Rebutting Arguments About Israel's Colonialist Origins
02/08/2010
Dore Gold
|
Sovereignty
The argument claiming that Israel has colonialist roots due to its connection with the British Mandate is ironic, as most Arab countries owe their establishment to conquest and control by the European powers. Prior to the First World War, countries such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan did not exist at all and were merely provinces of the Ottoman Empire. They became states only as a result of European intervention.
http://www.dailyalert.org/archive/2010-08/2010-08-02.html
View Article >>
|
Why Are the Palestinians Opposed to Ending the Occupation?
22/07/2010
Jonathan Dahoah Halevi
|
“Occupation”
Foreign Minister Lieberman's plan to assist the Gaza Strip in becoming an independent entity has encountered wall-to-wall Palestinian opposition. The dual-headed Palestinian regime in Ramallah (Fatah) and in the Gaza Strip (Hamas) totally rejects Lieberman's proposal to recruit the European Union to build power stations to supply electricity, desalination stations and a sewage treatment plant. This was to be part of a plan that would totally sever all connections with Israel, which would forego its naval supervision over merchandise entering the port of Gaza and would totally seal the border with the Gaza Strip.
View Article >>
|
The Legal Basis of Israel's Naval Blockade of Gaza
19/07/2010
Ruth Lapidoth
|
Gaza
A ship that clearly intends to breach a lawful blockade may be stopped when it is still on the high seas. Stopping the flotilla heading for Gaza in international waters 100 kilometers from Israel was not illegal; in time of armed conflict, ships intending to breach the blockade may be searched even on the high seas. Israel is in full compliance with international law because it fulfilled all of the conditions for a lawful blockade.
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=1&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=442&PID=0&IID=4402&TTL=The_Legal_Basis_of_Israel’s_Naval_Blockade_of_Gaza
View Article >>
|
Precision-Guided or Indiscriminate?
06/07/2010
Asher Fredman
|
International Law
This study analyzes the reporting of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch regarding the 2008-2009 conflict in Gaza and southern Israel. Their factual and legal claims, particularly relating to Israel's use of white phosphorus and UAVs, are considered in light of military sources, state doctrine, and the academic literature. The analysis demonstrates that many of the NGOs´ factual claims are contradicted by expert sources, and that in numerous instances their presentation of international law is inaccurate or incomplete.
http://www.jcpa.org/text/ngo_reporting.pdf
View Article >>
|
Who Will Keep the Peace? The Role of Peacekeeping in a Future Israeli-Palestinian Peace Accord
24/06/2010
Justus Reid Weiner, Avinoam Sharon and Michelle Morrison
|
How Israel Is Guided by International Law
The conventional wisdom is that the success of a future peace agreement
between Israel and an envisaged Palestinian state would require the support of an international peacekeeping mission. Yet bilateral peacekeeping has shown itself to be effective along the Israeli-Jordanian border, and bilateral security cooperation with multinational oversight has succeeded along the Israeli-Egyptian border. It may well be that primarily bilateral security arrangements, rather than an international peacekeeping mission, presents the best course.
http://www.jcpa.org/text/peacekeeping.pdf
View Article >>
|
Analysis: The Blockade on Gaza
24/06/2010
Irit Kohn
|
International Law
Israel, as a democratic State, looks for legal tools to curb such smuggling and respond to Hamas' terrorist attacks against its citizens. One of the tools available under international law is the maritime blockade. Israel, finding itself in a state of armed conflict with Hamas, has opted to employ this legal measure.
View Article >>
|
Israel's Blockade Stands the Test of International Law.
10/06/2010
Irit Kohn
|
Gaza
What does international law have to say about blockades against rogue enterprises?
View Article >>
|
Are the Settlements Illegal?
17/03/2010
Nicholas Rostow
|
Settlements
Israeli settlements in the territories that came under Israeli control as a result of the June 1967 war have long been a subject of often highly emotional debate within the United States, Israel and the international community. The Obama Administration’s decision to focus on settlements right out of the gate heightened attention on this already salient issue, but it is by no means clear that heightened attention will by itself facilitate resolution of the Palestine/Israel problem. Settlements are handy for obscuring the fundamental issue.
http://the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=782
View Article >>
|
Is Israel a Colonial State?
