Israel's Legal Violations: Counting The Broken Laws

Israel has been accused of breaking international law in its treatment of Palestinians. This includes the unlawful killing of civilians, forced displacement, abusive detention, the closure of the Gaza Strip, and the development of settlements.

In 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories violated international law. The court also said that Israeli restrictions on Palestinians in the occupied territories constituted systemic discrimination.

The UN has also pointed to discrimination against Palestinians in the way in which criminal law is enforced. While prosecution rates for settler attacks against Palestinians are low, most cases of violence against Israeli settlers are investigated and proceed to court.

Israel has also been accused of violating the right to adequate housing. Since 1967, Israel has constructed tens of thousands of homes on Palestinian land to accommodate settlers while, at the same time, demolishing an estimated 50,000 Palestinian homes.

In addition, Israel has been accused of violating the right to freedom of movement. Many restrictions on freedom of movement for Palestinian residents are directly linked to the settlements, including restrictions aimed at protecting the settlements and maintaining buffer zones.

Unlawful killings and war crimes

Israel has been accused of committing unlawful killings and war crimes since its founding in 1948. These include murder, intentional targeting of civilians, killing prisoners of war, indiscriminate attacks, collective punishment, starvation, persecution, the use of human shields, sexual violence, rape, torture, pillage, forced transfer, breach of medical neutrality, enforced disappearance, and targeting journalists.

In 2021, the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian territories since 2014. In 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, or 85% of the total population of the territory captured by Israel, were expelled or fled from their homes. Most scholars consider that the majority of Palestinians were directly expelled or fled due to fear. Causes of the exodus include direct expulsions by Israeli forces, destruction of Arab villages, psychological warfare, dozens of massacres, crop burning, water deprivation, and typhoid epidemics caused by Israeli well-poisoning. Many historians consider the events of 1948 to fit the definition of ethnic cleansing. Between 10 and 70 massacres occurred during the war, with Israeli soldiers killing roughly 800 Arab civilians and prisoners of war.

On October 14, 1953, a force commanded by Ariel Sharon carried out a massacre in the village of Qibya in the West Bank, killing 69 villagers, two-thirds of whom were women and children. In addition, they destroyed 45 houses, a school, and a mosque. Ariel Sharon wrote in his diary that "Qibya was to be an example for everyone," and that he ordered "maximal killing and damage to property." The attack was condemned internationally, with the UN's Mixed Armistice Commission calling it "cold-blooded murder."

During the Suez Crisis in 1956, Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. On November 3, the IDF attacked Egyptian and Palestinian forces at Khan Yunis, inflicting heavy civilian casualties. During the occupation, Israeli forces carried out massacres and summary executions, killing about 500 Palestinian civilians during and after the conquest of Gaza.

On October 29, 1956, the Israeli army ordered that all Arab villages near the Jordanian border be placed under a curfew from 5 pm to 6 am the following day. Any Arab on the streets was to be shot. Between 5 pm and 6:30 pm, in nine separate shooting incidents, the platoon stationed in Kafr Qasim killed 49 Palestinian civilians, including 19 men, 6 women, and 23 children.

In 1967, during the Six-Day War, the IDF killed surrendering Egyptian soldiers, Egyptian POWs, and civilians. Israeli historian Uri Milstein stated that there were many incidents in which Egyptian soldiers were killed by Israeli troops after they had raised their hands in surrender. "It was not an official policy, but there was an atmosphere that it was okay to do it," Milstein said. "Some commanders decided to do it; others refused."

In 1970, during the Egyptian-Israeli War of Attrition, four F-4 Phantoms of the Israeli Air Force bombed a primary school in the village of Bahr El-Baqar, killing 46 children and injuring at least another 50. Israel claimed the bombing was accidental, but Egypt and international observers widely condemned the attack as a war crime.

In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to drive out the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Following the siege of Beirut, the PLO forces and their allies negotiated passage from Lebanon. However, outraged by the assassination of Bachir Gemayel, Phalangists called for a revenge attack. On September 16, the IDF allowed Lebanese militias to enter Beirut's Sabra neighborhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp. From approximately 6 pm on September 16 to 8 am on September 18, the militias carried out a massacre while the IDF had the Palestinian camp surrounded. Between 460 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias, were killed.

In 1993, Israel launched Operation Accountability, a week-long attack against Lebanon. During the attack, around 120 Lebanese civilians were killed and close to 500 were injured by Israeli assaults on population centers. Israeli bombardment destroyed 1,000 homes and damaged another 2,500. Human Rights Watch stated that Israel was in grave violation of international humanitarian law, as civilians were the immediate targets of the military assault.

In 1996, Israel launched Operation Grapes of Wrath, a 17-day campaign against Hezbollah. During the operation, the IDF conducted more than 600 air raids and fired approximately 25,000 shells, killing approximately 154 Lebanese civilians and wounding 351.

