Amnesty International accuses Israel of illegally using white phosphorus in southern Lebanon
Amnesty International released a report on Tuesday saying that Israel used white phosphorus illegally in its military operations against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. White phosphorus is an incendiary material that militaries use to create smoke screens and to light battlefields. Its use is allowed in war but can violate international law if used in civilian [...]
UN peacekeeping operation location in Lebanon struck with rocket shell
United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) spokesman Andrea Tenenti said Sunday that a rocket shell struck a UNIFIL peacekeeping operation location in southern Lebanon but no one was injured. On Sunday, Lebanese Hezbollah militants attacked Israeli army posts and a village near the northern border. Israel responded with airstrikes in Lebanon as UN peacekeepers [...]
Israel, Counter-Terrorism, and International Law: The Analytic Challenges of 'System'
“The existence of `system’ in the world is obvious to every observer of nature, no matter whom.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1959) Whether conspicuous or obscure, terrorism generally presents itself as a systemic challenge. This means, inter alia, that seemingly singular strategic and legal matters may actually be many-sided and interrelated. Regarding legal issues, though [...]
Yael Iosilevich is a law student in the Buchmann Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University and JURIST’s Staff Correspondent in Israel. Last Wednesday, the final version of an Israel-Lebanon maritime border agreement was published. This deal comes at the end of a decade-long US-brokered effort to finally bring to an end the maritime dispute [...]
Israeli Nuclear Deterrence Against Broad Spectrum Attacks: Strategic and Legal Considerations
“Deterrence is not just a matter of military capabilities. It has a great deal to do with perceptions of credibility.” – Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s (1984) Abstract: Theoretic assessments of Israel’s nuclear strategy – especially ones concerning a prospective shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure” – generally [...]
Israel versus Hamas: Proportionality, Perfidy and the Law of War
“It must not be forgotten that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.” -Guillaume Apollinaire, The New Spirit and the Poets (1917) Whenever Israel finds itself in the midst of major conflict with Hamas, each side seeks to defend itself in military and legal [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Bilal Khan discusses the legal implications of the use of force against ISIS in IRAQ... The Factual Background The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) made headlines in June, when it escalated its offensives in...
Crimea and Ukraine 2014: A Brief Reflection on Russia's 'Protective Interventionism'
JURIST Guest Columnist Sascha-Dominik Bachmann of Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom argues that while their recent annexation of Crimea and apparent willingness to use military force in Eastern Ukraine, the prospect of a Ukrainian civil war has diminished the...
The US Says Landmines are Horrific—So Why Won't It Ban Them?
JURIST Guest Columnist Mary Wareham of Human Rights Watch discusses the US use of landmines and the possibility of the US joining the Mine Ban Treaty... Since antipersonnel landmines were banned by a majority of nations 15 years ago via...
The withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq was a complicated issue for both the Iraqi and US governments. The long, unpopular Iraq War drew sharp domestic criticism in the US leading to legislative and legal efforts to force...