14/03/2010
Irwin J. Mansdorf
|
Sovereignty
Israel's creation, far from being a foreign colonial transplant, can actually be seen as the vanguard of and impetus for decolonization of the entire Middle East, including a significant part of the Arab world. It is not popularly recognized how the Arab world benefited from the Balfour Declaration, which served to advanced their own independence from the colonial powers of England and France.
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=2&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=378&PID=0&IID=3472&TTL=Is_Israel_a_Colonial_State?_The_Political_Psychology_of_Palestinian_Nomenclature
View Article >>
|
Demography, Geopolitics, and the Future of Israel's Capital: Jerusalem's Proposed Master Plan
04/03/2010
Nadav Shragai
|
Jerusalem
The Jewish majority in Jerusalem is declining, meanwhile, according to the proposed plan for the city, there will not be sufficient Jewish housing by 2020 or Arab housing by 2030. The plan also calls for creating urban contiguity between eastern Jerusalem and Palestinian neighborhoods outside the city, reinforcing Palestinian demands to recognize the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem as a single political entity.
http://jcpa.org/text/Jerusalem-Master-Plan.pdf
View Article >>
|
A Moral Evaluation of the Gaza War - Operation Cast Lead
04/02/2010
Asa Kasher
|
Gaza
In Israel, a combatant is a citizen in uniform. His state ought to have a compelling reason for jeopardizing his life. There is no army in the world that will endanger its soldiers in order to avoid hitting the warned neighbors of an enemy or terrorist. Israel should favor the lives of its own soldiers over the lives of the well-warned neighbors of a terrorist when it is operating in a territory that it does not effectively control, because in such territories it does not bear the moral responsibility for properly separating between dangerous individuals and harmless ones.
View Article >>
|
Proportionality in Modern Assymetrical Wars
02/02/2010
Amichai Cohen
|
Proportionality
As the uses of force in Somalia, Kosovo, and Iraq show, Western armies are very concerned about protecting the lives of their soldiers, and to that end are willing to risk many civilian lives. They also find acceptable the notion that civilian lives can be forfeited in order to attain important military goals.
Israel's Gaza operation clearly shows that Israeli commanders successfully followed the requirements of the administrative model of the principle of proportionality. The IDF required commanders to take humanitarian law into account in the planning stages of the operation. Legal advisors were involved in the planning of many operations and provided advice regarding specific targets. The right questions were asked, checks were made, and the incidental damage to civilians was on the whole limited.
http://www.jcpa.org/text/proportionality.pdf
View Article >>
|
Israel at 60: Confronting the Rising Challenge to Its Historical and Legal Rights
20/01/2010
Dore Gold
|
Sovereignty
The year 2008 marks sixty years since the establishment of the State of Israel. Yet, today, notwithstanding a 1922 League of Nations Mandate affirming the Jewish people's right to reconstitute itself in its ancient homeland, Israel's fifty-nine year membership in the United Nations and its extraordinary achievements, the very legitimacy of a Jewish state remains an issue of public debate. This publication, based on a conference held on March 26, 2008, engages in a critical examination of the debate on Israel's legitimacy, and the rights of a Jewish nation-state and Jewish self-determination among other nation-states of the world and other nations' claims to self-determination.
View Article >>
|
Curbing the Manipulation of Universal Jurisdiction
20/01/2010
Diane Morrison and Justus Reid Weiner
|
Universal Jurisdiction
The principle of universal jurisdiction has been, and continues to be, an important tool in the legal practitioner's tool box and an essential means for achieving justice for international crimes. Unfortunately, the principle has also become a political device employed for far more cynical means and far less noble purposes. In the early 1960s, Israel was one of the first states to invoke the principle of universal jurisdiction in its groundbreaking trial against Adolf Eichmann, the "architect of the Holocaust."
http://www.jcpa.org/text/universal-jurisdiction.pdf
View Article >>
|
The Palestinians' Unilateral "Kosovo Strategy": Implications for the PA and Israel
13/01/2010
Dan Diker
|
Peace Process
Mahmoud Abbas' new precondition that the international community recognize the 1967 lines in the West Bank as the new Palestinian border bolsters the assessment that the Palestinians have largely abandoned a negotiated settlement and instead are actively pursuing a unilateral approach to statehood.
The Palestinians are legally bound to negotiate a bilateral solution with Israel. Unilateral Palestinian threats to declare statehood have been rebuffed thus far by the European powers and the United States.
View Article >>
|
|