Law & Accountability
UN resolutions, courts, legal terms, the ICJ and ICC record.
60 entries across 7 collections
Research18
Adalah — The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel
Adalah
Founded in 1996 and based in Haifa, Adalah litigates and advocates for the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and for Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, before Israeli courts and international bodies.
Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
Addameer
Addameer supports Palestinian political prisoners held by Israeli authorities and campaigns against administrative detention and torture.
Al-Haq — Defending Human Rights in Palestine
Al-Haq
Al-Haq is a Palestinian non-governmental human rights organization based in Ramallah, specializing in legal research, advocacy, and international accountability.
Amnesty International — Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories
Amnesty International
Amnesty documents human rights violations by Israeli authorities and Palestinian armed groups and campaigns for justice, accountability, and an end to apartheid.
BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
BADIL
Founded in 1998 in Bethlehem, BADIL defends the rights of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons, with a legal focus on residency, return, property restitution, and the right of return under international law.
Defense for Children International — Palestine (DCIP)
DCIP
DCIP documents the detention, killing, and maiming of Palestinian children by Israeli forces and advocates for their rights under international law.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor — Geneva-based documentation of violations in Gaza
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
A youth-led nonprofit founded in 2011 and registered in Switzerland, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor documents human rights violations across Europe and the MENA region, with extensive field reporting from the Gaza Strip.
Human Rights Watch — Israel and Palestine
Human Rights Watch
HRW investigates and reports on human rights conditions in Israel and Palestine, including laws and policies affecting Palestinians under occupation and in Israel.
ICC Arrest Warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant — Pre-Trial Chamber I, 21 November 2024
ICC
ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I's decisions of 21 November 2024 rejecting Israel's jurisdictional challenges and issuing arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
ICC Situation in the State of Palestine — International Criminal Court
International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court has been investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Situation in the State of Palestine since 2021; in November 2024 its Pre-Trial Chamber issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.
ICJ Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024 — Legal Consequences of Israel's Policies and Practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
ICJ
The International Court of Justice's advisory opinion holding Israel's continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful, and obliging it to end that presence as rapidly as possible, evacuate all settlers, and make reparation.
Application Instituting Proceedings — South Africa v. Israel (Genocide Convention, Gaza)
ICJ
South Africa's 84-page application of 29 December 2023 instituting proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention, together with a request for provisional measures.
ICJ Order of 26 January 2024 — Provisional Measures, South Africa v. Israel
ICJ
The International Court of Justice's first provisional measures order in the Genocide Convention case, finding South Africa's rights under the Convention plausible and ordering six measures, including the prevention of genocidal acts and the punishment of incitement.
ICJ Orders of 28 March and 24 May 2024 — Additional Measures and the Rafah Order
ICJ
The International Court of Justice's second and third provisional measures orders in South Africa v. Israel: the 28 March 2024 order on famine and humanitarian access, and the 24 May 2024 order directing Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah.
Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR)
PCHR
Based in Gaza, PCHR monitors and documents violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, provides legal aid, and advocates before international bodies.
UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel — 2024 Reports
UN Commission of Inquiry
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry's 2024 reports: the June 2024 report (A/HRC/56/26) on the 7 October 2023 attacks and Israel's military operations in Gaza, and the September 2024 report (A/79/232) on attacks on Gaza's healthcare system, Palestinian detainees, and hostages.
UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories — Human Rights Council mandate
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
An independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteur investigates and reports publicly on Israel's violations of international law in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, reporting annually to the Human Rights Council.
UNRWA — UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees
UNRWA
Established by UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) in December 1949, UNRWA provides education, health care, and relief to millions of registered Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza.
Voices5
Francesca Albanese: 'Anatomy of a Genocide' and the Reports of the UN Special Rapporteur
Francesca Albanese
There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating that Israel has committed genocide has been met.
Nelson Mandela on Palestine
Nelson Mandela
We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.
South Africa v. Israel: The Genocide Case at the International Court of Justice
Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC
The first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate, so far vain hope that the world might do something.
Ta-Nehisi Coates on Palestine and 'The Message'
Ta-Nehisi Coates
It occurred to me that there was still one place on the planet — under American patronage — that resembled the world that my parents were born into.
Desmond Tutu: Israeli Apartheid is Worse Than South Africa's
Desmond Tutu
I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces.
Figures5
Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni
1908–1948
The most prominent Palestinian field commander of his generation, who fought in the 1936–39 rebellion, rebuilt the Army of the Holy War after the partition resolution, and was killed retaking al-Qastal on 8 April 1948.
