Final Text of Joint Declaration on International Law & List of Endorsers
(Prefatory Note: with only a voluntary effort the Joint Declaration on International Law in relation to the Gaza Attacks by Israel has elicited an encouraging response from legal experts from around the world, including some of our most distinguished colleagues. Others without formal legal credentials have also indicated their support, and expressed their desire to endorse the Joint Declaration. The original drafting group agreed that formal endorsers should be limited to those with a law background, although we have recorded all others in a second list that will be made public when an appropriate occasion arises. We thank all of you who have contributed to this initiative by indicating support.
As might be expected the dissemination of this text also generated critical reactions from those who argued that we had understated Israel’s rights under international law and understated Hamas’ violations. There were other more vituperative denunciations of such an initiative and its endorsers that expressed anger and hostility toward anyone who dares criticizes Israel, and even encouraged Israel to persist in its military onslaught in Gaza, and do whatever its leaders think necessary.
With this posting we are formally closing the endorsing process, but we will continue to do our best to insist on the relevance of international law to the behavior of Israel and the other parties in this conflict along the lines of the analysis contained in the Joint Declaration. We discourage pro and con comments at this stage, although welcoming substantive discussion and suggestions for further dissemination)
The International Community Must End Israel’s Collective Punishment of the Civilian Population in the Gaza Strip
As international and criminal law scholars, human rights defenders, legal experts and individuals who firmly believe in the rule of law and in the necessity for its respect in times of peace and more so in times of war, we feel the intellectual and moral duty to denounce the grave violations, mystification and disrespect for the most basic principles of the laws of armed conflict and of the fundamental human rights of the entire Palestinian population committed during the ongoing Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip. We also condemn the launch of rockets from the Gaza Strip, as every indiscriminate attack against civilians, regardless of the identity of the perpetrators, is not only illegal under international law but also morally intolerable. However, as also implicitly noted by the UN Human Rights Council in its Resolution of 23 July 2014, the two parties to the conflict cannot be considered equal, and their actions – once again – appear to be of incomparable magnitude.
Once again it is the unarmed civilian population, the ‘protected persons’ under International humanitarian law (IHL), who is in the eye of the storm. Gaza’s civilian population has been victimized in the name of a falsely construed right to self-defence, in the midst of an escalation of violence provoked in the face of the entire international community. The so-called Operation Protective Edge erupted during an ongoing armed conflict, in the context of a prolonged belligerent occupation that commenced in 1967. In the course of this ongoing conflict thousands of Palestinians have been killed and injured in the Gaza Strip during recurrent and ostensible ‘ceasefire’ periods since 2005, after Israel’s unilateral ‘disengagement’ from the Gaza Strip. The deaths caused by Israel’s provocative actions in the Gaza Strip prior to the latest escalation of hostilities must not be ignored as well.
According to UN sources, over the last three weeks, at least 1,373 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and 8,265, including 2,502 children and 1,626 women, have been injured. Several independent sources indicate that only 15 per cent of the casualties were combatants. Entire families have been murdered. Hospitals, clinics, as well as a rehabilitation centre for disabled persons have been targeted and severely damaged. During one single day, on Sunday 20th July, more than 100 Palestinian civilians were killed in Shuga’iya, a residential neighbourhood of Gaza City. This was one of the bloodiest and most aggressive operations ever conducted by Israel in the Gaza Strip, a form of urban violence constituting a total disrespect of civilian innocence. Sadly, this was followed only a couple of days later by an equally destructive attack on Khuza’a, East of Khan Younis.
Additionally, the offensive has already caused widespread destruction of buildings and infrastructure: according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, over 3,300 houses have been targeted resulting in their destruction or severe damage.
As denounced by the UN Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on the Gaza conflict in the aftermath of Israel’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in 2008-2009: “While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: The people of Gaza as a whole” (A/HRC/12/48, par. 1883). The same can be said for the current Israeli offensive.
The civilian population in the Gaza Strip is under direct attack and many are forced to leave their homes. What was already a refugee and humanitarian crisis has worsened with a new wave of mass displacement of civilians: the number of IDPs has reached more than 457,000, many of whom have obtained shelter in overcrowded UNRWA schools, which unfortunately are no safe areas as demonstrated by the repeated attacks on the UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun. Everyone in Gaza is traumatized and living in a state of constant terror. This result is intentional, as Israel is again relying on the ‘Dahiya doctrine’, which deliberately has recourse to disproportionate force to inflict suffering on the civilian population in order to achieve political (to exert pressure on the Hamas Government) rather than military goals.
In so doing, Israel is repeatedly and flagrantly violating the law of armed conflict, which establishes that combatants and military objectives may be targeted, i.e. ‘those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.’ Most of the recent heavy bombings in Gaza lack an acceptable military justification and, instead, appear to be designed to terrorize the civilian population. As the ICRC clarifies, deliberately causing terror is unequivocally illegal under customary international law.
In its Advisory Opinion in the Nuclear Weapons case, the ICJ stated that the principle of distinction, which requires belligerent States to distinguish between civilians and combatants, is one of the “cardinal principles” of international humanitarian law and one of the “intransgressible principles of international customary law”.
The principle of distinction is codified in Articles 48, 51(2) and 52(2) of the Additional Protocol I of 1977 to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, to which no reservations have been made. According to Additional Protocol I, “attacks” refer to “acts of violence against the adversary, whether in offence or in defence” (Article 49). Under both customary international law and treaty law, the prohibition on directing attacks against the civilian population or civilian objects is absolute. There is no discretion available to invoke military necessity as a justification.
Contrary to Israel’s claims, mistakes resulting in civilian casualties cannot be justified: in case of doubt as to the nature of the target, the law clearly establishes that an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes (such as schools, houses, places of worship and medical facilities), is presumed as not being used for military purposes. During these past weeks, UN officials and representatives have repeatedly called on Israel to strictly abide by the principle of precaution in carrying out attacks in the Gaza Strip, where risks are greatly aggravated by the very high population density, and maximum restraint must be exercised to avoid civilian casualties. HRW has noted that these rules exist to minimize mistakes and “when such mistakes are repeated, it raises the concern of whether the rules are being disregarded.”
Moreover, even when targeting clear military objectives, Israel consistently violates the principle of proportionality: this is particularly evident with regard to the hundreds of civilian houses destroyed by the Israeli army during the current military operation in Gaza. With the declared intention to target a single member of Hamas, Israeli forces have bombed and destroyed houses although occupied as residencies by dozens of civilians, including women, children, and entire families.
It is inherently illegal under customary international law to intentionally target civilian objects, and the violation of such a fundamental tenet of law can amount to a war crime. Issuing a ‘warning’ – such as Israel’s so-called roof knocking technique, or sending an SMS five minutes before the attack – does not mitigate this: it remains illegal to wilfully attack a civilian home without a demonstration of military necessity as it amounts to a violation of the principle of proportionality. Moreover, not only are these ‘warnings’ generally ineffective, and can even result in further fatalities, they appear to be a pre-fabricated excuse by Israel to portray people who remain in their homes as ‘human shields’.
The indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, the targeting of objectives providing no effective military advantage, and the intentional targeting of civilians and civilian houses have been persistent features of Israel’s long-standing policy of punishing the entire population of the Gaza Strip, which, for over seven years, has been virtually imprisoned by an Israeli imposed closure. Such a regime amounts to a form of collective punishment, which violates the unconditional prohibition set forth in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and has been internationally condemned for its illegality. However, far from being effectively opposed by international actors, Israel’s illegal policy of absolute closure imposed on the Gaza Strip has relentlessly continued, under the complicit gaze of the international community of States.
