Professor Malik Dahlan has cowritten an article looking at the recent events in Israel and Gaza through the lens of international law.
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The three-page article covers the application of the laws of armed conflict, self-defence, humanitarian law, protection of civilians, requirement for proportionality and policy of siege. It also looks at the rules governing the conduct of both Hamas and Israel.
The article was cowritten by Malik Dahlan, Emeritus Professor of International Law at Queen Mary University of London, and Marc Weller, Professor of International Law at Cambridge University. They write: ‘Civilian casualties must remain incidental. Where civilian casualties cannot be avoided beyond a certain scale, the operation must not take place. Moreover, it is impermissible simply to rule in a blanket way that certain types of civilian installations, like schools or hospitals, or other places where terrified civilians have congregated, are tainted by virtue of possible military use by Hamas, and attack them at the cost of hundreds of civilian lives.
Read the full article on the New Law Journal (subscription required).