Israel as Innovator in the Attempted Mainstreaming of Extreme Violence (original) (raw)
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Humanitarianism as Global Humankind Responsibility: A Case Study of Gaza Conflict
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In less than one month, Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, demolishing the urban landscape and killing over 10,000 Palestinians. Given the sheer scale of violence and its leveling of homes, hospitals, schools and the civilians in them, the laws of war (also known as International Humanitarian Law, IHL) have become a renewed source of debate and scrutiny—most recently following the bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp on October 31, in which Israeli airstrikes killed at least 50 people in an attack that was allegedly targeting a single Hamas commander. Writing in these pages in 2016, Lisa Hajjar noted Israel’s role as innovator when it comes to pushing the limits of international humanitarian law and challenging the law’s protections of civilians (the article, from MER issue 279, is worth reading in full). At the time, Hajjar speculated that Israel’s new interpretations might alter legal norms, mainstreaming extreme state violence. The piece is important for moving beyond the question of whether violence is legal to underscore the unevenness of humanitarian law as powerful states maneuver within it. To discuss these and other facets of the law as it is being mobilized in Israel’s ongoing campaign on Gaza, MERIP’s managing editor, Marya Hannun, spoke to Neve Gordon, professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University in London and co-author (with Nicola Perugini) of Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire (University of California Press, 2020). Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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