***
As affirmed in 2009 by the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict: “Justice and respect for the rule of law are the indispensable basis for peace. The prolonged situation has created a justice crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that warrants action” (A/HRC/12/48, para. 1958) Indeed: “long-standing impunity has been a key factor in the perpetuation of violence in the region and in the reoccurrence of violations, as well as in the erosion of confidence among Palestinians and many Israelis concerning prospects for justice and a peaceful solution to the conflict”. (A/HRC/12/48, para. 1964)
Therefore,
- We welcome the Resolution adopted on 23 July 2014 by the UN Human Rights Council, in which an independent, international commission of inquiry was established to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
- We call upon the United Nations, the Arab League, the European Union, individual States, in particular the United States of America, and the international community in its entirety and with its collective power to take action in the spirit of the utmost urgency to put an end to the escalation of violence against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, and to activate procedures to hold accountable all those responsible for violations of international law, including political leaders and military commanders. In particular:
- All regional and international actors should support the immediate conclusion of a durable, comprehensive, and mutually agreed ceasefire agreement, which must secure the rapid facilitation and access of humanitarian aid and the opening of borders to and from Gaza;
- All High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions must be urgently and unconditionally called upon to comply with their fundamental obligations, binding at all times, and to act under common Article 1, to take all measures necessary for the suppression of grave breaches, as clearly imposed by Article 146 and Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention; these rules are applicable by all interested parties as well;
- Moreover, we denounce the shameful political pressures exerted by several UN Member States and the UN on President Mahmoud Abbas, to discourage recourse to the International Criminal Court (ICC), and we urge the Governmental leaders of Palestine to invoke the jurisdiction of the ICC, by ratifying the ICC treaty and in the interim by resubmitting the declaration under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute, in order to investigate and prosecute the serious international crimes committed on the Palestinian territory by all parties to the conflict; and
- The UN Security Council must finally exercise its responsibilities in relation to peace and justice by referring the situation in Palestine to the Prosecutor of the ICC.
***
Please note that institutional affiliations are for identification purposes only.
- John Dugard, Former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
- Richard Falk, Former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
- Alain Pellet, Professor of Public International Law, University Paris Ouest, former Member of the United Nations International Law Commission, France
- Georges Abi-Saab, Emeritus Professor of International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Former Judge on the ICTY
- Vera Gowlland-Debbas, Emeritus Professor of International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland
- Chantal Meloni, Adjunct Professor of International Criminal Law, University of Milan, Italy (Rapporteur)
- Roy Abbott, Consultant in International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law, Australia
- Lama Abu-Odeh, Law Professor, Georgetown University Law Center, USA
- Taris Ahmad, Solicitor at Jones Day, London, UK
- Kasim Akbaş, Professor of Law, Anadolu Üniversitesi, Eskişehir,Turkey
- Susan M. Akram, Clinical Professor and supervising attorney, International Human rights Program, Boston University School of Law, USA
- Maria Anagnostaki, PhD candidate, Law School University of Athens, Greece
- Antony Anghie, Professor of Law, University of Utah, USA
- Javier Ansuátegui-Roig, Director, Human Rights Institute Bartolomé de las Casas, Charles III University of Madrid, Spain
- Ayman Atef, LLM Ain Shams University, Egypt
- Ufuk Aydin, Dean, Professor of Law, Anadolu Üniversitesi, Eskişehir,Turkey
- Nizar Ayoub, Director, Al-Marsad, Arab Human Rights Centre in Golan Heights
- Valentina Azarov, Lecturer in Human Rights and International Law, Al Quds Bard College, Palestine
- Ammar Bajboj, Lecturer in Law, University of Damascus, Syria
- Samia Bano, SOAS School of Law, London, UK
- Asli Ü Bali, Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law, USA
- Jakub Micha³ Baranowski, Phd Candidate, Universita’ degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy
- Frank Barat, Russell Tribunal on Palestine
- Marzia Barbera, Professor of Law, University of Brescia, Italy
- Emma Bell, Coordinator of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control, Université de Savoie, France
- Barbara Giovanna Bello, Post-doc Fellow, University of Milan, Italy
- Brenna Bhandar, Senior lecturer in Law, SOAS School of Law, London, UK
- George Bisharat, Professor of Law, UC Hastings College of Law, USA
- Marta Bitorsoli, LLM, Irish Centre for Human Rights, Trial Clerk ICTY, The Hague, The Netherlands
- Barbara Blok, LLM Candidate, University of Essex, UK
- John Braithwaite, Professor of Criminology, Australian National University, Australia
- Michelle Burgis-Kasthala, lecturer in international law, University of Edinburgh, UK
- Eddie Bruce-Jones, Lecturer in Law, University of London, Birkbeck College, UK
- Sandy Camlann, LLM Candidate, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, France
- Grazia Careccia, Human Rights Advocate, London, UK
- Baris Cayli, Impact Fellow, University of Stirling, UK
- Antonio Cavaliere, Professor of Criminal Law, University Federico II, Naples, Italy
- Kathleen Cavanaugh, Senior Lecturer, Irish Center for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
- Elizabeth Chadwick, Reader in International Law, Nottingham, UK
- Donna R. Cline, Attorney at Law, USA
- Karen Corteen, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Chester, UK
- Andrew Dahdal, Lecturer, Faculty of Business and Economics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
- Teresa Dagenhardt, Reader in Criminology, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
- Luigi Daniele, PhD candidate in Law, Italy
- Alessandro De Giorgi, Professor of Justice Studies, San Josè State University, USA
- Cristina de la Serna-Sandoval, lawyer and human rights consultant, Spain
- Javier De Lucas, Professor of Law, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia, Spain
- Paul de Waart, Professor Emeritus of International Law, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Gabriele della Morte, Senior Lecturer in International Law, University Cattolica, Milan, Italy
- Max du Plessis, Professor of Law, University of Kwazulu-Natal, and Barrister, South Africa and London, UK
- Isabel Düsterhöft, LL.M., Utrecht, M.A. Hamburg, Germany
- Noura Erakat, Georgetown University, USA
- Mohammad Fadel, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, Canada
- Mireille Fanon-Mendés France, Independent Expert UNO, Frantz Fanon Foundation, France
- Michelle Farrell, lecturer in law, School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool, UK
- Daniel Feierstein, Professor and President International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), Argentina
- Eleonor Fernández Muñoz, Costa Rica
- Tenny Fernando, Attorney at Law, Sri Lanka
- Amelia Festa, LLM Candidate, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
- Katherine Franke, Professor of Law, Columbia Law School, USA
- Jacques Gaillot, Bishop in partibus of Partenia
- Katherine Gallagher, Vice President FIDH, senior attorney, Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), New York, USA
- Avo Sevag Garabet, LLM, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
- Jose Garcia Anon, Professor of Law, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
- Cristina Garcia-Pascual, Professor of Law, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia, Spain
- Jose Antonio García-Saez, International Law Researcher, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia, Spain
- Andrés Gascón-Cuenca, PhD candidate, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia, Spain
- Irene Gasparini, PhD candidate, Universitá Cattolica, Milan, Italy