In 2006, Israel invaded Gaza in response to the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit by Palestinian militants. Large-scale conventional warfare occurred in Gaza, resulting in a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and an Israeli withdrawal. On July 12, a family of nine was killed when the IDF landed a 550-pound bomb on a building in Gaza City. According to an Israeli army spokesperson, they attacked the house without realizing a family was inside because they were attempting to kill a group of Hamas militants.

In 2008-20

Forced displacement

The Geneva Conventions and other international treaties recognise that land conquered in war, and whose disposition is unresolved through peace treaties, is "occupied" and subject to international laws of war and international humanitarian law. This includes the protection of individuals in those territories, limitations on the use of the land, and access by international relief agencies.

The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the "individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory". It also prohibits the transfer of the occupying power's civilians into occupied territory.

Israel's policy of settling its civilians in occupied Palestinian territory and displacing the local population is in contravention of these rules. The extensive appropriation of land and property required to build and expand settlements breaches other rules of international humanitarian law. The Hague Regulations of 1907 state that the occupying state is only allowed very limited use of public property of the occupied population. This is derived from the notion that occupation is temporary, and the occupying power has a duty to ensure the protection, security, and welfare of the people living under occupation.

The Israeli government has passed laws that deepen the segregation of Palestinians from Israelis, confining Palestinians to deprived locations, and implementing policies that further the systematic dispossession of Palestinians. Wanton destruction, home demolitions, denial of access to livelihoods, and state-backed settler violence have all intensified forced displacement.

In 2023, Israeli offensives in Gaza alone forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians out of a population of 2.2 million. The entire population of more than 2.2 million people in Gaza is at risk of full-scale famine due to Israel's siege and bombardment. The Israeli military offensive has also targeted healthcare facilities, with at least 19 out of 36 hospitals non-functional, and at least 986 medical workers killed.

In the West Bank, Israeli policing operations have become increasingly lethal, with 493 Palestinians killed and over 12,500 injured during operations against armed groups in 2023. The year also saw the highest number of Palestinian children killed in the West Bank since 2005, with 110 deaths recorded.

The United Nations has accused Israel of creating a "man-made" catastrophe in Gaza, with at least 46% of coordinated humanitarian movements in Gaza denied or impeded by Israel. The UN has called on the international community to take immediate action to stop Israel's forced evictions and displacement of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

Abusive detention

The Israeli military court system for the occupied territories treats West Bank Palestinians as "foreign civilians" and combines elements of colonial administration and martial law. The measures it applies cover not only incidents involving recourse to violence but also many other activities, non-violent protests, political and cultural statements, and the way Palestinians are allowed to move or associate with each other.

The specific practice of administrative detention allows individuals to be detained by state authorities based on secret security grounds that neither the defendant nor their lawyer can review, effectively circumventing due process. Israel has systematically used administrative detention as a tool to persecute Palestinians, rather than as an extraordinary and selectively used preventative measure.

In April 2022, there were 4,450 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli prisons, including 160 children, 32 women, and 530 "administrative detainees" (incarcerated without charge). According to B'Tselem, a human rights organisation, abuse of detainees is so institutionalised that the prisons should be called 'torture camps'.

Israel's practice of jailing West Bank Palestinians inside Israel violates the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit an occupying power from detaining members of the occupied population outside the occupied territory. The laws of occupation, which Israel is bound to respect, permit the use of administrative detention only in exceptional circumstances. Article 78 of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides that an occupying power may legitimately order the detention of an individual only "for imperative reasons of security."

In 2023, Amnesty International documented the cases of 27 Palestinian former detainees, including five women, 21 men, and a 14-year-old boy, who were detained for up to four and a half months without access to their lawyers or any contact with their families. All those interviewed stated that they were subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment during their detention.

The large number of Palestinian detainees is primarily the result of separate criminal justice systems Israeli authorities maintain in the occupied territory. The nearly 3 million Palestinians who live in the occupied West Bank are ruled by military law and prosecuted in military courts, while the nearly half a million Israeli settlers in the West Bank are governed under civil and criminal law and tried in Israeli civil courts. Discrimination pervades every aspect of this system, with Palestinians facing different sentences for the same offence as Israeli settlers.

Israeli authorities have also subjected thousands of Palestinians from Gaza with permits to enter Israel, mostly workers, to a third form of arbitrary detention where they were held incommunicado for at least three weeks on two military detention bases in Israel and the West Bank.

Overall, Israel's abusive detention practices, including the use of administrative detention and the denial of due process, have been widely criticised by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. These practices have been characterised as violations of international law and have contributed to the systematic oppression of Palestinians.

Closure of the Gaza Strip and other restrictions on movement

The restrictions on movement and goods in Gaza imposed by Israel date back to the early 1990s. In 2005, Israel withdrew its military forces from Gaza, dismantled its settlements, and implemented a temporary blockade of Gaza. The blockade became indefinite after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

The current blockade prevents people and goods from freely entering or leaving the territory, leading to Gaza often being called an "open-air prison". The UN, as well as at least 19 human-rights organizations, have urged Israel to lift the blockade. Israel has justified its blockade on the strip with wanting to stop the flow of arms, but Palestinians and rights groups say it amounts to collective punishment and exacerbates dire living conditions.

