simply evolved into new dichotomies: first, the myth of the “developed” versus the “underdeveloped”; then “democratic” versus “undemocratic,” or “liberal” versus “non-liberal.”
These frameworks and epistemologies, rooted in Western notions of democracy, development, and capitalist liberalism, have been used to justify violence outside of Europe—always under the guise of missions to bring “democracy,” or “capitalist development.” The material function of these dichotomies—and the logic behind them—remains unchanged: to entrench colonial domination and preserve the imperial interests of superpowers.
At the same time, we did witness a wave of so-called decolonization. From the 1950s to the 1970s, many formerly colonized nations gained formal independence. As they entered the international arena and became members of the UN, they began using their presence to advance their own interests—often positioned in direct opposition to capitalism and liberalism.
In 1955, the Bandung Conference brought together colonized nations, allowing them to create a shared agenda to push forward within international forums. This eventually led to the UN General Assembly resolution granting independence to colonial countries—commonly known as the “UN Friendly Declaration”—which, notably, was voted against by all Western powers.
We also see the mention of collective rights in the human rights covenants codified in 1966, including the recognition of self-determination not only as an individual right but as a collective one. Here, self-determination became the legal articulation of freedom and liberation from colonialism.
However, this entire process was ultimately co-opted. Imperial powers interfered in these transformations to reframe international law, symbolically creating the appearance of change while continuing to protect and preserve their own material interests.
The right of self-determination, as mentioned earlier, epitomizes this contradiction. While it was framed as a universal right, the legal definition that was adopted and codified followed a Wilsonian approach focused primarily on sovereignty—rather than a Leninist approach, which originally emphasized the economic dimensions of freedom, not just its political aspects. In fact, Lenin was the first to articulate the concept of self-determination in relation to economic liberation.
The version of self-determination enshrined in the current international legal system, then, serves more as a rhetorical strategy—one that ultimately obstructs the very purpose it claims to advance. Political independence may have been achieved, but the economies of formerly colonized nations remain dependent on the global capitalist structures that facilitated their subjugation in the first place.
Principles associated with economic freedom—such as sovereignty over natural resources—were introduced, but their emancipatory potential was quickly undermined by Western powers who insisted on legal doctrines like the sanctity of acquired rights and the internationalization of investment contracts. These Western doctrines have ensured that former colonial powers retained economic dominance by preventing newly independent states from exercising regulatory control over their own resources. Instead, external financial institutions—largely Western—were positioned to maintain economic control.
This is reflected not only in how the world has developed since then, but also in what was happening at that very moment—when the right to self-determination was being codified and numerous nations were gaining independence.
During this period, the US actively sponsored military coups against anti-colonial leaders—not only those advocating for political independence, but specifically those embracing Marxist approaches to liberation and promoting a Leninist conception of self-determination that linked political sovereignty with economic liberation.
From the 1950s onward, we witnessed the assassination of leaders like Mossadegh in Iran, Lumumba in the Congo, and Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana.
So, both at the conceptual and practical levels, we clearly see the limits of the decolonization wave—a process that was ultimately manipulated to block the realization of true independence and replace genuine sovereignty with continued imperial control and economic dependence.
[comra]: Can you explain how Israel’s colonial existence has been normalized within international law? What precedents does this set for the protection and legitimization of colonial power dynamics?
Sara Troian: I will go back to 1947 when the UN passed Resolution 181, also referred to as the “partition resolution” or the “partition plan”. This resolution partitioned Palestine into two states, a Jewish state and an Arab state, with the idea of solving the Palestinian problem.
Resolution 181 allocated 56% of Palestine, including 85% of agricultural land, to European Jewish settlers, who in 1947 controlled only 7% of Palestine, most of which they had seized illegally. Additionally, the resolution relegated the economic aspects of the new Arab state to the Jewish state, forcing Palestinian communities into dependency on the economic system of Jewish settlers who were usurping and stealing their land.
This resolution marked a sort of connection between two eras, because it turned Zionism from a colonial project in the making into a legalized political reality, sanctioning its ideology and past practices, and laying the ground for its future development. At the same time, for Palestinians, the resolution formed the constitution of a perpetual limbo of refugeehood, violence and disenfranchisement.
The effects are still manifested today within the international system. That 56% that was to be allocated to the Jewish state became 78% by the will and the military force of Zionist militias.
This reality became a fait accompli, in the sense that the term “Palestine” has since been used in the international system to refer only to the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, which together comprise merely 22% of historic Palestine.
