On March 24, Israel struck a car in northern Gaza and killed the Tel Aviv Tribune Hossam Shabat correspondent.
The 23 -year -old is one of the countless civilians – men, women and children – Israel has since launched what legal researchers have described as a “genocidal” war against Gaza.
Israel often justifies his killings by saying that the targets are sympathetic or affiliated people in Hamas or other armed factions. It was the justification given to kill the shabat.
Israel also regularly destroys whole neighborhoods and buildings, killing dozens – often hundreds – at the same time, ostensibly to target a single agent in Hamas.
For years, Israel has tried to justify these practices by using lawyers to create almost dark almost Legal concepts in the hope of establishing new dangerous previous ones, according to researchers and experts.
However, the legal researchers told Tel Aviv Tribune that neither the so-called “targeted murders” nor the disproportionate attacks against civilians have land in international law.
“Is there a semblance of law or legal justification for war tactics that Israel uses in Gaza? The simple answer is no. There is none,” said Heidi Matthews, assistant professor of law at York University in Toronto, Canada.
Definition of previous
On September 28, 2000, the Palestinians of the occupied West Bank and Gaza began to demonstrate against the constantly evolving occupation of Israel in what became the second intifada.
The repression of Israel of intifada quickly prompted the Palestinians to mobilize and retaliate.
Over the next five years, Israel has launched what he called “targeted murders”, murdering unarmed Palestinians.
Israel said these objectives could be a threat to the Israelis in the future due to their armed membership in an armed faction.
“Israel … strips protection against civilians according to their opinions or their prospects,” said Noor Kilzi, a legal agenda researcher, a non-profit organization in Lebanon who defends legal reform and human rights in the Middle East.
The concept of Israel of targeted murders has exposed a plan that the United States adapted during its “war on terrorism,” analysts said in Tel Aviv Tribune.
“(In the early 2000s) Israel and the United States changed their legal doctrines and implemented this as part of their military dogma,” Matthews from the University of York in Tel Aviv Tribune said.
“When it was a question of distinguishing civilians and combatants … The United States and Israel began to see (anyone like a target) according to their subscription to a group,” she added.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, a person is only a legitimate target if he is directly engaged in an armed fight at the time of their death.
This means that membership suspected of an armed group is not a sufficient basis to assassinate someone.
Leiber’s inheritance?
Throughout the War of Israel against Gaza, he regularly dropped 2,000 lb (900 kg) bombs in densely populated residential areas, as well as schools, hospitals and systematically targeted trips.
Israeli officials justify these attacks by saying that Israel is fighting against a “just war” against the barbarians. Consequently, the ostensible objective of destroying Hamas prevails over the minimization of civilian victims.
This is partly rooted in the philosophy of Francis Leiber, a German American military theorist from the 19th century, who was responsible for defining the “rules of conduct” for the Unionist soldiers fighting the Confederates of the American Civil War.
He argued that certain wars are vital for the moral progress of civilized nations and require a rapid victory, which can only be carried out by using tactics which will probably cause enormous civilian victims.
“Leiber essentially said that everything that is militarily necessary to carry out the war is legal,” said Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg, a legal academic from London School of Economics.
This terrifying reasoning is clearly in contradiction with international standards and laws, added Gurmendi Dunkelberg.
“He thought he was killing as many people as you can, so that you quickly finish work. He thought it was more human than trying to protect people to the point that war is dragging for 15 years,” he said.
Since the start of the War of Israel against Gaza, its spokespersons have made similar arguments.
Mark Regev, advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the goal was to “make the (war) faster” when PBS was asked why Israel had lost 6,000 bombs in the first six days of attacks on the besieged enclave.
Then, the Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari, also admitted during the first days of the war that the accent of Gaza was on “damage and not precision”.
Destroy the system
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) approved two arrest warrants against Netanyahu and its Minister of Defense of the time, Yoav Gallant – accused of having used famine as a weapon of war and deliberately attacking civilians in Gaza.
A previous decision of the International Court of Justice revealed that the Palestinians of Gaza faced a real risk of genocide due to the practices of war of Israel.
The decisions of the ICC and the CIJ add weight to the argument that Israel has failed to try to legally justify its war practices, which probably represents several war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide.
Consequently, Israel and its Western allies are now trying to sabotage the very institutions that have been created to maintain international law and prosecute the authors of atrocities, said Nadim Khoury, former director of Human Rights Watch and founder of the Arab reform initiative group.
“Israel has clearly reached the limit of what they can get away using legal arguments. Now they are simply impunity to undermine institutions trying to apply international laws,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Several researchers and legal experts have expressed their dismay that Netanyahu could visit European countries which are parties to the status of Rome, the legal framework underpinning the ICC.
Countries like Hungary, Belgium and France have declared that they would not stop Netanyahu if he visits their country or passed through their land or their airspace.
Matthews of the University of York believes that states that claim to maintain international law must act quickly to save what remains of the system, recognizing that it was never a perfect model.
“Other states-beyond America and Israel-must take measures to save or save the system as a whole, or it will disappear quickly,” she told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“We are at a inflection point and it doesn’t look good.”