Diana Buttu
Lawyer and political analyst
Palestinian-Canadian lawyer who advised the PLO's negotiating team from 2000 to 2005 and has since become one of the sharpest analysts of the failed negotiations process.
Fayez Sayegh
1922–1980
Palestinian philosopher and diplomat who founded the PLO's Palestine Research Center, produced the first systematic analysis of Zionism as settler colonialism, and was a principal architect of the UN's 1975 resolution declaring Zionism a form of racism.
Marwan Barghouti
1959–
The Fatah leader from Kobar, imprisoned since 2002 under five life sentences after a trial an Inter-Parliamentary Union inquiry found riddled with breaches of international law — and, in poll after poll, the most popular Palestinian politician.
Noura Erakat
1980–
Palestinian-American human rights attorney and Rutgers professor whose book Justice for Some examines how international law has shaped — and so often failed — the Palestinian struggle.
Library1
Timeline9
The Palestinian Declaration of Independence
1988
Meeting in Algiers, the Palestine National Council proclaims the State of Palestine and accepts UN Resolutions 242 and 338 — a de facto two-state formula.
ICC Arrest Warrants
2024
On 21 November 2024 the International Criminal Court rejected Israel's challenges to its jurisdiction and issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, and for the Hamas commander Mohammed Deif.
The ICJ Advisory Opinion on the Occupation
2024
On 19 July 2024 the International Court of Justice found Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful and held that it must be brought to an end as rapidly as possible, settlements evacuated and reparation made. The General Assembly demanded compliance within twelve months.
The ICJ Genocide Case
2024
The International Court of Justice orders provisional measures in South Africa's genocide case against Israel over Gaza, finding the rights claimed plausible.
The ICJ Advisory Opinion on the Wall
2004
On 9 July 2004 the International Court of Justice found that the wall Israel was building inside the occupied West Bank was contrary to international law, that Israel must stop building it, dismantle what stood and make reparation — and that other states must not recognise the situation it created.
The Mandate for Palestine
1922
The League of Nations approved the Mandate on 24 July 1922. Its preamble wrote the Balfour Declaration into international law, and its articles obliged Britain to facilitate Jewish immigration and settlement — while referring to the Arab majority only as 'the existing non-Jewish communities.'
The October War and Resolution 338
1973
Egypt and Syria attacked on 6 October 1973 to break the diplomatic deadlock over the occupied territories. The war ended with Security Council resolution 338, which ordered a ceasefire and, for the first time, negotiations 'between the parties concerned' to implement resolution 242.
UN Security Council Resolution 242
1967
Adopted unanimously on 22 November 1967, resolution 242 emphasised the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and called for withdrawal from territories occupied in the recent conflict. It mentioned Palestinians only once, as a refugee problem.
UN General Assembly Resolution 194
1948
Adopted on 11 December 1948, resolution 194 (III) established the Conciliation Commission for Palestine and, in paragraph 11, resolved that refugees wishing to return to their homes should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, with compensation for those choosing not to return.
Glossary14
Absentees' Property Law (1950)
legal
An Israeli law that vested the homes, land, and assets of Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the 1948 war in a state Custodian, becoming the main legal instrument by which Israel took possession of Palestinian refugee property.
Administrative Detention
legal
Imprisonment without charge or trial, ordered by military commanders on the basis of secret evidence and renewable in six-month increments without limit; Israel uses it extensively against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Apartheid
legal
Apartheid is a crime against humanity defined in the 1973 Apartheid Convention and the 1998 Rome Statute as inhumane acts committed within an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another. Since 2021, leading Israeli and international human rights organizations have concluded that Israel's rule over Palestinians meets this definition.
Area A, Area B, and Area C
legal
The three zones into which the 1995 Oslo II Interim Agreement divided the occupied West Bank: Area A under Palestinian civil and security control, Area B under Palestinian civil and Israeli security control, and Area C — about 60 percent of the territory — under full Israeli control.
Gaza Blockade
legal
The Gaza blockade is the closure regime imposed by Israel — with Egypt controlling the Rafah crossing — on the Gaza Strip since June 2007, severely restricting the movement of people and goods by land, air, and sea for a population of more than two million.
Custodian of Absentee Property
legal
The Israeli office in which the property of Palestinian refugees vests under the Absentees' Property Law — an administrator rather than a decree, empowered to certify a person absent, to hold everything they owned, and to sell it on to a state Development Authority.
Ban on Family Unification
legal
Israel's 2003 Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order), which bars Palestinians from the occupied territory who marry Israeli citizens or residents from obtaining legal status in Israel, forcing thousands of families to live apart or abroad.