And we see this continuously in the UN language, in the news, and in resolutions and judgments that the UN system produces. We’ve had for the past 30 years, a UN special rapporteur on the so-called Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, which is again that 22% of Palestine.
We have International Court of Justice judgments that are about Israel’s occupation of Palestine, which, again, is just intended as the 22%. The UN progressively limited both the geographical focus of Palestine to the territories that Israel seized in 1967, but also temporarily, because it never allowed, and it never really manifested into a real investigation into what led to 1967.
The fact that the majority of the demographic composition of Palestine was not invited to the Resolution 181 table paved the way for this hegemonic structuring of decision-making after World War II.
This represents a clear mode of colonial administration, where the fate of the “Other” is determined by those who view them as inferior, according to European and Western standards. The will of Indigenous peoples has been systematically ignored, and UN Resolution 181 exemplifies this dynamic. It reinforced the colonial logic whereby it is the victors who make the rules, but also those who arbitrate history and control the narrative.
At the global level, Resolution 181 legitimized settler colonialism. It codified settler colonialism as an enduring component of the international normative system.
[comra]: Why has international law not proven to be an effective tool in ending the Palestinian genocide and, even before that, the colonization of Palestine? Does international law even have mechanisms that could be implemented to stop genocides? If so, why have they not been applied in Palestine?
Sara Troian: International law has mechanisms to not just stop but even prevent genocides. It has the convention on the prevention and punishment of genocide as well as a lot of other treaties and norms that should prevent so-called atrocity crimes, which includes genocide, torture, crime against humanity and war crimes; it has international courts that are tasked to deliberate on either the responsibility of states in perpetrating genocide, as well as the responsibility and role of complicit states in aiding and abetting genocide; it has also courts like the International Criminal Court that is tasked to prosecute individuals who directly carry out crimes like genocide; and there is a general prohibition of atrocity crimes and genocide.
On the one hand, these mechanisms have been applied. We have seen a case brought forth by South Africa against Israel before the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocide. We have seen how the genocide has finally broken the paralysis of the International Criminal Court to finally have arrest warrants against Israeli criminals.
The first problem is that international law lacks an implementation mechanism beyond court judgments and UN resolutions. It is up to the states to implement these decisions using their own forces. This leads to a second problem: international law remains at the mercy of political power, will, and interests.
We need to look at the material realities underlying both the genocide and the colonization of Palestine. Israel is an offshoot of Western imperialism. Its function is to serve the economic and capitalist interests of the West. It has always been supported—and in many ways mothered—by European empires. Initially, it was the British Empire that, beginning in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration, institutionalized the alliance between Zionism and imperialism. As the global balance of power shifted after World War II and the US took over the imperial hegemony from Britain, a rapid and deepening alliance formed between the US and Israel. Today, the two are mutually constitutive: Israel, as it exists now, serves US foreign interests.
This is why the mechanisms that technically and theoretically exist to prevent or stop genocide have never been applied—because there was no political will. It is in the interest of the US to maintain Israel where it exists today, due to the geopolitical importance of the Middle East, which gained more and more relevance since the 50s and 60s as the fossil fuel industry became the dominant energy sector and a source of capital.
Regarding colonization, it is a bit different because there is no definition of colonialism in international law, let alone a criminalization of this practice.
Everything that regards colonialism is sort of fragmented through many legal instruments and definitions—intentionally. Because international law emerged and developed as an instrument to uphold and protect colonialism and imperial domination. It is not in the interest of international law to criminalize—to indict—the very practice that it was born to protect and to preserve.
Legally, we cannot even pinpoint colonialism or colonization. We can, we have like its attributes. We have occupation, apartheid, racial discrimination, and denial of self-determination, which are all prohibited practices under international law. This is a fragmentation through many levels of the legal structure of the root cause, which is colonialism. Without being able to address the root cause, there is very little that international law can do.
What we’ve seen over the past two years is a shift in how Israel and the West have been using international law. Before the genocide began, they would appeal to international law to justify their practices in Palestine, invoking concepts like the right to self-defense, security, and so on. They were instrumentalizing international law to secure international legitimacy.
Around this, all the institutions tasked to arbitrate legal aspects—such as the Red Cross, UNRWA, and many NGOs—acted not only as witnesses, but also as enablers of how the relationship with international law was orchestrated to legitimize Israel’s violence.
Now, international law has been progressively abandoned completely and is not even weaponized. It’s been completely bypassed and ignored. Israel no longer seeks to hide, to veil its actions behind international legal excuses, but it’s openly breaking and eroding the language and structure that it used to use to mask its violence.