- Stratos Georgoulas, Assistant Professor, University of the Aegean, Greece
- Haluk Gerger, Professor, Turkey
- Hedda Giersten, Professor, Universitet I Oslo, Norway
- Javier Giraldo, Director Banco de Datos CINEP, Colombia
- Carmen G. Gonzales, Professor of Law, Seattle University School of Law, USA
- Penny Green, Professor of Law and Criminology, Director of the State Crime Initiative, King’s College London, UK
- Katy Hayward, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
- Andrew Henley, PhD candidate, Keele University, UK
- Christiane Hessel, Paris, France
- Paddy Hillyard, Professor Emeritus, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
- Ata Hindi, Institute of Law, Birzeit University, Palestine
- Francois Houtart, Professor, National Institute of Higher Studies, Quito, Ecuador
- Deena R. Hurwitz, Professor, General Faculty, Director International Human Rights Law Clinic, University of Virginia School of Law, USA
- Perfecto Andrés Ibánes, Magistrado Tribunal Supremo de Espagna, Spain
- Franco Ippolito, President of the Permanent People’s Tribunal, Italy
- Ruth Jamieson, Honorary Lecturer, School of Law, Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland
- Helen Jarvis, former member Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), member of IAGS, Cambodia
- Ioannis Kalpouzos, Lecturer in Law, City Law School, London, UK
- Victor Kattan, post-doctoral fellow, Law Faculty, National University of Singapore
- Michael Kearney, PhD, Lecturer in Law, University of Sussex, UK
- Yousuf Syed Khan, USA
- Tarik Kochi, Senior Lecturer in Law, School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex, UK
- Anna Koppel, MSt Candidate in International Human Rights Law, University of Oxford, UK
- Azra Kuci, legal advisor TRIAL (track impunity always), Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Karim Lahidji, President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and lawyer
- Giulia Lanza, PhD Candidate, Università degli Studi di Verona, Italy
- Massimo La Torre, Professor of Law, University of Hull (UK), Catanzaro University (Italy)
- Daniel Machover, solicitor, Hickman & Rose, London, UK
- Tayyab Mahmud, Professor of Law, Director of the Centre for Global Justice, Seattle University School of Law, USA
- Maria C. LaHood, Senior Staff Attorney, CCR, New York, USA
- Louise Mallinder, Reader in Human Rights and International Law, University of Ulster, UK
- Triestino Mariniello, Lecturer in International Criminal Law, Edge Hill University, UK
- Mazen Masri, Lecturer in Law, The City Law School, City University, London, UK
- Siobhan McAlister, School of Sociology, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
- Liam McCann, Principal Lecturer in Criminology, University of Lincoln, UK
- Jude McCulloch, Professor of Criminology, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
- David McQuoid-Mason, Director, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
- Yvonne McDermott Rees, Lecturer in Law, University of Bangor, UK
- Cahal McLaughlin, Professor, School of Creative Arts, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
- Araks Melkonyan, LLM Candidate, University of Essex, UK
- Antonio Menna, PhD Candidate, Second University of Naples, Caserta, Italy
- Naomi Mezey, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, USA
- Michele Miravalle, PhD candidate, University of Torino, Italy
- Sergio Moccia, Professor of Criminal Law, University Federico II, Naples, Italy
- Kerry Moore, Lecturer, Cardiff University
- Giuseppe Mosconi, Professor of Sociology, University of Padova, Italy
- Usha Natarajan, Assistant Professor, Department of Law & Centre for Migration and Refugee Studies, The American University in Cairo, Egypt
- Miren Odriozola Gurrutxaga, PhD Candidate, University of the Basque Country, Donostia – San Sebastián, Spain
- Georgios Papanicolaou, Reader in Criminology, Teesside University, UK
- Marco Pertile, Senior Lecturer in International Law,
Faculty of Law, University of Trento, Italy - Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Professor of Law and Theory, LLM, The Westminster Law and Theory Centre, UK
- Carli Pierson, Attorney at Law, USA
- Antoni Pigrau Solé, Universitat Rovira i Virgili de Tarragona, Spain
- Joseph Powderly, Assistant Professor of Public International Law, Leiden University, The Netherlands
- Tony Platt, Visiting Professor of Justice Studies, San Jose State University, USA
- Scott Poynting, Professor in Criminology, University of Auckland, New Zeeland
- Chris Powell, Professor of Criminology, University S.Maine, USA
- Bill Quigley, Professor, Loyola University, New Orleans College of Law, USA
- John Quigley, Professor of Law, Ohio State University
- Zouhair Racheha, PhD Candidate, University Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France
- Laura Raymond, International Human Rights Advocacy Program Manager, CCR, New York, USA
- Véronique Rocheleau-Brosseau, LLM candidate, Laval University, Canada
- David Rodríguez Goyes, Lecturer, Antonio Nariño and Santo Tomás Universities, Colombia
- Alessandro Rosanò, PhD Candidate, Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy
- Jamil Salem, Director Institute of Law, Birzeit University, Palestine
- Mahmood Salimi, LLM Candidate, Moofid University, Iran
- Nahed Samour, doctoral fellow, Humboldt University, Faculty of Law, Berlin, Germany
- Iain GM Scobbie, Professor of Public International Law, University of Manchester, UK
- David Scott, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Liverpool John Moores University, UK
- Phil Scraton, Professor of Criminology, Belfast, Ireland
- Rachel Seoighe, PhD Candidate, Legal Consultant, King’s College London, UK
- Tanya Serisier, School of Sociology, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
- Mohammad Shahabuddin, PdD, Visiting researcher, Graduate School of International Social Sciences, Yokohama National University, Japan
- Angeles Solanes-Corella, Professor of Law, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia, Spain
- Dean Spade, Seattle University School of Law, USA
- Per Stadig, lawyer, Sweden
- Chantal Thomas, Professor of Law, Cornell University, USA
- Kendall Thomas, Nash Professor of Law, Columbia University, USA
- Gianni Tognoni, Lelio Basso Foundation, Rome, Italy
- Steve Tombs, Professor of Criminology, The Open University, UK
- Paul Troop, Barrister, Garden Court Chambers, UK
- Valeria Verdolini, Reader in Sociology, University of Milan, Italy
- Francesca Vianello, University of Padova, Italy
- Lydia Vicente-Márquez, Executive Director, Rights International Spain
- Aimilia Voulvouli, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Fatih University, Turkey
- Namita Wahi, Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, Dharma Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi, India
- Sharon Weill, PhD, Science Po, Paris/ CERAH, Geneva, Switzerland
- Peter Weiss, Vice President of Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), New York, USA
- David Whyte, Reader in Sociology, University of Liverpool, UK
- Jeanne M. Woods, Henry F. Bonura, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, Loyola University College of Law, New Orleans, USA
- William Thomas Worster, Lecturer, International Law, The Hague University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands
- Maung Zarni, Judge, PPT on Sri Lanka and Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science
After July 28th
- Lindsay Adams, Barrister, London, U.K
- Kasim Akbaş, Professor of Law, Anadolu Üniversitesi, Eskişehir,Turkey
- Nidal al-Azza, lecturer in Refugee Law, Al-Quds University, Director of Badil Resource Center for Residency and Refugee Rights, Palestine
- Reem Al-Botmeh, Institute of Law, Birzeit University, Palestine
- Rouba Al-Salem, PhD candidate, faculty of Law, Montreal University, Canada
- Koorosh Ameli, Former Judge, Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, The Hague, Netherlands
- Rinad Abdulla, Lecturer in Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law, Birzeit University, Palestin Claims Tribunal
- Mojgan Amrollahi Biuki, Human Rights Lawyer in Tehran, PhD candidate, Freiburg University, Freiburg i.Br., Germany
- Alessandra Annoni, Senior Lecturer in International Law, University of Catanzaro, Italy
- Javier Ansuátegui-Roig, Director, Human Rights Institute Bartolomé de las Casas, Charles III University of Madrid, Spain
- Alicia Araujo Mendonca, Lawyer, London, UK
- Maria Aristodemou, School of Law, Birkbeck College, USA
- Huwaida Arraf, Attorney and Human Rights Advocate, New York, USA
- Ayman Atef, LLM Ain Shams University, Egypt
