I don't see complexity and long resolution times as necessarily indicative of a failed, flawed or ineffective process. The important aspect is that no one is seen as "above" the process that everyone else must likewise abide by. The largest issue with international law is the enforcement of the rulings and findings. I'm wondering if a more official connection between the World Court proceedings and the enforcement responsibilities of the Security Council would add some more teeth to such processes?
Therein lies the rub. While many hold Israel to the letter of the law, a much less stringent standard is applied to its enemies. Allowing Libya on the UN Committee for Human Rights is a great indication of the interplay of dark interests with legal opportunism at the UN. The Security Council itself is based on balancing power and conflicting ideologies, and decidedly not on achieving a fair and balanced roll-out of the rule of international law.
This regional conflict is, for many of the players and by their own repeated declarations, first and last a religious war. This is not a question of redrawing simple nation-state boundaries, and the very legitimacy of nation-states is under question. Conquest of Jerusalem and its subjugation to Islamic rule is the number one, unchanging objective of many in the Muslim world, as they so often explicitly make abundantly clear: a never-ending, do-or-die crusade. (This applies fully to Iran, and gives the lie to their public posturing about nukes.)
If you are concerned with human rights and law, you have clear work cut out for you in terms of the legal systems in place across the region, which enshrine profound bigotry and sentence innocents with death. Seriously, just how do you reconcile the consistent, intentional, legally prescribed, grotesque violation of human rights in Muslim countries with arguments in favor of unleashing that same anti-modern extremism on the borders of Israel, without sufficient condition? You do see the missiles raining in from wherever they can be placed, whenever there is any opportunity, don't you?
The false equivalence is between theocratic and democratic principles. Politically correct notions about respect for religious belief, regardless of its illiberal anti-democratic content, is the source of the myopic loss of gonads.
There is a double standard at work alright, and you have it entirely, 100% backwards. Peace in the ME? Islam must drop its claims, and lower all weapons, then we can talk. That is, assuming one believes anything a subscriber to
al-darura tubih al-mahzurat says
("Necessity overides the forbidden;" aka to lie, cheat, steal, break oath, murder, ambush and divide the spoils is 'righteous' if this advances Islam. Some 'religion,' that! More like hate speech and mafia doctrine than anything approaching 'holy.' Ridiculous! No respect.)
