By Dr Bertrand Ramcharan
Author of ‘Modernizing the Role of the International Court of Justice’ (2022)
On 7 October 2023, Hamas perpetrated a genocidal attack against Israel when it brutalized and killed over 1200 people, raped women, and took some 240 hostages. Israel has responded with lethal violence ever since then, displacing some two million people, killing over 22,000 civilians, including thousands of children, destroying practically all homes and buildings in Gaza, and severely curtailing the provision of humanitarian relief to the desolate Palestinians in Gaza. Israel has publicly declared that its attacks on Hamas and the Gazans will continue for months and possibly for another year until, in its view, it has totally destroyed Hamas’s ability ever to endanger it again.