[comra]: Is resistance legitimate within a framework of colonial oppression? Could October 7, if viewed as an anti-colonial uprising, be legitimized under international law?
Sara Troian: The right to resist under colonial oppression, as well as under alien occupation or under racial regimes, is codified in international law.
It emerged during the decolonization era, and it was reaffirmed by many UN General Assembly resolutions, starting from the end of the 1960s until the 1980s, and then it was properly codified into a treaty, the Additional Protocol 1 of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions.
The formerly colonized nations were pushing for the right to self-determination to be properly enshrined in international law, instead of just staying under the more vague and less legally binding UN General Assembly resolutions. Like with every treaty, there were negotiations. And, of course, the usual imperial powers used their economic strength to impose limits on how this right would be codified.
This is the problem, as legally it prevents us from even saying “anti-colonial uprising” and from defining October 7 as such. The main problem is that the right of armed resistance imposed a legal asymmetry between colonizers and the colonized, putting them into the same category of obligations. The same legal constraints regulate the resistance of colonized people against the state militaries that are oppressing them.
All the material and historical conditions of colonial oppression are completely obscured, and the power dynamics that define the colonial relationships from which resistance is born are completely flattened.
Additionally, by codifying the right to armed resistance and therefore creating all of these obligations on the resistance, it grants a legal instrument to colonial powers to criminalize and dehumanize anti-colonial resistance. For example, one of the principles that regulates resistance is that of distinction, which is, on paper, intended to protect civilians. This principle is applied “equally” to the colonizer and the colonized without considering how colonial regimes themselves blurred the lines between military and civilian targets. And it does not address the inherent violence of colonization itself.
There is also a prohibition of certain weapons that limits the ability of those resisting colonial rule to defend themselves by restricting their means of self-defense, while the colonizer’s superior military capabilities remain untouched. Within this framework of prohibitions, by insisting on precision targeting, Palestinian rockets are automatically deemed inherently indiscriminate, and therefore illegal—subject to criminalization. Israel’s weapons arsenal remains legal as long as it is “proportionate.” The military strength of the colonizer not only remains intact but is systematically privileged.
How the right to armed struggle has been codified epitomizes two key aspects of international law. First, it fails to account for power dynamics. And second, all the legal transformations that took place during the decolonization era—while they redefined violence, history, and nature—did not challenge the existing power structure. Instead, they reinforced the colonizer’s authority to define humanity, positioning it as the arbiter of who could be considered human. This power then translates into a continued monopoly over both legal definitions and the use of violence.
[comra]: Why do Western powers seem to be rushing to legitimize a Palestinian state when there is no real foundation on the ground for it?
Sara Troian: It’s necessary to take a material approach to this question, because it’s crucial to consider when, how, and—above all—whom all this talk and recognition of a Palestinian state is actually serving.
It serves Zionism, Israel, and the Western Empire. The recognition of a Palestinian state is presented as the solution, but what it actually does—and is intended to do—is undermine social trust in the resistance movement.
It aims at displacing the Palestinian resistance, as the representative of Palestinians, with an artificial and complicit entity that is designated to, on one hand, erase the revolution and, on the other hand, entrench Israel’s domination. By doing so, the surrender of the whole Palestinian people to their own colonizer becomes very easy.
This campaign for the recognition of Palestine as a state—within the 22% of land that the international system recognizes as Palestine—is a genealogical continuation of the partition of Palestine.
This is another long-term effect of Resolution 181 and of the colonial foundations of international law.
Because, at the end of the day, what this recognition does is refer to the two-state solution as a legitimate outcome—one that not only fails to challenge the existing colonial power dynamics but also ignores the settler-colonial foundation of Palestinian dispossession, which has led to the ongoing genocide.
It treats the settler colonization of Palestine as legitimate, and it seeks to legitimize this reality from the outside, while also pressuring Palestinians themselves to endorse and accept the legitimacy of their own colonization.
As I mentioned, this has been a gradual process—one that began in 1947 with the partition of Palestine through Resolution 181.
And then it was taken to a new level with the Oslo Accords, which further entrenched Zionist settler colonialism—always under the rhetoric of solutions, peace negotiations, and salvation. With this strategy, the rights and existence of Palestinians residing within the 1948 borders, as well as the Palestinian refugees’ right of return, are completely abandoned.
Lastly, it entirely gives up all the terms of reference that the Palestinian liberation movement has historically articulated. The vocabulary of liberation and anti-colonialism has been completely dropped. The land and its people are effectively sold in the interest of “peace and security” for the colonizers.
