17 January 2023
A Possible Regime Change in Israel
Israel is rapidly undergoing a regime change/constitutional revolution - Hungary style - as reflected by various draft bills placed on the Knesset’s agenda during the past days, accompanied by a grand plan of reform presented by the Minister of Justice on January 4th. The new Israeli government only took office a few weeks ago, but these plans, evidently, were prepared carefully over several years. If successful, Israel may fully lose its democracy. Continue reading >>
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13 July 2022
Hanging by a Thread
On June 20, 2022, Israel’s PM Naftali Bennet announced that he has decided, together with Yair Lapid, Israel’s foreign minister and Alternate Prime Minister, to disperse the Knesset. Bennet explained that the dissolvement was necessary to avoid “constitutional chaos”. But what was this pending “chaos”? What Bennet was referring to in such dramatic terms is the prospect of the expiration of the Emergency Regulations (Judea and Samaria—Adjudication of Offenses and Legal Assistance), which were set to expire as a result of the Knesset failing to pass a law extending them. What are these regulations? And how can the expiration of regulations, let alone emergency regulations, amount to a constitutional crisis? Continue reading >>13 April 2021
A Year in Review: COVID-19 in Israel
Israel’s response to the pandemic took place in an unstable and highly polarized political climate. This affected the decisions taken in several ways. First, throughout the crisis, it was difficult to achieve agreement within the government on required actions. In addition, decisions often reflected political rather than professional considerations, a problem that was exacerbated by the instability of the coalition. The prospect of additional elections also effected the political will to enforce restrictions, in particular in the Ultra-Orthodox sector, as Ultra-Orthodox parties are perceived by Netanyahu as necessary partners in any government coalition. Continue reading >>
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19 July 2019
Response: Critiquing in the Light of The ABC of the OPT
Interwoven across the contributions to this symposium are two central themes: first, the use of conceptual frameworks as critical tools, and second, international law’s relationship with state violence. In what follows, we will reflect on the contributors’ comments regarding each of these themes. Continue reading >>
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18 July 2019
‘Say My Name’: The Politics of Not Naming
Despite the many nuances academics employ to draw a picture of Israel’s “complicated” rule over the Palestinian people, this review takes issue with the hesitance displayed when looking for a much needed epistemological shift and concepts in understanding how law creates injustice in Israel_Palestine. Continue reading >>
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17 July 2019
The ABC of the OPT: The Broken Promise of Belligerent Occupation Law
The ABC of the OPT, the award-winning new publication by three outstanding Israeli scholars and jurists - Orna Ben-Naftali, Michael Sfard and Hedi Viterbo –demonstrates, in a masterly fashion, the use and abuse of the laws of belligerent occupation as a masquerade for raw power and as a tool for oppression. The authors illustrate, using the format of a legal lexicon dedicated to specific legal terms and rhetorical devices (or newspeak), how the distorted application of the laws of belligerent occupation by Israeli lawyers and judges has conferred an aura of decency and legitimacy upon the long and open-ended occupation of the West Bank. This approach draws its intellectual roots from classic insights of critical legal studies – e.g., that law is chronically malleable to abuse and that law constitutes politics through other means. Continue reading >>
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16 July 2019
Phantom Sovereignty and the Imaginary Version of International Law
In this brief review, I will explore two aspects of the legal cartography offered in the book in the entry on nomos and the entry on military courts. The entry on nomos, authored by Orna Ben-Naftali, takes on a thematic thread of the entire book and explains how Israel created an alternative legal universe of international law. The entry on the military courts, written by Hedi Viterbo, looks at the institutions that have intervened in the lives of most of the Palestinian population: Israel has arrested and detained over three quarters of a million Palestinians. In 2018 alone, the military arrested 6500 Palestinians, 1800 of whom were children. Continue reading >>
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15 July 2019
The ABC of the OPT: Mobilizing the Untapped Capacity of International Law
The point I wish to make here comes through loudly and clearly in the ABC book: the Israeli occupation of Palestine embodies a fateful and troubling paradox regarding international law that we must acknowledge and think our way through. Continue reading >>
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15 July 2019
From ‘Assigned Residence’ to ‘Zone’: Introduction to the Book Review Symposium on The ABC of the OPT
Israel's half-a-century long rule over the West Bank and Gaza Strip has been the subject of extensive academic literature, also in international law. Yet, there had been no comprehensive, theoretically informed, and empirically based academic study of the role of various legal mechanisms, norms, and concepts in shaping, legitimizing, and responding to the Israeli control regime. The ABC of the OPT. A Legal Lexicon of the Israeli Control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the most timely and award-winning new book by Orna Ben-Naftali, Michael Sfard and Hedi Viterbo (Cambridge University Press 2018) fills this gap and offers a comprehensive and yet detailed study of law’s role in constructing and maintaining this protracted and highly institutionalized regime. Continue reading >>
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