- Ufuk Aydin, Dean, Professor of Law, Anadolu Üniversitesi, Eskişehir,Turkey
- Irene Baghoomians, Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, Australia
- Ajamu Baraka, human rights activist and former director of the U.S. Human
- Marzia Barbera, Professor of Law, University of Brescia, Italy, Rights Network (USHRN), USA
- Faisal Bhabha, Assistant Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Onder Bakircioglu, Lecturer in Law, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
- Alonso Barros, PhD, Attorney at Law, Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights Advocate, Chile
- Asmaa Bassouri, PhD Candidate, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech, Morocco
- Jinan Bastaki, Law PhD candidate, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK
- Paolo Bertoli, Professor of International Law, University of Insubria, Como-Varese, Italy
- Marta Bitorsoli, LLM, Irish Centre for Human Rights, Trial Clerk ICTY, The Hague, The Netherlands
- Tessa Boeykens, Legal Researcher in Transitional Justice, Ghent University, Belgium
- Audrey Bomse, Co-Chair, National Lawyers Guild Palestine Subcommittee, USA
- Giorgio Bonamassa, Lawyer, Legal Team Italia, Lawyer
- Marco Borraccetti, senior Lecturer in European Union Law, Alma Mater Studiorum-University of Bologna, Italy
- Fatma Bouraoui, Lawyer, Tunisia
- Bill Bowring, Barrister, Professor, Director of the LLM/MA in Human Rights, School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
- John Burroughs, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, New York City, USA
- Valentina Cadelo, Researcher, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Geneva, Switzerland
- Andrea Caligiuri, Senior Lecturer in International Law, University of Macerata, Italy
- Alejandra Castillo Ara, Lawyer, PhD Candidate, Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg i.Br., Germany
- Giovanni Cellamare, Professore of International Law, Faculty of Political Science, University of Bari, Italy
- Emanuele Cimiotta, Assistant Professor of International Law, Law Faculty, University La Sapienza, Rome, Italy
- Maivan Clech Lam, Professor Emerita, City University of New York Graduate Center, USA
- Ziyad Clot, Lawyer, University of Paris II Assas and Sciences Po Paris, France
- Marjorie Cohn, Professor of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president, National Lawyers Guild, USA
- Nicola Colacino, Associate Professor of International Law, University Niccolò Cusano, Rome, Italy
- Judith Cole, Adjunct Professor of International Law, International University in Geneva (IUG), Geneva, Switzerland
- Luigi Condorelli, Professor of International Law, University of Florence, Honorary Professor, University of Geneva, Switzerland/Italy
- Aoife Corcoran, Human Rights Researcher, (UCL Human Rights graduate), London, United Kingdom
- Francesco Costamagna, Assistant Professor of EU Law, University of Turin, Italy
- Jamil Dakwar, International Human Rights Lawyer, New York, USA
- Fredrik Danelius, LLM, former lecturer in international law, Lund University, Sweden, Oslo University, Norway, former editor-in-chief of Nordic Journal of International Law
- Shane Darcy, lecturer, Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway, Northern Ireland
- Nasrin Dashty, Barrister, Associate Special Assistant, ICC, The Hague, The Netherlands
- Birju M. Dattani, Barrister and PhD Student in International Law, SOAS University of London, UK
- Gail Davidson, Director, Lawyers against the War, USA
- Mark de Barros, Lecturer in Law, Université Paris II Panthéon, Assas/Attorney at Law, New York Bar, France/USA
- Emanuele De Franco, Lecturer in Criminal Law, University Federico II, Solicitor, Naples, Italy
- Javier De Lucas, Professor of Law, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia, Spain
- Fanny Declercq, LLM, Leiden University, The Hague, The Netherlands
- Géraud de La Pradelle, Emeritus Professor International Law, France
- Adele Del Guercio, Researcher in International Law, University L’Orientale, Naples, Italy
- Cristina de la Serna-Sandoval, lawyer and human rights consultant, Spain
- Francesca De Vittor, Researcher in International Law, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy
- Saverio Di Benedetto, Senior Lecturer of International Law, Università del Salento, Italy
- Mahmoud Dodeen, Lawyer and Professor of Law, Birzeit University, Palestine
- Linn Döring, Lawyer, PhD Candidate, Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg, Germany
- Pierre-Emmanuel Dupont, Member of the Hague Center for Law and Arbitration, Senior Lecturer at the Free Faculty of Law, Economics and Management, Paris, France
- Isabel Düsterhöft, LL.M., Utrecht, M.A. Hamburg, Germany
- Penelope Ehrhardt, MSt in International Human Rights Law Candidate, University of Oxford, UK
- Lena El-Malak, PhD in Public International Law SOAS, Legal Counsel, UAE
- Ali Ercan, Researcher and Intern at the OIC Mission to the United Nations, New York, USA
- Siavash Eshghi, PhD candidate, SOAS University, London, UK
- Marco Fasciglione, Researcher in International Law, International Institute for Legal Studies, Naples, Italian National Research Council, Italy
- Matteo Fornari, Researcher in International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy
- Francisco Forrest Martin, Former Ariel F. Sallows Professor of Human Rights, University of Saskatchewan, College of Law, Canada
- Fabrizio Forte, PhD Candidate, University Federico II, Solicitor, Naples, Italy
- Micaela Frulli, Associate Professor of International Law, University of Florence, Italy
- Domenico Gallo, Judge, Italian Supreme Court, Rome, Italy
- Cristina Garcia-Pascual, Professor of Law, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia, Spain
- Jose Antonio García-Saez, International Law Researcher, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia, Spain
- Andrés Gascón-Cuenca, PhD candidate, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia, Spain.
- Francesco M. Genovesi, Attorney at Law, Milan, Italy
- Andrea Giardina, Emeritus Professor of International Law, University La Sapienza, Rome, Italy
- Jérémie Gilbert, Reader in Law, University of East London, School of Law and Social Sciences, London, UK
- Andrés Felipe Gómez Ariza, Colombia, Public International Law LLM candidate, University of Leicester, UK
- Henning Grosse Ruse, PhD, Khan, King’s College, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, UK
- Kelly L. Grotke, PhD, Affiliate Research Fellow, Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki, Faculty of Law, Iceland
- Kumaravadivel Guruparan, Lecturer, Department of Law, University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka
- Mateenah Hunter, LLB (Wits), LLM Public Interest Law and Policy (UCLA), Attorney, South Africa
- Ivan Ingravallo, Associate Professor of International Law, University of Bari, Italy
- Issaaf Ben Khalifa, Lawyer, University of Carthage, Tunisia
- Urfan Khaliq, Professor of International Law, Cardiff University, UK
- Ahmed Amine Khamlichi, Investigator at the CNRS, France
- Adilur Rahman Khan, Senior Advocate at Supreme Court of Bangladesh
- Shoaib M. Khan, Solicitor, Human Rights activist, London, UK
- Daniela Kravetz, International Criminal Justice and Gender Expert, The Hague, The Netherlands
- Azra Kuci, Human Rights Lawyer, LLM Graduate, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Massimo La Torre, Professor of Law, University of Hull (UK), Catanzaro University, Italy
- Roberto Lamacchia, Lawyer, President, Association Democratic Jurists, Turin, Italy
- Michelle Landy, Solicitor, London, UK
- Federico Lenzerini, Assistant Professor of International Law, University of Siena, Italy
- Afsaneh Lotfizadeh, Human Rights Researcher (UCL LLM graduate), London, United Kingdom
- Michael Lynk, Professor, Faculty of Law, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
- Osama Malik, Advocate, Islamabad High Court Bar Association, Pakistan
- Marina Mancini, Senior Lecturer in International Law, Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, Italy
- Ana Manero Salvador, Associate Professor of Public International Law, University Carlos III, Madrid, Spain
- Fabio Marcelli, Research Director, Institute for International Legal Studies of the National Research Council, Rome, Bureau Member of IADL, Italy
- GIlberto Pagani, Avvocato, Legal Team Italia,
- Antonio Martínez Puñal, Professor of Public International Law, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
- Mari Matsuda Professor, William S. Richardson School of Law, USA
- David McQuoid-Mason, Director, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.
