analysis

Since its establishment in 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has struggled to find a path to legitimacy. Its creation was a triumph for the Global South in extending the potential reach of international criminal law, although it was limited from the outset by its existence outside the formal UN framework, and by the failure of the geopolitical “big three” (the US, China and Russia) to join. In relation to present concerns, it is also limited by Israel’s refusal to sign up to the court. 

We live in an era of poisonous political conflict, to the point where it became necessary for someone to make a movie about a second U.S. civil war to show us all what a horrible thing this would be.

Soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron sought to help resolve the conflict diplomatically. During the war’s first summer, Macron said it was important that Moscow was not humiliated and that a European security order including Russia should be established.

I am a Jewish pro-Palestine solidarity activist originally from the New York area and now based in Berlin. My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor from Cologne who fled to the United States during the Second World War at the age of 16. Her parents and much of her family were murdered during the Holocaust. I came “back” to Germany about five years ago, a decision born largely out of the desire for intergenerational healing for me and for my grandmother, who was alive at the time.

 Donald Trump is underscoring the profound choice that voters could face next year with expansive claims of unchecked presidential power alongside increasingly unapologetic anti-democratic rhetoric.

The truce is over. Nerve-racking negotiations had continued in Qatar on Thursday, after a meagre extension of the humanitarian pause, a mere 24 hours, was secured minutes before the expiry of the previously agreed term.

The deal that people on all sides of the fighting in Gaza and the international community anticipated and longed for has finally been agreed.

Israeli troops again entered the al-Shifa Hospital en masse on Thursday, for the second time in as many days. Their searches so far appear to have failed to uncover the alleged Hamas underground command centre that the Israeli side adamantly insists lies below the medical facilities.

The past week of Israel’s land incursions into Gaza can be called a “war on hospitals”. Most of Israel’s military activities in the last few days appear directed at or around the medical facilities in Gaza City.

Over the past weeks, dozens of countries and leaders have asked Israel, directly, indirectly and through the United Nations, to temporarily cease assaults on Gaza. Pleas were ignored or turned down; the UN talks drowned in technicalities and semantics.