Hafrada
legal
Hebrew for 'separation' — the word used in Israeli political discourse for the policy of physically and legally separating Israelis from Palestinians in the occupied territory, and taken up in human-rights analyses of the barrier, the permit regime, segregated road networks and the closure system.
Military Order 101
legal
An August 1967 Israeli military order that bans political gatherings, processions, and publications — including the display of flags and political symbols — in the occupied West Bank without prior permission from the military commander.
Present Absentee
legal
Israeli administrative usage — nifkadim nokhahim — for a Palestinian who never left the country and holds Israeli citizenship, but whose land and home were classified as 'absentee property' and taken anyway: present in the state, legally absent from their own field.
Punitive Demolition
legal
The Israeli practice of demolishing the family home of a Palestinian accused of an attack — a penalty imposed on relatives who are not suspected of any offence, carried out under a British Mandate emergency regulation and applied only to Palestinians.
Right of Return
legal
The right of return is the principle that Palestinians displaced in 1948, and their descendants, are entitled to return to their homes — affirmed for the 1948 refugees by UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948 and reaffirmed by the Assembly nearly every year since.
Settlement
legal
Settlements are the residential communities Israel has built for its citizens in the territories occupied in 1967. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its own civilian population into occupied territory, and the UN Security Council has affirmed that the settlements have 'no legal validity.'
Other Registered Persons (UNRWA)
legal
The second of UNRWA's two registration categories: people the agency serves who do not meet all of its Palestine Refugee criteria and are therefore not counted in the official registered refugee figure — a bookkeeping line that is routinely misread as a statement about who is or is not a refugee.
Arguments8
Arabs have 22 countries; Palestinians can just go live in one of them
rhetoric
Self-determination is the right of each people in its own country, not an interchangeable commodity by language group — the UN recognized the Palestinian people's inalienable rights, including return to their homes, in Resolution 3236 (XXIX) of 1974, and no state would accept the same argument for itself.
Criticism of Israel or Zionism is antisemitism
rhetoric
Antisemitism — hatred of Jews as Jews — is real and must be fought, but the lead drafter of the IHRA definition, Kenneth Stern, himself warns it was never meant to police political speech, and the Jerusalem Declaration, signed by hundreds of scholars of Jewish and Holocaust studies, states that evidence-based criticism of Israel, including comparisons to settler-colonialism or apartheid, is not in itself antisemitic.
Israel left Gaza in 2005, so Gaza is no longer occupied
legal
Occupation is a question of effective control, not troop locations: after 2005 Israel kept control of Gaza's borders, airspace, territorial waters, population registry and economy, which is why the UN Security Council (Res. 1860, 2009), the ICRC, Human Rights Watch and the ICJ continued to treat Gaza as occupied.
Civilian casualties are the fault of Hamas, which uses human shields
legal
Using human shields is a war crime under IHL, but it does not suspend the attacker's own duties of distinction, proportionality and precaution — and the UN's 2009 Gaza fact-finding mission, while documenting that Israeli soldiers used Palestinian civilians as shields, found no evidence that Palestinian armed groups forced civilians to shield their operations.
There is no Palestinian right of return
legal
UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948 resolved that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace 'should be permitted to do so,' and the right to return to one's own country is also codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Art. 13(2)) and the binding ICCPR (Art. 12(4)).
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, with equal rights for all citizens
legal
Palestinian citizens of Israel do vote, but the state's own laws document a different structure: automatic immigration rights for Jews only (Law of Return, 1950), confiscation of refugee property (Absentees' Property Law, 1950), a 2018 Basic Law reserving national self-determination 'unique to the Jewish people,' and over 65 laws Adalah classifies as discriminatory.
The Arabs rejected the UN partition plan in 1947, so they forfeited their rights
history
Resolution 181 (II) awarded 56% of Palestine to a Jewish community that was 32% of the population and owned about 6% of the land, and the proposed Jewish state would itself have held nearly as many Arabs as Jews — rejection by the two-thirds majority was the predictable democratic response, and a General Assembly recommendation cannot extinguish a people's rights.
Zionism is simply Jewish self-determination, and opposing it is denying Jews what every nation has
morality
Self-determination is universal, but it is not a license to extinguish another people's rights: in 1975 the UN General Assembly determined that Zionism, as practiced, was 'a form of racism and racial discrimination' (Res. 3379) — a resolution repealed in 1991 as Israel's condition for attending the Madrid Conference, not because the underlying question had been resolved.