Palestine

The release of United Nations (UN) documents on Israeli conduct always seems to give rise to controversy and heated debates. However, the latest publication of an UN Board of Inquiry investigating selected actions carried out during the 2014 Israeli and Palestinian hostilities has brought a relatively mild media storm. Israeli‘s acknowledgement of the investigation had already been…

I recently gave a paper on prolonged occupation at a UN Roundtable on Legal Aspects of the Question of Palestine.  In the law of armed conflict, the notion of “prolonged occupation” is absent from the governing international instruments.  It has been little discussed in commentaries, and Adam Roberts cautions that attempting to define…

The recent jury verdict in the U.S. federal court finding that the Palestinian Authority should pay $655.5 million in damages to American victims of terrorism during the second Intifada has important legal and political ramifications. This post will focus on two questions raised by the verdict. First, on what basis can non-states be obligated to compensate civilians…

After days of speculation, the clouds have begun to clear over Palestine's strategy at the ICC. Ever since the Security Council rejected a draft resolution on December 30, 2014 designed to upgrade Palestine's status to full Member State of the UN and imposing a 12-month deadline on a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the media overwhelmingly…