This recognition secures and protects Western interests in Palestine, which are mediated through Israel and its existence. Furthermore, it formalizes the colonial relationship between Israel and Palestine through the creation and reinforcement of the Palestinian Authority (PA). This entity, which continues to be presented as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, is in reality an intermediary of colonial power and interests.
Talks about reforming the PA and extending its control over Gaza once again just reinforces Israel’s architecture of settler-colonial violence.
[comra]: How has Israel succeeded in promoting its “pre-emptive security measures” within international legal frameworks? What strategies does Israel employ to normalize the execution and assassination of Palestinians and others who resist Israeli colonial violence?
Sara Troian: I would say that Israel consistently relies on two key legal categories.
On the one hand, there is UN Resolution 181. This resolution serves as a sort of legal constitution for Israel. Whenever Israel, or its Western allies, needs to justify its existence in the region, they often refer back to Resolution 181.
The second is the “right to self-defense.” This is profoundly paradoxical: Here we have a colonial power that is occupying, dispossessing, and committing genocide against an Indigenous population—claiming self-defense against that very population. But this paradox is not an anomaly. It is, in fact, entirely mainstream. It is characteristic of colonial and imperial systems, which are built on and function through contradictions.
We have this language of securitization, terrorism, and self-defense, all of which highlight the colonial continuity embedded in the international legal system. Five hundred years ago, during the so-called “discovery” of the Americas, the Indigenous peoples were also labeled as terrorists, against whom European colonizers claimed they had to defend themselves. The justification was that these people and their lands needed to be “civilized.”
Today, this same civilizing mission is mirrored in Israel’s depiction as “the only democracy in the Middle East”—a democracy that is, paradoxically, also defined as a Jewish state. Again, a contradiction.
So, beyond legal arguments based on international law, there is also an appeal to European and Western morality—deeply entangled with colonialism, capitalism, and economic interests. As I mentioned before, it’s important to understand the geopolitical significance of Palestine in order to grasp the persistence of Israel’s violence and the intentional unwillingness of Western states to apply the very laws they themselves have codified—on paper—against Israel.
[comra]: After two years of genocidal war in Gaza, should one still believe in the role of international law?
Sara Troian: No, but I would say that even before these past two years, I did not. We need to understand the ongoing genocide as the natural continuation of a process that began more than 100 years ago—a systematic erasure, dispossession, and exile of Palestine and of its people. International law has always existed to uphold and legitimize this architecture of erasure—by defending it legally, by providing tools for Israel and its allies to justify these actions and agendas.
I do not believe in the role of international law as an arbiter of justice. I believe international law functions as a hegemonic tool of social control—one that ultimately renders liberation impossible. Through its reference to “human rights” and its distinction between the legal and the non-legal, it abstracts politics and power from their material realities. It treats these forces as if they exist outside the realm of law, thus failing to challenge the entrenched power structures that produce so-called human rights violations in the first place.
By promoting a framework of formal equality, international law legitimizes and perpetuates global capitalism, exploitation, imperialism, and oppression. Its colonial foundations have neutralized the fundamental relationship between colonizer and colonized by drowning it in an endless discourse of “both sides”—a discourse that, in material terms, always favors the more powerful.
Even though the law has evolved over time, it continues to reproduce these dynamics—simply under new names and guises. The rearticulation of legal norms, narratives, and language in the decolonization era was nothing more than co-optation. Imperial powers reshaped and neutralized anti-colonial demands by incorporating them into legal frameworks that served their interests. As former Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah described, this transition marked the shift from colonialism to neocolonialism—where formal independence was granted, but deeper forms of control, particularly economic, were entrenched.
International law, in this context, operates as a form of counterinsurgency. It confines the possibilities for genuine liberation within boundaries acceptable to dominant powers. The proliferation of human rights discourse and the constant resort to international mechanisms overshadow the strategies, visions, and political agency of liberation movements. These movements are either reduced to victimhood—if they are recognized at all—or criminalized as terrorism.
At the end of the day, international law is a tool of the enemy—if we understand imperialism as the enemy.
It offers nothing that leads to true emancipation. Instead, it reinforces the very structures of oppression it claims, on paper, to dismantle.
It enables colonial and imperial powers not only to continue thriving but also to dehumanize colonized peoples—portraying them as incapable of adhering to legal principles, and therefore in need of education or civilizing. Under the parameters of international law, anti-colonial wars of liberation become completely impossible.
To close, I’ll reference the Palestinian revolutionary Basel al-Araj, who insisted that decolonization and material liberation from imperialism require a radical exit from international law and the global system it regulates.