Cheering Israel's lawlessness is a threat to Singapore's own survival

When Singapore won sovereignty over Pedra Branca at the International Court of Justice in 2008, the country celebrated. Rightly so. It was a genuine victory, achieved not through force but through law.

Malaysia and Singapore had agreed in advance to accept the ICJ's judgment as final and binding. The court ruled. Singapore prevailed.

And the lesson a small, vulnerable city-state surrounded by larger neighbours should draw from that outcome is precisely the one Singapore drew: that the international rules-based order works, and that small states have the most to gain from its integrity.

It is worth sitting with that lesson before cheering what Israel has done in Gaza and in international waters this week.

The rules do not choose sides

The ICJ is the same institution that issued an advisory opinion in July 2024 stating that Israel's continued presence in and control over Palestinian territories is unlawful and must end as rapidly as possible. It is the same institution whose authority Singapore invoked, and whose judgment Malaysia accepted, in the Pedra Branca dispute.

Israel disputes the advisory opinion's interpretation and rejects its binding effect. That is precisely the problem. You do not get to celebrate the ICJ when it rules in your favour and applaud its erosion when it rules against your preferred side.

The authority of the court is indivisible. Either its judgments carry weight, or they do not. There is no intermediate position that conveniently applies only when Singapore benefits.

When Israeli forces intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla approximately 268 kilometres off the Gaza coastline this week, they did so in international waters.

Israel argues the interception was lawful under blockade enforcement rules applicable during armed conflict. Critics, including multiple governments and international legal experts, dispute both the legality of the Gaza blockade itself and Israel's authority to enforce it against civilian vessels in international waters.

The governments of Italy, France, Germany, Canada, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Greece, and the European Union have all characterised what occurred as a violation of international law. This is not a fringe position. It reflects the view held by a substantial majority of UN member states and a broad body of international legal opinion.

What Singapore's hawks are actually cheering for

Some Singaporean commenters have dismissed the flotilla activists as criminals who placed themselves in harm's way. They have characterised concern for Palestinian lives as foreign activism irrelevant to Singapore. They have framed international legal consensus as bias.

What they have not done is think through what they are actually arguing for.

They are arguing for a world where powerful states can intercept civilian vessels in international waters without consequence. Where an occupying power can maintain a blockade that a substantial body of international legal opinion describes as unlawful, and enforce it against whoever it chooses. Where the advisory opinions of international courts are optional, to be respected or ignored depending on the political preferences of the state in question.

That is not a world that protects Singapore. It is the world that threatens it most acutely.

Singapore does not have the luxury of selective multilateralism

Singapore's entire strategic existence rests on legal norms that are weakened whenever powerful states selectively reject international legal constraints. Many governments and international institutions argue that Israel's actions this week are contributing to precisely that erosion.

The UN Charter's guarantee of sovereign equality. The law of the sea's protection of freedom of navigation. The principle that territorial disputes must be resolved through legal mechanisms, not force. The norm that larger states cannot simply absorb or coerce smaller ones. These are not abstract ideals for Singapore. They are existential guarantees.

Remove them, or allow them to be selectively applied based on which state has the most powerful friends, and Singapore's position in Southeast Asia becomes dramatically more precarious.

Singapore is a city of fewer than six million people, with no strategic depth, surrounded by neighbours considerably larger than itself. It has no oil, no minerals, and no agricultural hinterland.

What it has is a reputation as a state that plays by the rules, engages multilateral institutions seriously, and can be trusted to honour its legal commitments. That reputation is not incidental to Singapore's success. It is foundational to it.

Many Singaporeans have spent their entire lives under the protection of a functioning international order. They hold passports backed by recognised sovereignty, navigate globally protected sea lanes, and live in a country whose territorial disputes were resolved through binding legal mechanisms rather than force.

That security can create the illusion that such protections are natural or permanent. They are not. They exist only so long as states continue to believe that international law constrains power rather than merely decorates it.

The Pedra Branca ruling was possible because Malaysia, despite being the larger party, accepted that the ICJ's authority was binding. Singapore benefited from a world in which that acceptance was the norm rather than the exception.

Every time a powerful state demonstrates that international legal consensus can be defied without consequence, that norm erodes. And every erosion makes Singapore less safe.

Singapore cannot simultaneously celebrate ICJ authority in the Pedra Branca dispute, invoke UNCLOS protections in the South China Sea, champion a rules-based international order rhetorically, and then dismiss those same institutions entirely when politically inconvenient. That contradiction has a cost, and small states pay it first.

A matter of national interest, not sentiment

This is not a position that requires Singaporeans to look abroad for guidance.

Singapore's own Minister for Foreign Affairs, Vivian Balakrishnan, stated in Parliament on 22 September 2025 that Israel's actions in Gaza have "gone too far for too long," that the denial of humanitarian aid to civilians constitutes a breach of international humanitarian law, and that Singapore cannot recognise any unilateral annexation of occupied territory as it would be "a flagrant breach of international law."

Singaporeans cheering Israel's conduct this week are not being realists. They are being more hawkish than their own government.

This editorial is not an appeal to sympathy for Palestinians, though their humanity should require no argument. It is an appeal to Singaporean self-interest, plainly stated.

Singapore's neighbours are watching whether Singapore applies its stated commitment to international law consistently across geopolitical contexts. That is not a question of sentiment. It is a question of how Singapore is perceived as a partner in a region where it cannot afford to be seen as inconsistent.

The hawks cheering from their keyboards this week may believe they are being clear-eyed and unsentimental. They are being neither. They are cheering for a world that is measurably more dangerous for the country they live in.

International law is imperfect and unevenly enforced. But for small states, weakening it further is not pragmatism. It is self-harm.

Singapore's survival has always depended on the rule of law. That is not idealism. It is the cold arithmetic of small state existence. For Singapore, geography has always made that reality unavoidable.