[Joyce Claudia Choo was a fellow at the Department of Legal Affairs, UNWRA, during the 2024-2025 Gaza war. She has an LLM in international legal studies and LLB from NYU School of Law, where she was both a Transitional Justice Scholar and Lloyd N. Cutler Salzburg Fellow.] This post responds to Finkelstein and Votel’s January 2024 post at Just Security, which claims...
[Jinan Bastaki is an associate professor of legal studies at New York University, Abu Dhabi, and a visiting fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford] On the 19th of July 2025, Keir Starmer, the UK’s Prime Minister, threatened Israel with recognizing a Palestinian state if Israel did not end the ‘appalling situation’ in Gaza. While the UK is effectively...
[Dr. Mais Qandeel is an Associate Professor of International Law at Örebro University, Sweden. She holds a Ph.D. in international humanitarian law from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.] The Israeli ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is not disconnected from the killings, torture, forcible transfer by Israeli military and settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. It is...
[Konstantinos Deligiannis-Virvos is a PhD Research Fellow with the Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea (NCLOS) at the Law Faculty of The Arctic University of Norway (UiT)] On 9 June 2025, the UK-flagged ship Madleen (officially the Barcarole), operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, was intercepted by Israeli forces on the high seas, approximately 100nm from Gaza. Twelve activists onboard were arrested,...
[Melanie O’Brien is Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Western Australia, President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and Visiting Scholar with the Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota Law School.] Many people are asking the question, ‘is genocide happening in Gaza?’. The question was explored in the media in the early days after 7 October 2023...
[Yaser Salarain is a lawyer and international law expert at the School of International Relations, Tehran] The protracted conflict in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) has consistently tested the limits of international humanitarian law (IHL) and, more specifically, the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (GCIV). Despite repeated UNGA resolutions and diplomatic initiatives,...
[Paola Gaeta is a professor of international law at the Geneva Graduate Institute and director of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. Dr Etienne Henry is an independent legal consultant and a lecturer in international humanitarian law at the University of Neuchâtel, whose recent work includes contributing to the Geneva Academy’s research project IHL in Focus.] The weaponization...
[Benazir Jatoi is a human rights lawyer from Pakistan currently living in Bath, UK. She has worked as a consultant with UNFPA and UNWomen, Pakistan.] A buried mobile phone, along with its owner, Refat Radwan, in a shallow sand grave has settled, at least one thing we have been debating for a while. That Israel’s Defence Force operates with immunity until...
[Kate May is an LLM international human rights law and practice student at the University of York] As Palestinian scholar Nabulsi warned over ten years ago, “Israel is seeking to annihilate an educated Palestine.” The devastating impact of educational destruction in Palestine has reached unprecedented levels, and this extended crisis has left children without formal education for over a year and...
[Anna-Christina Schmidl is a legal advisor and Eitan Diamond is a manager and senior legal expert, both in the Israel & Palestine team with the IHL Centre] Introduction The smashed city stretched to the frozen river. International law prohibited the targeting of medical facilities, which explained why, in a city where eighty percent of freestanding structures had been flattened, the hospital still...
[Neve Gordon is a professor at the School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences and the former Chair of the British Society of Middle Eastern Studies’ Committee on Academic Freedom. He is the author of Israel’s Occupation (University of California Press 2008) and co-author of The Human Right to Dominate (Oxford University Press, 2015), Human Shields:...
[Neve Gordon is a professor at the School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences and the former Chair of the British Society of Middle Eastern Studies’ Committee on Academic Freedom. He is the author of Israel’s Occupation (University of California Press 2008) and co-author of The Human Right to Dominate (Oxford University Press, 2015), Human...