INTERNATIONAL LAW

International Law

International Law

Civilian's protection under International Law

The law for the protection of civilians is known as the Fourth Geneva Convention, fully formed as Geneva Convention relative to the protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War. It describes the human protection of civilians during war time. It outlaws the application of total war. It was formulated in 1949. The Article 3 related the provision of law of the treaties which states that the lowest principles set for the handling individuals who are in any parties' custody. The law of association of the occupation mentioned in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, is applied to Gaza because Israel's control in Gaza have different impact on the lives of people in Gaza, in spite of the fact that it has withdrawn its forces (Gold 2008, 16).

UN General Assembly status on International Law

General Assembly doesn't hold certain powers to enforce all the resolutions of legal or practical matters. It has authority for making a final decision related to the UN budget. Its resolutions are non-binding on the members. They are legally binding on the operations conducted by the General Assembly. Security Council can also be referred to put a obligatory resolution by the General Assembly (Gold 2008, 16).

Goldstone Report Recommended Resolution

The mission of UN on the conflict in Gaza is known as Goldstone Report. This team was formulated in 2009 by the Human Rights Council of UN. It was made during the Gaza war as a self-governing worldwide fact-finding assignment to find out the violations and the law of humanitarian followed in the territories of Palestine (Weiner 2009, 39).

This report accused both the Israel Defence and the Palestinian militants related to the war crime. It suggested to analyze own actions first and then to refer to the International Criminal Court before taking any serious action. Israel rejected the report which stated that it contains errors overall and blamed that intentionally the policies are made to target civilians. Palestine rejected a few findings of the report and requested the powers to hold onto it (Weiner 2009, 39).

This report received huge support from all over Arab and developing countries of UN. A few Western countries opposed and supported it. It was critically viewed and concluded that it consists of failures methodologically, errors concerned with legal and facts, and dedicated inadequate concentration to the allegations that Hamas was intentionally in commission in heavily populated areas of Gaza.

Goldstone, in 2011, was argued that it is due to Israeli government that acted intentionally to target citizens. As a reply, its three co-authors reported the validity of the report and that both the states have failed in investigating about the assumed war crime.

The report recommended both the states to investigate domestically and report the findings and results and the prosecution. The reason that can be figured out of Israeli rejection on the report that it had nothing to prove that can reduce the evidence of its failure to make attacks on ...