- Maeve McMahon, Associate Professor, Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
- Ladan Mehranvar, PhD candidate in International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Canada
- Ezio Menzione, Lawyer, Legal Team Italia, Italy
- Ruth Mestre, Professor of Law, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia, Spain
- Lies Michielsen, Lawyer Antwerp, Belgium
- Jeanne Mirer, President, International Association of Democratic Lawyers
- Bela Mongia, Human Rights Researcher, (UCL Human Rights student), London, United Kingdom
- Lavinia Monti, PhD candidate in International Law and Human Rights, University La Sapienza, Rome, Italy
- Gloria M. Moran, Professor of Law, Religion and Public Policy, UDC, Spain/USA
- Giuseppe Morgese, Senior Lecturer in European Uninion Law, University of Bari, Italy
- Raffaella Multedo, Lawyer, Legal Team Italia, Italy
- Raymond Murphy, Professor of Law and Human Rights, Irish Centre for Human Rights, Galway, Northern Ireland
- Francesca Mussi, PhD candidate in International Law, University of Milan- Bicocca, Italy
- Egeria Nalin, Senior Lecturer in International Law, Faculty of Political Science, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy
- Nina Navid, Human Rights Researcher, (UCL MA Human Rights graduate), London, U.K.
- Mary Nazzal-Batayneh, Barrister, Palestine Legal Aid Fund, Amman, Jordan
- Dorothy-Jean O’Donnell, Lawyer, Hope, British Columbia, Canada
- Maria Irene Papa, Senior Lecturer in International Law, Faculty of Law, University La Sapienza, Rome, Italy
Facoltà di Giurisprudenza - Brad Parker, Attorney, Defence for Children International Palestine, USA
- Gilberto Pagani, Lawyer, Milan, Italy
- Brunilda Pali, Researcher, KU Leuven Institute of Criminology, Leuven, Belgium
- Paolo Picone, Emeritus Professor of International Law, University La Sapienza, Rome, Member of Institut de Droit International, Member of Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy
- Enrique Pochat, profesor de Derechos Humanos en la Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina
- Giuseppe Puma – PhD, International Law, University La Sapienza, Rome, Italy
- Antonio Martínez Puñal, Professor of Public International Law, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
- Micòl Savia, human rights lawyer, permanent representative of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) at the UN, Italy
- Chiara Ragni, Senior Researcher and Assistant Professor of International Law, University of Milan, Italy
- Michael Ratner, President Emeritus, Center for Constitutional Rights, New York, USA
- Edel Reagan, LLM, Irish Center for Human Rights, Galway, Northern Ireland
- Clara Rigoni, PhD Candidate, Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg, Germany
- Sunčana Roksandić Vidlička, assistent lecturer Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, PhD Candidate Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg, Germany
- Yashvir Roopun, Barrister at Law, UK
- Itziar Ruiz-Gimenez Arrieta, Lecturer of International Relations, University Autónoma of Madrid, Spain
- Simeon A. Sahaydachny, LL.M in International Law, New Jersey, USA
- Francesco Saluzzo, PhD candidate in International Law, University of Palermo, Italy
- Laura Salvadego, research Fellow in International Law, University of Ferrara, Italy
- Stephanie Schlickewei, Research Associate in Public International Law, University of Kiel, Germany
- Smita Shah, Barrister, Garden Court Chambers, London, UK
- Rasha Sharkia, Media Advisor, Israel/Palestine,UCL MA Human Rights graduate, London, UK.
- Francesco Sindico, Reader in International Environmental Law, University of Strathclyde Law School, Glasgow, UK
- Francisco Soberon, Director Fundador, Asociacion Pro Derechos Humanos (APRODEH), Lima, Peru
- Angeles Solanes-Corella, Professor of Law, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia, Spain
- Mihira Sood, Human Rights Lawyer, Supreme Court of India, India
- Marta Sosa Navarro, Lawyer and International Criminal Law researcher, PhD in International Criminal Law, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
- Pamela Spees, Senior Staff Attorney, Centre for Constitutional Rights, New York, USA
- Euan Sutherland, CB, Barrister and Parliamentary Draftsman, London, UK
- Patrice Tacita, Lawyer, Member of LKP, Guadeloupe
- Dennis Töllborg, Professor in Legal Science, STIAS Fellow, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
- Seline Trevisanut, Assistant Professor in International Law, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands.
- Maïa Trujillo, Senior Programme Officer for International Law and Human Rights, The Hague, The Netherlands
- Lydia Vicente-Márquez, Executive Director, Rights International Spain
- Luisa Vierucci, Lecturer in International Law, university of Florence, Italy
- Gianluca Vitale, Lawyer, Legal Team Italia, Italy
- Daniela Vitiello, PhD, International Law and EU Law, University La Sapienza, Rome, Italy
- Benjamin Vogel, Senior Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg i. Br., Germany
- B.J. Walker, Professor, University of Victoria, Canada, and PUC-Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Burns H Weston, Bessie Dutton Murray Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Senior Scholar, UI Center for Human Rights, The University of Iowa, USA
- Laura Westra, PhD, University of Windsor, Canada – International Law
University Bicocca, Milan, Italy - John Whitbeck, Expert on International Law, former legal advisor, Palestinian Negotiation Team
- Richard Wild, Lecturer, School of Law, University of Greenwich, UK
- Pål Wrange, Professor of International Law, Stockholm University, Sweden
- Selma Abdel Qader, LLM, SciencesPo, PSIA, Paris, France
- Jacqueline Alsaid, LLM, freelance writer and Human Rights Activist, UK
- Soumaya Ben Dhaou, PhD, Assistant Professor Nipissing University, ON, Canada
- Francisco Bernete, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
- Carla Biavati, Members of the IPRI – Institute for Peace Research, Italian branch
- Linda Bimbi, International Section of the Lelio and Lisli Basso Foundation, Rome
- Robert Bourque, Professor of Philosophy and Political Science, College de Thetford and UMCE University, Canada
- Elpidio Capasso, Member of Naples City Council and lawyer, Italy
- Joseph Chiume, Barrister, Malawi
- Elena Coccia, Member of Naples City Council and lawyer, Italy
- Esmeralda Colombo, Legal Practitioner, (LLM, College d’Europe), Milan, Italy
- Antonio Crocetta, Member of Naples City Council and lawyer, Italy
- Maurizio Cucci, Member of the IPRI – Institute for Peace Research, Italian branch
- Simon Dalby, professor, Wilfrid Laurier University, USA
- Luigi De Magistris, Mayor of Naples and former Judge, Italy
- Silvia De Michelis, PhD candidate, University of Bradford, Department of Peace Studies, Bradford, UK
- Gennaro Esposito, Member of Naples City Council and lawyer, Italy
- Roja Fazaeli, Lecturer in Islamic Studies, Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
- Andrea Florence, Master in International Law (IHEID), Brazil
- Alejandro Forero, Researcher, Observatory on Penal System and Human Rights University of Barcelona, Spain
- César Alejandro González Carrillo, Master in law
Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Jalisco, México - Héctor Grad, Associate Professor, Social Anthropology, University Autónoma, Madrid, Spain
- Cristina Greco, PhD in Semiotics, Department of Communication and Social Research, Rome University Sapienza, Italy
- Sondra Hale, Research Professor and Professor Emerita, Anthropology and Gender Studies, UCLA; and Coordinator, California Scholars for Academic Freedom, USA
- Remzi Halil, LLB, UK
- Naomi Head, Lecturer in Politics, University of Glasgow, UK
- Carlo Iannello, Member of Naples City Council and lawyer, Italy
- Mahmood M. Jaludi, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, USA
- Rabania Khan, LLB, UK
- Ronald C. Kramer, Professor of Sociology and Criminology, Western Michigan University, USA
- Charles H. Manekin, Professor of Philosophy, University of Maryland, USA
- Sarah Maranlou, Independent Legal Researcher, UK
- Lloyd K. Marbet, Executive Director, Oregon Conservancy Foundation, USA
- Miriam McColgan, Solicitor (Lawyer), Dublin, Ireland
- Giuseppe Nesi, Dean of the Law School, University of Trento, Italy
- Alba Nogueira López, Associate Professor of Administrative Law, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
- Francis Oeser, Poet, London, UK
- Sarah Pallesen, MA Social Anthropology of Development, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK
- Daniele Perissi, LL.M Graduate, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Italy
- Raffaele Porta, Professor, Chemical Sciences, University Federico II, Naples Italy
- Nicola Quatrano, Judge, OSSIN – International Observatory on Human Rights, Italy
- Minhaj Quazi, B.Com(Hons) M.Com, LL.B.
