Terrorism Counterterrorism
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...
Palestine’s Quest for Full United Nations Membership
Amidst the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, the United States vetoed Palestine’s latest bid for full acceptance as a member State of the United Nations (UN). In the view of the United States, the only way for a stable future between Israel and Palestine...
MARWAN 1: How U.S. Central Command Transferred Seized Iranian Ammunition to Ukraine
On December 1, 2022, the USS Lewis B. Puller, an expeditionary mobile base ship assigned to the U.S. 5th Fleet and U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, intercepted a fishing trawler, the Marwan 1 (Marwan), a flagless vessel, in the Gulf of Oman. A security team from the...
Israel-Hamas 2024 Symposium – Israel’s Declaration of War on Hamas: A Modern Invocation of Recognized Belligerency?
Hours after Hamas launched a horrific and unprecedently large-scale terrorist assault on Israel, the Israeli Security Cabinet invoked, for the first time in Israel’s history, Article 40(a) of its Basic Law: The Government. Israel’s invocation of Article 40(a) was...
The Law of Self-Defense and the U.S. and UK Strikes against the Houthis
The Houthis are an Iran-aligned armed group that controls large swathes of territory in northern Yemen. Since 19 November 2023, and to support Hamas during its ongoing armed conflict with Israel, the Houthis have launched attacks against vessels transiting through the...
International Law, Political Will, and Regulation of the Foreign-Fighter Phenomenon
Editor’s Note: This post is based on an article, “Regulating the Foreign-Fighter Phenomenon” published in the Virginia Journal of International Law, available here. Across at least three centuries, foreign fighters—individuals who voluntarily depart their countries of...
Israel – Hamas 2023 Symposium – After the Battlefield: Transnational Criminal Law, Hamas, and Seeking Justice – Part II
Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series illustrating the “transnational legal order” that must be used to counter Hamas outside the battlefield. The first post discussed the range of international legal instruments that comprise the transnational legal...
Israel – Hamas 2023 Symposium – After the Battlefield: Transnational Criminal Law, Hamas, and Seeking Justice – Part I
Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series illustrating the “transnational legal order” that must be used to counter Hamas outside the battlefield. The second post will address potential challenges to using transnational legal mechanisms required for the...
Israel – Hamas 2023 Symposium – The Circle of Suffering and the Role of IHL
Great suffering is the cause and consequence of armed conflict. International humanitarian law (IHL) sets a minimum base line of humanity at times when tensions and emotions run at unbearably high levels. By finding a balance between military necessity and the...
Israel – Hamas 2023 Symposium – Beyond the Pale: IHRL and the Hamas Attack on Israel
The October 7, 2023 attack by armed Hamas militants against Israel and the long string of atrocities committed by them against Israeli civilians and military personnel has already been the subject of legal analysis on Articles of War (see here, here and here). Beyond...
Israel – Hamas 2023 Symposium – Siege Law and Military Necessity
It is no surprise that the debate over the legality of Israeli measures directed against Hamas is already gaining momentum. Public discussion has focused, at least for now, on Israeli Defense Minister Gallant’s declaration that, “no electricity, no food, no water, no...
Israel – Hamas 2023 Symposium – Hostage-Taking and the Law of Armed Conflict
In the early morning of October 7, the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, the militant Palestinian group Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, a surprise attack against Israel. Its military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, fired thousands of rockets from the Gaza Strip...
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