ABSTRACT
The 2009 United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council-mandated FactFinding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (herein known as the FFM, and more widely known as the Goldstone Report) found that during the December 2008 to January 2009 Israeli assault on Gaza – codenamed Operation Cast Lead (OCL) – both Israel and Hamas committed gross abuses of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL), amounting in some cases to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity (HRC 2009). This chapter will focus on Israel’s actions in the lead-up to, and during, OCL.2 In exploring the rationale behind the operation, and the violations committed in its course, this chapter will demonstrate that OCL was not a defensive measure of last resort by Israel, but a carefully planned offensive aimed at achieving the continued subjugation of the Gazan population. It will establish that Israel did not fulfil the criteria of either jus ad bellum (the right to go to war) or jus in bello (just conduct in war). Moreover, this offensive was part of Israel’s wider strategy in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs), encapsulated in the tactic known as the ‘Iron Wall’. The ‘Iron Wall’ strategy was first devised by Ze’ev Jabotinksy, who is seen as the ‘father’ of the Israeli right. As Avi Shlaim explains it,
the Zionist project could only be implemented unilaterally and by military force. The crux . . . was to enable the Zionist movement to deal with its local opponents from a position of unassailable strength. . . . Despair was expected to promote pragmatism on the other side. . . . The Arabs . . . learnt the hard way that Israel could not be defeated on the battlefield and were compelled to negotiate with it from a position of palpable weakness.
