Targeting
Attacking a Pipeline: Legal Issues for Consideration
Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 are pipelines constructed by a Russian State-controlled company called Gazprom to transport 110 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year from the Russian Federation under the Baltic Sea to Germany. Gazprom has a 51 percent...
“Well, it Depends”: The Explosive Pagers Attack Revisited
On 17 September, 2024, thousands of pagers distributed by Hezbollah to its operatives in Lebanon and Syria exploded. On the following day, hundreds of walkie talkies used by Hezbollah operatives also exploded. According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, more than 30...
State Practice in Assassination: What is Old is New Again
In July 2024, CNN reported that American and German intelligence agencies had thwarted a Russian plan to kill Armin Papperger, the chief executive of Rheinmetall, a company known as “the largest and most successful German manufacturer of the vital 155mm artillery...
Attacking Iran: Retaliation or Self-Defense?
On October 1, Iran launched a major two-wave attack consisting of over 180 missiles against Israel. The primary targets were the headquarters of Mossad and three Israeli Air Force bases. However, Israel’s multi-layered air defense systems, supported by U.S. warships,...
Killing Nasrallah and the Law of Armed Conflict
Last Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted air strikes against a Hezbollah command and control bunker in Beirut’s Dahiyeh suburbs, which was located under an apartment complex. The attack, which followed IDF warnings for civilians to evacuate the area,...
A Policy Approach for Addressing the “Cyber Attacks” and “Data as an Object” Debates
Among the issues examined at this week’s International Society of Military Law and the Law of War’s annual Silent Leges Inter Arma? (In Times of War, the Law Falls Silent?) Conference in Bruges, Belgium, is the protection of civilians against digital threats during...
Exploding Pagers and the Law
Reports emerged on 17 September 2024 that, from about 15:45 that day local time, a large number of pagers used by Hezbollah personnel in Lebanon exploded spontaneously and virtually simultaneously. At the time of writing, nine persons are reported to have died and...
Lawfully Using Autonomous Weapon Technologies
Editor's note: This post is derived from the author’s recently published book Lawfully Using Autonomous Weapon Technologies, published with Springer Press. We, members of the human race in 2024, already live in a world saturated with artificial intelligence (AI). Like...
Targeting in an Urban Environment: Why Weaponeering and Tactics Matter
Israel’s ongoing urban operations in Gaza have drawn extensive international scrutiny. Critics have focused on the number of reported civilian casualties, with many attributing Israel’s use of large, high-explosive free-fall bombs in an urban environment as the cause...
International Law and Intelligence Gathering: Mind the Gaps
Intelligence gathering is a fundamental element of both statecraft and the conduct of hostilities. Its integral role in armed conflict is evident in the Israel intelligence service, the Shin Bet, having provided “surgical intelligence” for the July 2024 targeting of...
Targeting in the Black Box: The Need to Reprioritize AI Explainability
States around the world are racing to leverage the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) to their own military advantage. In the coming decades, AI-based systems are expected to revolutionize logistics, significantly alter targeting processes, and power...
Israel-Hamas 2024 Symposium – Israel’s Jus ad Bellum and LOAC Obligations and the Evolving Nature of the Conflict
According to the New York Times, some senior American officials have concluded Israel has achieved all it can militarily in the Gaza Strip. It reports that “a growing number of national security officials” believe that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) will never be able...
Targeting Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr
On Wednesday morning, Israel killed the Chief of Hamas’s Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, while he was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. To do so, it reportedly used a bomb that had been smuggled two months earlier into the...
Applying the Unwilling or Unable Test: Israel Strikes Houthi Targets in Yemen
On July 18, 2024, Houthi rebels conducted a drone strike in Tel Aviv, killing one person and wounding at least ten others. The attack was carried out by an Iranian Samad-3 drone that had been modified to conduct the long-range strike. The attack constitutes the first...
The International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission and Gaza – How is it Involved?
On 20 June 2024, the government of the Republic of Poland signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC) regarding the incident on April 1, 2024 in the Gaza Strip during which seven people working with the...
Protecting Schools in Armed Conflict
In early July 2024, the BBC reported that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had conducted an air strike on a school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. According to Palestinian sources, sixteen people were killed, with dozens more injured in the attack on the...
Lieber Studies Making and Shaping LOAC Volume – The Application of LOAC in Domestic Courts and the Question of Expertise
Editors’ note: This post is based on the author’s chapter in Making and Shaping the Law of Armed Conflict (Sandesh Sivakumaran and Christian R. Burne eds. 2024), the tenth volume of the Lieber Studies Series published with Oxford University Press. The South Africa v....
Israel – Hamas 2024 Symposium – The Gospel, Lavender, and the Law of Armed Conflict
In November 2023, +972 Magazine and Local Call published a joint report on Israel Defense Force (IDF) targeting operations, labeling them a “mass assassination factory.” It correctly stated that the IDF was using “Gospel,” a system characterized as relying upon...
Israel-Hamas 2024 Symposium – AI-Based Targeting in Gaza: Surveying Expert Responses and Refining the Debate
The reported use of artificial intelligence-enabled decision-support systems (AI-DSS), in particular the Gospel and Lavender, by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in their military operations in Gaza has been controversial. Allegedly, these two systems are used to...
Precautions and Aerial Superiority or Supremacy
In modern armed conflict, belligerents must control the air domain. Air supremacy or air superiority is a precondition for success in land and naval operations. Simultaneously, belligerents must exercise “constant care to spare the civilian population, civilians and...
Caltrop: An Ancient Weapon in Modern Warfare
Recent reports indicate that Ukraine has modified drones to deliver and disperse a weapon of ancient design in its fight against Russia. The weapon, known as a caltrop, is a spiked device that can be strewn in large numbers, sometimes connected by a chain, across a...
In Honor of Yoram Dinstein – The San Remo and the Newport Manuals on the Law of Naval Warfare
Editors’ note: This post is part of a series to honor Professor Yoram Dinstein, who passed away on Saturday February 10, 2024. These posts recognize Professor Dinstein’s work and the significant contribution his scholarship has made to our understanding of...
Israel – Hamas 2024 Symposium – Civilian Protection as an Element of Military Advantage in Determining Proportionality
In a prior post, I raised the issue of whether the protection of Israeli civilians may be treated as a military advantage in determining the proportionality of attacks in Gaza. This situation arises when an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) attack prevents harm from being...
Imposing a Maritime Quarantine to Enforce the Houthi Arms Embargo
This post suggests that the United States and its allies should implement a naval quarantine to restrict the flow of Iranian weapons into Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. A quarantine, unlike a blockade, is a peacetime measure that imposes reasonable restrictions on...
Ukraine Symposium – New ICC Arrest Warrants for Russian Flag Officers
The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) wanted list for Russian perpetrators of war crimes committed in Ukraine has doubled. Prosecutor Karim Khan announced arrest warrants against two Russian military commanders, General Sergei Ivanovich Kobylash and Admiral Viktor...
The Netherlands Appeals Court Order on F-35 Parts Delivery to Israel
A domestic court judgment in the Netherlands recently captured global headlines for ordering the government to suspend participation in a multinational program supplying F-35 parts to Israel. The Court of Appeal decision reversed an earlier judgment rendered by the...
