That's the question at the heart of a complicated debate between a variety of IHL scholars. The debate began with a legal opinion that Avi Bell submitted to the Knesset, in which he argued that nothing in international law prohibits Israel from cutting off the water and power it provides to Gaza. Although the opinion is dense -- and has been updated...
Libya's Foreign Minister, 21 May 2014: There is a complete absence of the army and the police [in Libya], which are responsible for the security of the state. Armed groups are not under control...
Diane Sawyer had a hard-hitting report tonight at ABC News on the recent hostilities between Israel and Palestine. The segment opens with her saying, “We take you overseas now to the rockets raining down on Israel today as Israel tried to shoot them out of the sky.” As she speaks, a video box next to her shows explosions on an urban landscape. Sawyer then...
What Israel-hating, Hamas-loving lefty said the following on Facebook? Dear friends: Take a few moments to read the following words and share them with others. I see the severe and rapid deterioration of the security situation in the territories, Jerusalem and the Triangle and I’m not surprised. Don’t be confused for a moment. This is the result of the policy conducted by...
I will be participating in a roundtable about Syria and international justice next Monday night at the LSE. It's free and open to the public, so I hope at least a few OJ readers will come. You can also send questions to the following hashtag: #LSESyriaICC. We will try to answer at least a few of them! Here are the event details: Syria...
Here he is, defending General Sisi, the new President of Egypt: This is a general, but a general who has studied in both the United States and the United Kingdom, so he is certainly someone who is familiar with the rule of law. Because everyone knows that you can't learn about the rule of law outside the West. Duh. PS. Abbott made his silly comment as a way...
I want to call readers' attention to a remarkable Israeli NGO, Breaking the Silence, which collects the testimony of Israeli soldiers about the brutalization of Palestinians during the occupation. Here is the NGO's self-description: Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to...
I had a good chuckle this morning when I read Libya's latest attempt to avoid complying with its obligation to surrender Saif Gaddafi to the ICC. (Which, of course, it may be genuinely unable to do, given that he's still being held in Zintan. But that's another story.) The source of my amusement is Libya's new excuse for not being able to...
Lawfare reports today on a study published in Political Science Quarterly about how ordinary Pakistanis view US drone strikes in their country. According to the post, the study "[c]hallenge[s] the conventional wisdom" that there is "deep opposition" among Pakistanis to drone strikes and that "the associated anger [i]s a major source of the country's rampant anti-Americanism." I don't have access to the...
There are many reasons to be skeptical of the Security Council referring the situation in Syria to the ICC, not the least of which is that an ICC investigation is unlikely to accomplish anything given the ongoing conflict. (One that Assad is almost certainly going to win.) But just in case that's not enough, take a gander at this provision...