- Rezaur Rahman Lenin, Executive Director, Law Life Culture, Bangladesh
- Jale Reshat, Solicitor, UK
- Dario Rossi, Lawyer, Italy
- Marco Russo, Member of Naples City Council and lawyer, Italy
- Ghassan Shahrour, MD
- Lloyd Schneider, Retired Minister, United Church of Christ, Delegate to General Synod 2015, Tuolumne, California, USA
- Gene, Schulman, Former senior editor, Overseas American Academy, Geneva, Switzerland
- Salvatore Talia, graduate in law, Università degli Sudi di Milano, Italy
- Carlo Tagliacozzo, Human Rights Activist, Turin, Italy
- Jeanne Theoharis, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Co-Founder of Educators for Civil Liberties , Brooklyn College of CUNY, New York, USA
- Ismail Waheed, Lecturer, Institute of Islamic Studies, Maldives
- Paul Wapner, Professor, School of International Service, American University, USA
- Saïd Zulficar, Network for Colonial Freedom
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
Reading Jeff Halper’s ‘War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification’
7 Apr[Prefatory Note: The review below was published in the current issue of Journal of the Society for Contemporary Thought and Islamicate World. I am posting it here because I believe that Jeff Halper’s book deserves the widest possible reading. It explains clearly and convincingly one of the deepest and least understood roots of Israel’s diplomatic support throughout the world, which is its role as a niche arms supplier and influential tactical specialist in waging wars against peoples who dare offer resistance to state power as variously deployed against them. The Israeli experience in exerting oppressive control of the Palestinian people provides the foundation of Israel’s international credibility and perceptions of effectiveness in disseminating for economic and political profit its hardware and software associated with managing and suppressing the resistance of popular movements fighting for their rights. The Israel stress on pacification rather than victory exposes the true nature of what Halper identifies so vividly and comprehensively as the distinctive character of waging ‘war against the people.’ ]
Jeff Halper, War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification, Pluto Press, 2015, 296 pp., $25.00 US (pbk), ISBN 9780745334301.
Jeff Halper is an unusual hybrid presence on both the scholarly and political scene. He describes himself as an “activist-scholar” (6), which adopts a controversial self-identification. The conventional stance erects a high wall between scholarship and activism. To his credit and for our benefit, Halper excels almost equally in both roles. He is one of the most lucid speakers on the lecture circuit combining clarity with wisdom and a rich fund of information and firsthand experience, and his work as a writer is influential and widely known. His activist credentials have been built up over many years, especially in his work as co-founder and leader of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, which has bravely confronted Israeli demolition crews and IDF soldiers, helped Palestinians on multiple occasions to rebuild their destroyed homes, thereby responding humanely to one of Israel’s cruelest occupation practices, an instance of unlawful collective punishment. Halper has estimated that less than 2% of demolitions can lay claim to a credible security justification (the respected Israeli human rights NGO, B’Tselem, estimates 1.3% of demolitions are justified by security, while the rest are punitive or 621 of 47,000 since 1967). As an author his main prior book makes an unsurprisingly strong pitch for activism as the most reliable foundation for analysis and prescription. His important and incisive title gave the theme away—An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel.1 This earlier book remains valuable as testimony by a progressive Zionist in Israel that with good faith Jews and Palestinians might yet learn to live together, including finding a formula for sharing the land.
Halper’s own life experience makes this blend of scholarship and activism particularly compelling. He is an American born Jew who grew up in the Midwest and studied anthropology in Wisconsin, taught at a Quaker university for several years, and then moved to Israel where he married an Israeli and has three grown children. What particularly sets Halper apart from most other principled Jews in the ranks of critics of Israel is the striking combination of the radicalism of his opposition to the policies and practices of the Israeli state together with his evident commitment to remain in Israel no matter how far right the governing process drifts. Most other prominent Jewish critics of Israel have remained outside the country throughout their life (e.g. Noam Chomsky) or were born in Israel and then chose to become expatriate critical voices (e.g. Daniel Levy, Ilan Pappé, Gilad Azmun). There are a few internationally prominent Israeli journalists and cultural figures who have sustained sharply critical commentary (e.g. Gideon Levy, Amira Hass) and kept their Israeli residence despite harassment and threats.
In the book under review Halper broadens his own distinctive identity while enlarging the apertures of perception by which he views the Israeli state. He focuses attention on the Israeli arms industry, security doctrines, and policies, and examines Israel’s acquisition of formidable diplomatic influence grossly disproportionate to its size and capabilities. It is this gap between Israel’s significant impact on current world history and the modest scale of its territorial reality and its outsider status in most global settings that is the core mystery being explicated by Halper. He starts the book with some provocative questions that put the underlying puzzle before us in vivid language: “How does Israel get away with it? In a decidedly post-colonial age, how is Israel able to sustain a half-century occupation over the Palestinians, a people violently displaced in 1948, in the face of almost unanimous international opposition” (1)? He indicates that this phenomenon cannot be adequately “explained by normal international relations” nor by the strength of the Israel lobby in the United States nor by strong Israeli pushback to discredit critics by invoking the Holocaust as an indefinite source of impunity (3). What the book demonstrates very persuasively is that Israeli influence is a result of its extraordinary, partially hidden and understated role as arms supplier to more than 130 countries and as an increasingly significant mentor of national police forces and counter-terrorist operations and practices in many countries, including the United States.
