In responding to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of war in cities, it is crucial to pay attention to every individual death, injury, and incident of destruction and also to indirect harm to the collective population and its shared spaces—to the very fabric of the city.
The city as a unit is the expression of a sum greater than its parts: homes, centers of community and culture, roads to work and school, infrastructure and architecture, and the people living there; it is both political and politicized.
In one of the most dramatic moments in international legal history, advocates for South Africa argued before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Israel’s resort to and conduct of war in Gaza violates the Genocide Convention.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1 indicates the obligation of universal solidarity as a foundation for human rights: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Asher Kaufman Since the mid-1990s, Israel has attempted to separate the fate of Gaza from that of the West Bank. The 2005 “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip was the most dramatic step of this policy. There were at least two reasons for the decision to withdraw from...
Patrick Gaffney, C.S.C. In terms of media reporting, public debate, and partisan polemics, the recent conflict in Gaza can be characterized like its predecessors as a military confrontation and diplomatic poker game between Israel and Hamas. But on a deeper level this...
Asher Kaufman If the late historian Barbara Tuchman could write a new edition of The March of Folly, would she consider the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a proper candidate for an addition to her classic book? Tuchman wrote about “one of the most compelling...
George A. Lopez Much attention is paid to noncombatant casualties caused by military strikes and terrorist bombings, but few observers have focused on the impact of non-military actions, such as economic sanctions, on civilians. The shift more than a decade ago from...