In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Middle East

01 May

I have no desire to get into an argument with Eugene Kontorovich about the ostensibly "landmark" decision of a French intermediate court -- especially because, like him, I am far from fluent in French and the decision strikes me as quite legally complicated. But it is important to push back against claims like these (emphasis mine): This is an extraordinarily important holding in...

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25 Apr

New evidence that Syria has used chemical weapons against insurgents have spurred new calls here in the U.S. for military action in Syria.  Here is the LA Times (hardly an interventionist paper): An American or multilateral response should of course be proportional to the offense. That means considering whether chemical weapons were used against civilians or militants, and whether a "whole...

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16 Apr

An opinion piece in Al-Jazeera by an international lawyer who works with the Palestinians, John Whitbeck, reports some interesting comments by Fatou Bensouda about Palestinian ratification: During a public discussion held at the Academie Diplomatique Internationale in Paris on March 20, Fatou Bensouda, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, addressed the potential membership of Palestine in the ICC. During the...

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14 Mar

This according to a bizarre -- and bizarrely inaccurate -- article in the Jerusalem Post. How many errors can you find? An Israeli law firm on Thursday formally announced its request to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensada, to open a criminal investigation into violations by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and nine members of Hamas for war...

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03 Mar

[Sigall Horovitz is a PhD candidate, teaching fellow and Transitional Justice Project Manager at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a member of ALMA – the Association for the Promotion of IHL. A longer version of this op-ed appears on the website of the Israeli Democracy Institute (in Hebrew).] The Palestinians have threatened to complain to the International Criminal Court (ICC) about Israel’s settlement activities...

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03 Feb

We know what is stake at in Libya's admissibility challenge regarding Saif Gaddafi: either a fair trial at the ICC that will likely result in a lengthy prison sentence or an unfair trial in Libya that will almost certainly result in execution. Libya has done nothing to disguise the unfairness of its national proceedings, but it has generally pretended to...

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01 Feb

Nothing in the Human Right's Council's report is particularly novel; it's long been obvious that both the settlements and the transfer of Israeli civilians into the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Nevertheless, it's worth noting the report's most important conclusions: 100. The facts brought to the attention of the Mission indicate that the State of Israel has had full control of...

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29 Jan

Michael Lewis claims, in his very interesting post, that "it is fair to say that if Israel’s action in the 1967 war was justified by Article 51 (something that most states, if not most scholars, seem to agree with), then Article 51 'imminence' is broader than Caroline 'imminence'." I don't have time today to address that claim in any detail, but I...

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28 Jan

McClatchy reports that Israel now believes Iran will not be able to produce a nuclear weapon until 2015 or 2016.  That is progress of a sort; Netanyahu had previously been claiming that Iran would have the bomb no later than late summer 2013 -- around six months from now.  But Israel is still insisting that Iran is only two or...

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23 Jan

Pathetic: Ambassador Susan Rice objected Wednesday to the Palestinians' latest bid to capitalize on their upgraded UN status when their foreign minister spoke at Security Council while seated behind a nameplate that read "State of Palestine." It was the first Palestinian address to the Security Council since the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on November 29 to upgrade the Palestinians from UN...

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