Israel as Arms Merchant and Pacification Ideologue
Without exaggeration, War Against the People, is really three books in one. It is first of all a comprehensive and detailed look at the elaborate Israeli arms industry, including the extensive network of private companies engaged in arms production. Halper explores how Israel managed to become such a valued producer of sophisticated weaponry that so many governments have come to depend upon. Part of Israel’s success in the highly competitive international arms market is to identify and develop niches for itself in the wider global arms market that allows it to compete successfully for market share with companies backed by several of the world’s largest states by supplying specific kinds of weaponry that outperform the alternatives available for purchase. By so serving as an arms merchant to no less than 130 countries gives Israel a powerful unacknowledged source of leverage throughout the entire world. An aspect of Israel’s success is to be apolitical in its operations as an arms supplier, provided only that the foreign government poses no security threat to Israel.
Secondly, the book is a detailed examination of the specific ways that Israel has adapted its security doctrine and practice to the varieties of Palestinian resistance over the decades. The Israeli approach rests on adopting a goal toward internal security that seeks to achieve a tolerable level of “pacification” of the Palestinian population. As such it does not seek to “defeat” the Palestinians, including even Hamas, and is content with keeping violent resistance contained so that Israelis can go about their lives with reasonable security and the economy can prosper. At the same time, the threat of violent resistance never entirely disappears or is absent from the political consciousness and experience of Israeli society, and the fear factor keeps Israelis supportive of oppressive internal policies. Pacification in the face of a potentially very hostile minority Palestinian presence in pre-1967 Israel has presupposed a fusing of Israel’s military, paramilitary, police, and intelligence capabilities, but also a less understood Israeli politics of restraint. The capabilities to sustain pacifications must be continuously updated and adapted to evolving circumstances, including shifts in Palestinian tactics of resistance.
This mental shift from “victory” over the natives to their relentless “pacification” to some extent reflects the ethical orientation of a post-colonial world. In many respects Israel represents a species of settler colonialism, but it takes the form of seeking some kind of imposed accommodation with the native population rather than their extinction or spatial marginalization. Actually, as Israeli politics have moved further and further to the right, the tactics of pacification have become more coercive and brutal, and do seem to push the original dispossession of the nakba toward some kind of “final solution” by way of settlement expansion as likely supplemented at some point by population transfer and by periodic massive military operations of the sort that have occurred in Gaza in 2008-2009, 2012, and 2014. In other words, pacification as conceived in the 1950s has become quite something more ominous for the Palestinians in the twenty-first century as “Palestine” shrinks in size and diminishes in threat while Israel’s territorial ambitions continue to expand and seem to be within reach.
The Israel/Palestine encounter is certainly unique in several of its aspects, yet it bears sufficient similarity to a range of threats facing many governments in the world to allow the Israeli government to serve as an exemplary practitioner of counterinsurgency war/politics. It is precisely the generality of contemporary security challenges situated within society that makes the Israeli experience seem so valuable to others, especially when reinforced by the widespread impression that Israel’s security policies have succeeded in the face of difficult challenges over an extended period. This combination of considerations gives Israel’s weapons, training programs, and security doctrines their global resonance. Especially in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the long-term character of the Israeli experience became a strong credential on the arms market and among strategy-minded think tanks. Israel’s perceived counterinsurgency record has even led other governments to mute or even abandon their criticisms of the manner in which Israel suppresses Palestinians and flaunts international law. In this way, the Israeli network of arms sales arrangements has not only functioned as direct sources of influence and economic benefit to Israel, but also contributed a political payoff by weakening motivations at the UN and elsewhere in the world to exert meaningful pressure on Israel to modify its policies and uphold its obligations under international law. What Halper helps us to understand is this rarely discussed relationship between the arms trade and what might be called an international diplomacy of pacification. In effect, Israel has quietly bought off most of its potentially most dangerous governmental adversaries by making itself an invaluable collaborator in the security domain, which is given priority by every government when it comes to shaping its foreign policy. The reach of this weapons diplomacy is further extended due to Israel’s willingness to do arms deals discreetly with the most repressive of regimes around the world even while at the same time it takes great pains to substantiate the claim that Israel remains the only democracy in the Middle East.
Thirdly, this long experience of coping with Palestinian resistance has given Israel continuing field experience with tactics and weapons useful to subdue a non-state adversary, including convincing demonstrations of what works and what doesn’t. In fundamental respects the work of pacification is never finished, and so Israel continuously modifies its weapons mix to take account of battlefield lessons and technological innovations, and this is of great value to governments that were seeking to choose among several alternatives to meet the requirements of their particular security challenges. Israel can claim both the reliability of its weaponry through their field testing in response to varying conditions and success in adapting to ever changing tactics of Palestinian resistance. No other country has achieved this mastery over the hardware and software of a pacification approach to internal security.
Halper also makes us aware that pacification is what also best explains the hegemonic ambitions of America’s securitizing approach to world order. What Israel has achieved on a small scale, the United States is managing on a large scale. In other words the several hundred American foreign military bases together with navies patrolling all of the world’s oceans, further reinforced by satellite militarization of space for purposes of intelligence and possible attack are the coercive infrastructure of both neoliberal globalization and American global leadership. The objective is to keep those dissatisfied with this established order under sufficient control so that trade, investment, and basic security relations are not deeply disturbed. Part of Halper’s argument is that Israel understands the dynamics of an effective regime of global pacification better than any other country, and has done its best to be useful to the United States and Europe by providing niche support in terms of weaponry (say for border barriers, surveillance, and control) and doctrine (say targeted assassinations by drone strikes and collective blockades).
Matrix of Control
Halper relies upon an illuminating style of conceptualization to develop his basic analysis. For instance, one of his important contributions is to specify global pacification by reference to a “Matrix of Control.” The basic argument of the book is that the most defining “wars” of our times involve using state violence against a mobilized population that mounts threats against the established economic and political order. The matrix of control is the complex interaction of weapons, policies, practices, and ideas that make this project a reality. The paradigmatic case is the Israeli pacification of the Palestinians, which is less than their defeat or annihilation, but something other than sustained warfare; it is doing enough by way of forcible action to punish, terrorize, and suppress without clearly crossing the line drawn by legal prohibitions on mass atrocity and genocide. It is damping down the fires of Palestinian resistance into a smoldering mass of tensions and resentments that every so often bursts into flames, offering pretexts for launching a new campaign of devastation. The pattern of periodic onslaughts against Gaza since 2008 is indicative of the broader policies, with three massive attacks every 2-3 years, what Israeli officials are comfortable describing as “mowing the lawn” (146), which incidentally stimulates a new round of arms sales.
The Israeli matrix of control (143-190) is specified by reference to its various main components, forming an integrated and distinctive form of what Halper describes as “urban warfare” resting on the premise of “domestic securitization,” that is, conceiving of the enemy as mainly operating within the boundaries of the state, ultimately to be contained rather than defeated. Such an integrated approach relies on walls to keep the unwanted from entering, surveillance, fragmenting the population to be controlled, periodic and punitive violent suppression designed to prevent, preempt, and demoralize, and proactive intelligence that seeks to gain access to the inner circles of militant opposition forces. Such a matrix of control both deploys a mixture of traditional counterterrorist measures and the latest innovations in sophisticated technology, including armed robotics, drones, and a variety of overlapping surveillance techniques. The approach relies on a vertical layering of security measures that rests on redundancy to ensure effective control. What is original about this approach is its conscious realization that “victory” over hostile subjugated forces is not an acceptable or realizable policy option, and what works best is a system of permanent control sustained by a mix of coercive and psychological instruments.
