26 September
2024
Type of event: 
Humanitarian Camouflage: Israel Rewrites the Laws of War to Legitimize the Genocide in Gaza
Organizing office: 
IPS Washington
Date: 
Thursday, September 26, 2024 - 19:00 - 20:15
Eastern Date:: 
Thursday, September 26, 2024 - 12:00 - 13:15
Language: 
English
Location: 
Online
Venue: 
Zoom
Event Theme: 
About the event: 

*EVENT AT 12PM ET / 7PM PALESTINE ON THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 2024*

Israel uses international humanitarian law (IHL) to justify actions in Gaza that amount to genocide. Israel’s settler-colonial agenda systematically strips Palestinians of their rights, and has transformed Gaza into a site of extreme violence, segregation, and mass annihilation. The speakers explore how Israel’s tactics include mass expulsions, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and distorted legal discourse to present these actions as compliant with IHL, despite their genocidal nature. The appropriation of IHL is shown as a legal-political strategy to mask atrocities while framing Gaza’s Palestinian population as a “terrorist” group to be eliminated. Ultimately, the speakers raise urgent concerns about how such legal distortions may enable future genocides globally, under the guise of lawful warfare.

The three speakers have a forthcoming installment on the same topic in our Current Issues in Depth series.

 
Cover image: (Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
About the speakers: 

Dr. Luigi Daniele teaches and researches international humanitarian law and international criminal law at Nottingham Law School (NTU). His research focuses on the law of targeting, war crimes law, and the proposed crime of ecocide. His latest contributions concerned the misuses of the notion of 'collateral damage' , the crisis and changing landscape of genocide studies (with R. Segal), and the war crimes of destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity. He is author of the forthcoming Indiscriminate and Disproportionate Attacks in International Law. Bridging the Accountability Gap (Hart Publishing, 2025).

Nicola Perugini teaches at the department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. His research revolves around the politics of human rights and international law, and the ethics of violence, with special focus on Palestine. He is the co-author of The Human Right to Dominate (Oxford University Press 2015) and Human Shields. A History of People in the Line of Fire (University of California Press 2020). His current research explores the role of civilians in anti-colonial national liberation wars. Nicola publishes regularly in several media outlets and blogs. 

Francesca Albanese is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. She is an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, and a Senior Advisor on Migration and Forced Displacement for the think tank Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD), where she co-founded the Global Network on the Question of Palestine (GNQP), a coalition of renowned professional and scholars engaged in/on Israel/Palestine. She has published widely on the legal situation in Israel/Palestine; her latest book, Palestine Refugees in International Law (Oxford University Press, 2020), offers a comprehensive legal analysis of the situation of Palestinian refugees from its origins to modern-day reality. She regularly teaches and lectures on International Law and Forced Displacement in European and Arab universities, and speaks frequently at conferences and public events on the legal situation of Palestine. She worked for a decade as a human rights expert for the United Nations, including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees. In these capacities, she advised the UN, governments, and civil society across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Asia Pacific, on the enforcement of human rights norms, especially for vulnerable groups including refugees and migrants. She holds a Law Degree (with honors) from the University of Pisa and an LLM in Human Rights from the University of London, SOAS.

Malika Irshad (moderator) is the Operations and Publishing Officer at the Institute for Palestine Studies-USA. She has an LLB in Law from SOAS, and a masters in Human Rights and Cultural Diversity from the University of Essex.

 

 

Video of the event: 

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