The blockade has been criticized by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and other human rights organizations. In 2011, a panel of UN experts concluded that the naval blockade of Gaza constituted collective punishment and in doing so violated international law, contradicting a previous UN investigation that declared it was legal.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is the guardian of international humanitarian law, the law applicable in situations of armed conflict. The ICRC termed Israel's blockade of Gaza "collective punishment" in violation of international humanitarian law. In 2010 it also called the blockade a violation of the Geneva Conventions and called for its lifting.

The 2010 UNHRC Report on the Flotilla Incident also noted that the naval blockade and other travel restrictions imposed on the Gaza Strip had tripled "abject poverty" among refugees in the territory, making 61 per cent of households food insecure causing "disproportionate damage to the civilian population".

These views are supported by further legal analyses. A multi-referenced University of California, Hastings College of the Law analysis in 2009 recorded:

> Under customary international law, a blockade is an act of war. It is employed to cut off communications and supplies of an enemy. While the modern concept extends beyond its original and exclusive maritime roots to include both land and technological blockades, the consistent feature is that a blockade's purpose has been to deprive a military adversary of necessary supplies. A belligerent imposing a blockade upon a region consisting of a civilian population must allow the free passage of relief consignments to the civilian population. In fact, the legality of a blockade under customary international law hinges on the requirement that aid for the civilian population be met with free passage.

The reasons cited for Israel's refusal to allow passage of basic necessities are untenable. Israel claimed that its restrictions were necessary to put pressure on Hamas officials to halt or substantially hinder the firing of rockets into Southern Israel. However, there is no reasonable relationship between depriving Gazan civilians of subsistence items and the suppression of Hamas' rocket launchings against Israeli towns. Israel's duties to "protected persons" as an occupier of the Gaza Strip under Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention require that it allow the passage of all aid, foodstuffs, and water given the severity of the humanitarian crisis. The blockade appears to have clearly violated this provision of the law of occupation.

Development of settlements and discriminatory policies

The development of settlements by Israel in the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights, is considered illegal under international law. These settlements are in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that the "Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies". The settlements also breach international declarations and conventions, such as the Hague Regulations of 1907, which prohibit the confiscation of private property.

The establishment of these settlements often involves the confiscation of Palestinian land and resources, leading to the displacement of Palestinian communities. This has created a fragmented Palestinian territory, hindering economic development and freedom of movement for Palestinians. The presence of settlements and Jewish-only bypass roads further contribute to the fragmentation and tension in the region.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has reaffirmed the illegality of these settlements and called on Israel to end its occupation, cease settlement activities, and evacuate settlers. The ICJ's 2024 ruling concluded that Israel's occupation was illegal and that the country had an obligation to "cease immediately all new settlement activities and to evacuate all settlers" from the occupied territories.

The United Nations Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other international bodies have also affirmed that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the Israeli-occupied territories. Numerous UN resolutions, including UN Security Council Resolution 446 in 1979, have declared the settlements to be a violation of international law. The ICJ's 2004 advisory opinion also found the settlements to be illegal, based on the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention and UN Security Council resolutions.

Despite the international consensus, Israel disputes the illegality of its settlements, claiming that its citizens were not deported or transferred to the territories and that the territory is not occupied as there was no internationally recognized legal sovereign prior. Israel argues that the Fourth Geneva Convention does not de jure apply and that its settlement policy is consistent with international law.

The development of settlements has been described as a war crime according to the Rome Statute, and the matter is currently under investigation by the International Criminal Court. The establishment of settlements and their expansion have been criticized as an obstacle to peace by various parties, including the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the United Nations, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and the European Union.

The expansion of settlements has resulted in the confiscation of Palestinian land, restricted access to water, and limited freedom of movement for Palestinians. It has also led to the destruction of Palestinian homes and infrastructure, with tens of thousands of Palestinian homes demolished to make way for settlements. The presence of settlements has fragmented the Palestinian territory, hindering the possibility of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state.

In addition to the illegality of the settlements themselves, Israel's policies and practices within these settlements have been criticized as discriminatory and a violation of Palestinian human rights. The Israeli authorities have created a discriminatory urban planning and zoning system, allocating a disproportionate amount of land to settlements while restricting Palestinian construction. This has resulted in systematic discrimination against Palestinians in areas such as housing, education, movement, and access to resources.

The development of settlements and the associated discriminatory policies have far-reaching consequences, including violations of the right to life, liberty, security, equality, and adequate housing for Palestinians. These practices have been widely condemned by international bodies and human rights organizations, highlighting the need for Israel to abide by international law and respect the human rights of the Palestinian people.

Frequently asked questions