More than 150 lawyers specializing in international law want to set the record straight: they have not been divided on what is happening in Gaza since October 7, 2023. On the contrary, they agree on a list of observations, which these: Israel has committed and still committed war crimes and against humanity, and “genocidal intention” of the Israeli government against the Palestinian people Crystallized, they write in an open letter published on our digital platforms.
Missive wants to be an answer to an article published in The world In July, entitled “” Génocide in Gaza “: why the question divides lawyers”, explained in an interview with Duty The law professor at the University of Ottawa Geneviève Dufour, who is one of the 22 Canadian signatories.
However, the community of lawyers under international law is not divided, retort the signatories from 15 countries, including France, Belgium and the United Kingdom, which communicate their legal analysis in this open letter.
The idea of this replica was born in the head of two professors from Paris-Panthéon-Assas University, Olivier de Frouville and Julian Fernandez, reports in an interview with Duty Another signatory of the letter, David Pavot, professor at the University of Sherbrooke and president of the Quebec Society of International Law. They managed to bring together in just a few days the signatures of more than 150 lawyers – “the greatest specialists in the field, the most prestigious”, according to Professor Dufour.
“It was therefore urgent for us to set the record straight,” said Professor Pavot.
To do this, the 160 French -speaking teachers under international law states eight observations on which they get along.
They begin by establishing that the actions of Hamas of October 7, 2023 are “undeniably war crimes and crimes against humanity that no cause can justify”. Recall that that day, Hamas fighters entered Israeli territory to massacre civilians, including children, and have taken many hostages, some of which are still in captivity. “It is totally abominable. No one puts him in doubt, ”said Professor Pavot.
Following this attack, the Hebrew state invoked the principle of self -defense when it started to bomb the Gaza Strip. However, explain the signatories, he could not avail himself of this right since the attack came “from the interior” of an occupied territory, which Israel does not recognize as a distinct state. The right to self -defense only exists if the attack comes from outside its own country.
And even if Israel had a right of self-defense, it must be proportional to the attack and be made within a planned legal framework, explained Professor Dufour in an interview: “It is not because one is in self-defense that we have the right to starve a population. We are no longer allowed to refuse humanitarian aid and bomb civilian targets, she added.
War crimes and against humanity can “never” be justified by self -defense. “Never,” said the two teachers in an interview.
However, “within the framework of his response, Israel has committed and continues to commit many serious violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law”. These violations can also receive the qualification of war crimes and against humanity, establish specialists in international law, in particular because of these acts of the Hebrew State: intentionally directing attacks against the Palestinian civilian population and using famine as a method of war. And then, it is not that the population of Gaza which is the subject of abuses, they say, recalling the fate of the Palestinians of the West Bank.
By approaching the question of genocide, a delicate subject if there is one, the Pavot and Dufour teachers explain that to obtain a conviction, it is necessary in particular to demonstrate before the International Court of Justice the “intention” to commit this “crime of crimes”.
In their open letter, the 160 lawyers indicate that if some of them have been able to wonder in the past on the existence of a “specific intention” to eliminate the Palestinians from Gaza, today, they are minimally “to note that the genocidal intention of the Israeli government has crystallized”. This conclusion is based on several acts, including the blocking of aid and food to Gaza, as well as the Israeli project of “humanitarian city”, which would aim to bring together and confine the population of Gaza in an even smaller territory.
“What we could doubt a few weeks ago, and what we can no longer doubt today is the genocidal intention of the Israeli government,” said Professor Pavot.
The letter of lawyers also wants to be a reminder to all states, including Canada, that in accordance with international law, they have not only the obligation to lend neither aid nor assistance to a state which commits a genocide – or war crimes or against humanity -, but also that of cooperating to put an end to it. Anything that would have the effect of providing the means to commit them, like delivering weapons to Israel, could make them accomplices.
