Search: palestine icc
07 Oct 15 Years Later: A History of the Forever War and the Laws of War (Part 1 of 2)
...effort to wage war. Clearly, this debate has a certain resonance with the ongoing controversies surrounding the tension between retribution and peace – think of the ICC’s intervention in Sudan, or that of Human Rights Watch in Colombia most recently. Strikingly, however, both experts seem to have a very selective – and problematic – understanding of the historically ambiguous, yet constantly changing relationship between the two fields of international law in wartime – jus in bello and jus ad bellum. In this post, adhering to Moyn’s call for a new...
14 Nov Doing Business in Illegal Israeli Settlements, the Dutch Way
...OPT, a small number of which she explicitly named in her July 2025 report (para. 8). As she compellingly argues, the economy of occupation in Palestine spans well beyond the settlements and encompasses a wide-ranging corporate-fueled process of displacement and replacement of the Palestinian population in the service of settler colonialism (para. 22). Relatedly, compliance by third states with the obligations identified by the ICJ in its 2024 Advisory Opinion requires more than taking measures in relation to settlements. In a resolution demanding compliance with the Advisory Opinion, the UN...
08 Jun Black Lives Matter, the USA and the UN Convention against Racial Discrimination
...ICERD. Articles 11-13 ICERD lay out the procedure, which applies to all State parties to the ICERD without the need for a declaration of consent to proceed. Such a practice was only exercised for the first time in 2018 where three inter-State communications were submitted: State of Qatar vs. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, State of Qatar vs. United Arab Emirates and State of Palestine vs. State of Israel (see here). The Committee initially decided to not take decisions due to “the legal complexity of the issues broached and a lack...
05 Apr Of Palestinian Liars and Israeli Saints: Confronting Anti-Palestinian Racism in International Law
...is for us to acknowledge that the epistemic injustice we have normalised has created conditions for the savagery Israel perpetrates today. “Dominant hearers must recognise that epistemic environments in which marginalised individuals can speak are notably few and dispersed and may constitute substandard spaces for these individuals to be heard.” The epistemic environment cultivated by international law has long been a hostile space and, judging by the ICC prosecutor’s tolerance for a mushrooming catalogue of war crimes, at least when Russia is not involved, it will remain so. In light...
15 Nov Israel’s Brazen Attack on Al-Haq – Troubled from Apartheid Charges, Armed with Terrorism Designations and Blessed by U.S. Silence
...and human rights activities, and its long-lasting constructive engagement with the ICC. Having a closer look at how Israel strategized its most recent attack, Al-Haq’s General Director, Shawan Jabarin’s statement only proves how anxious and desperate Israel is to obliterate the Palestinian CSOs: The recent allegations against Al-Haq and fellow organizations are a result of the Israeli failure to challenge the work of the organization on the basis of law or evidence, deciding instead to use its political power as an occupying colonial regime with the ability to create the...
23 May Development as Domination: Settler Tourism in Western Sahara and the Commodification of Occupied Territories in Trumpist International Law
...“homo homini lupus”) which masks as order its core logic of conquest and domination. Trump’s dystopian visions (from Greenland to Panama, from Eastern Ukraine to Palestine), constrained less by common values and normative commitments than by realpolitik considerations, do not so much disrupt the international order as they lay bare the underlying architecture that has long sustained it. As such, Morocco’s intensifying integration of Western Sahara into its economy, premised on landgrab and segregation and facilitated by European complicity and rhetorical appeals to “development”, reflects international law’s systemic inability to...08 Dec Weekend Roundup: December 1-7, 2012
This week on Opinio Juris, we continued a few conversations from last week. Kevin Jon Heller clarified his argument about the retroactive acceptance of the ICC’s jurisdiction, and challenged the assumption that Palestine was not a state before last week’s UNGA vote. Deborah Pearlstein advanced three reasons for the importance of Jeh Johnson’s recent speech on the conditions for calling an end to the war on terror. Continuing on the war on terror, Kevin expressed concern over the extension of US targeting policy in Afghanistan to “children with potential hostile...
28 Apr Symposium on Boyd van Dijk’s Preparing for War: Preparing for War – Demythologising the Post WWII Years and Charting the Untraveled Paths of CA3
...by the ICRC in February 1945, Dresden was being burned to ashes by Allied incendiary bombs. Equally, the drafting parties were shaping the conventions against the backdrop of the ongoing violence in Palestine, Indochina, Indonesia and Greece around 1947. Van Dijk’s challenging of this master narrative is timely, particularly when read against the backdrop of current armed conflicts in so many countries, including Ukraine, Syria, Yemen and Ethiopia. The book encourages a train of critical thought that is helpful, when reflecting on where we are, and how we got here....23 Aug Ruth Wedgwood on the Lockerbie Release, and the Politics of Security Council Resolutions
...served as a signature in the crime. Undaunted, Libya may still try to insinuate that it was some other group–say Iran, operating alone or through the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. That, of course, is not an especially exculpatory choice, since after their expulsion from Lebanon, parts of the Palestinian leadership took up residence in Libya. Second, and equally dismaying, Libya may read this triumph as a certified all-purpose “get out of jail free” card–absolving it of a broad swath of bad acts. With oil reserves at play...