Article

Ten types of Israeli and Palestinian violations of the laws of war and the ICC

Jordan J. Paust

• Connecticut journal of international law, Vol. 31, no. 1, Fall 2015, p. 27-58

English

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This article addresses international law that is relevant to longstanding and politically contentious issues regarding four types of conduct that Israel has been found to have authorized or facilitated in territories that Israel occupied after the 1967 war. The article also addresses six types of manifest violations of the laws of war by Palestinians since mid-June 2014. In particular, part II focuses on the laws of war applicable to use of collective punishment, deportation of civilians, infusion of one's own nationals into occupied territory, and annexation of occupied territory. The focus in part III is on what laws of war are applicable to unlawful confinement, hostage taking, murder, attacks on civilians, attacks on civilian objects, and use of indiscriminate methods and means of attack. In 2015, these issues were among those raised by Palestine before the International Criminal Court (ICC), although it is not certain that the ICC will assume jurisdiction after the conclusion of a preliminary investigation opened by the Prosecutor in January 2015. As noted in part II, the four types of violations addressed therein are among offenses that are of a continuous nature regardless of the time when they commenced, a circumstance that is significant with respect to the potential reach of ICC jurisdiction. Part IV addresses two other matters concerning ICC jurisdiction - certain preconditions to jurisdiction, especially with respect to transnational aspects of international crimes, and possible deferrals to domestic prosecutions.

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