Pacifying Palestinians and Pacifying the World
Halper shows how this matrix of control, which developed to enable Israeli settler society to achieve a tolerable level of security with respect to the indigenous Palestinian population, seeks to fulfill an elusive requirement. It maintains security without resorting to genocide or to the kind of destructive forms of mass slaughter that characterized earlier experiences of settler colonialism where the land occupied was cleared of natives. At the same time, it pacifies in a post-colonial era where the power of the colonial master has been effectively challenged throughout the world. It is no longer possible to beat the native population into a condition of passive resignation as had been the case so often during the heyday of the extensive European colonial empires. These two considerations suggest a policy puzzle for the pacifier who must avoid extreme violence and yet depends on a sufficient degree of violence to intimidate a restive population that believes resistance is justified and currently accords with the flow of history.
The Israeli answer in a variety of acknowledged and disguised forms is best understood by reference to the Dahiya Doctrine, which incorporates a logic of disproportionate retaliation (174-176). In effect, for every Israeli killed or home damaged or destroyed, a far greater number of Palestinians will be killed and entire residential neighborhoods destroyed. The Dahiya Docrtine was proclaimed originally to justify the destruction of the Dahiya neighborhood in south Beirut during the Lebanon War of 2006. The people living in densely populated Dahiya were viewed by Israel as supportive of Hezbollah, but it is descriptive of Israeli behavior generally with respect to Palestinian acts of resistance, particularly with respect to Gaza since falling under Hamas’s control. The supposedly centrist Tzipi Livni, the Israeli political leader who served as Foreign Minister during the massive attack on Gaza at the end of 2008, expressed this Israeli way of dealing with Palestinian resistance in Gaza in the following chilling words: “Hamas now understands that when you fire on its [Israel’s] citizens it responds by going wild—and this is a good thing” (quoted in Halper, 175). I would add that “going wild” is a euphemism for rejecting the efforts of international humanitarian law and the just war tradition to constrain the intensity of violence and suffering by insisting on proportional responses. In effect, to reject so overtly this admittedly vague effort of international law to impose limits on the conduct of warfare, Israel is incorporating into the core of its security approach a repudiation of the humanizing ambition of international law, and implicitly claiming the right on its own to use force as it wishes. This is a step back from the extensive attempt during the prior century to put the genie of war, if not back in its bottle, at least to gesture toward that end. With Israel’s concept of securitization, also descriptive of the approach taken by the United States, as well as such other countries as Russia, France, and China, it is arguable that international society has turned the normative clock back to a nihilistic zero.
There is another crucial feature of the matrix of control that is of wider relevance than Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians that Halper associates with “Framing: A Tendentious Definition of ‘Terrorism’” (149-151). This framing idea is to make it appear that “the terrorists” are always those resisting control by the established political order, and never those that are exercising authority however oppressively. As Halper points out, the IDF may kill over 2,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of whom are civilians, in the course of an armed confrontation in Gaza, as opposed to Hamas killing five Israeli civilians, but Hamas will still be depicted as the practitioner of terror and Israel’s violence will be put forward as defensive measures that are reasonable and necessary for the protection of the civilian population of Israel. The Israeli government will describe Palestinian civilian deaths as regrettable collateral damage, while attributing Hamas’s comparatively trivial lethality to a deliberate intention to kill Israeli civilians. The final step in the ideologizing process is to make this construction of the respective intentions of the two sides hinge on the question of deliberate intention, and since Hamas’s rockets are fired in the general direction of civilian populations the intention is declared to be deliberate, while Israel is seeking to destroy militarily relevant personnel and weaponry. This kind of manipulative framing by Israel has been borrowed by the United States and other governments to lend moral authority to the form of disproportionate violence that has characterized counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan in the post-9/11 era as well as lesser military operations around the world in the course of “the war on terror.”
What Israel has been doing within Palestinian territory it is seeking to control, the United States does globally. The introduction of drone warfare and special ops covert forces into dozens of countries throughout the world is an extension of the matrix of control as perfected by Israel within its limited field of operations. It also reformulates the parameters of permissible violence without regard to the limitations of international law, regarding any point of suspected adversaries throughout the planet as subject to deadly attack, borrowing notions of targeted assassination from the repertoire of Israeli practices. As with Israel, the operative goal of the so-called long war is not victory in the World War II sense, but rather the exercise of a sufficiency of control that is able to establish tolerable levels of security for Western societies and transnational economic activity. It is worth pointing out that as with Israel, the United States is unwilling to pay the costs in reputation and resources that would be required to achieve victory, although in the Iraq occupation as earlier in Vietnam it did seek to do more than pacify but in the end found the costs too high, and abandoned the undertaking.
Halper’s book gives essential insights to a key set of interrelated concerns: the political benefits to Israel arising from its dual role as quality arms supplier and counterinsurgency mentor; the degree to which Israel’s success in managing a hostile Palestinian population as well as a series of dangerous regional threats offers the United States a model for global securitization with a primary objective of preempting threats to the American homeland and safeguarding neoliberal global markets and trade routes from hostile forces; as also noted, the Israeli domestic security apparatus has been influential in the equipping and training of American and other national police forces. Additionally, Isreali technologies and knowhow have been relied upon to monitor borders and to erect barriers against unwanted entry; the advantages of having a seemingly permanent combat zone such as Gaza for field testing weapons and tactics increases the attractiveness of Israel as supplier of choice. This kind of combat zone is real world simulation that has many experimental advantages over the sorts of war games that are used to assess the effectiveness of weapons and tactics. Without incoming rockets from Gaza it would be impossible to reliably test the effectiveness of a defensive system such as the Iron Dome.
Concluding Comments
In the end, Halper answers the question as to why Israel’s seeming international unpopularity based of its long-term suppression of the Palestinian people does not harm its image or status. Israel manages to get away with its abusive human rights record while a more powerful and populous country such as apartheid South Africa was sanctioned and censured repeatedly. Of course, U.S. geopolitical muscle is part of the answer, but what Halper adds to our understanding in an insightful and factually supported manner is an appreciation of Israel’s extraordinary usefulness as arms supplier and counterinsurgency guru. A further implication of Israeli usefulness is a realization that governments give much more weight to relationships that bolster their security capabilities than they do to matters of international morality and law. Given these realities, it remains clear that the Palestinian national movement will have to wage its struggle on its own with principal support coming from civil society. Israel, it must be acknowledged has substantially neutralized both the UN and the foreign policy of most important countries, although public opinion around the world is moving in directions that could exert mounting pressure on Israel in the years to come.
As the title of Halper’s book suggests, what is transpiring worldwide, and is epitomized by the Israeli response to Palestinian opposition, can be best understood as part of a wider shift in the nature of global conflict in the post-Cold War period. Instead of most attention being given by security bureaucracies to rivalries and warfare among leading states, the most salient, dangerous, and cruelest conflicts are between state and society, or wars waged against people. There are no significant international wars between two or more states taking place now, while at least 30 internal wars are raging in different parts of the world. To be sure there have been a series of military interventions as part of the global pacification project under the direction of the United States and proxy wars in the Middle East in which major states intervene on opposite sides of a civil war. Yet whether we think of Syria as the paradigm of twenty-first century warfare or the Israeli matrix of control, it is “the people,” or a mobilized segment, that is being victimized. Halper’s book does the best job so far of depicting this new cartography of warfare, and deserves to be widely read and its main theses debated.
Tags: Counterinsurgency Tactics, Counterinsurgency Weaponry, Global pacification, intelligence capabilities, Israel's Arms Industry, New Wars, Palestinian pacification, paramilitary dimensions, police dimensions