Minefields tend to last longer than the conflicts they are used in, becoming remnants of war, injuring and killing people for many years after the conflict has ended and rendering areas unusable for decades.
Al-Marsad condemns the incitement of hatred and the attack against the ambulance and the two wounded Syrians who were being transferred for treatment in Israeli hospitals.
Al Marsad condemns the attack by the Al Nusra front on June 10 against the Druze community in the village of Qalb Luza in Idlib province which resulted in the deaths of 23 civilians including children, and the wounding and enforced disappearance of many others.
As international and criminal law scholars, human rights defenders, legal experts and individuals who firmly believe in the rule of law and in the necessity for its respect in times of peace and more so in times of war, we feel the intellectual and moral duty to denounce the grave violations, mystification and disrespect of the most basic principles of the laws of armed conflict and of the fundamental human rights of the entire Palestinian population committed during the ongoing Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip.
In January 2014, the Israeli cabinet approved a proposal to develop 30,000 dunams (7,400 acres) of land in the Occupied Syrian Golan for agricultural use.
According to the Law of Occupation, Israel being the occupying country, has the legal obligation to act as just administrator of public property and natural resources. Nevertheless, at the beginning of 2013 Israel’s Energy and Water Resources Ministry granted Genie Energy, an American-Israeli company, an exclusive licence to explore for oil and gas in a 153-square miles radius in the southern part of the Golan.
Since the occupation began, the Israeli authorities have aimed to implement policies which control the valuable resources in the region, in particular the land and the water.
The current conflict in Syria has developed from an excessively violent suppression of civilian protestors by Syrian State forces into an allout Civil War. Beginning in March 2011, the conflict has troubled the conscience of the international community.
Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011 the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity by both the government and pro-government forces and the anti-government military groups has continued to escalate, leading to the worst humanitarian crisis since the Rwandan genocide.
Al-Marsad is currently drafting a discussion regarding the merits of a referral for Syria before the ICC, pursuant to Articles 13 and 15 of the Rome Statute, to demand international criminal accountability for crimes against humanity committed by both…
