ABSTRACT
In September 2000 the latest period in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict — the second intifada — began. As outlined in Chapter 8, the intifada has been characterised by attacks, retaliation and counter-retaliation. This vicious cycle of violence has continued up until today. The present contribution discusses various legal aspects of how to respond to this cycle of violence and counter-violence. The case study of the Mahane Yehuda bombing (see Rohne: this volume, Chapter 8) serves as a starting point for the following analysis. In our examination of legal responses to the violence occurring in the context of the overall political conflict, we need to reflect upon international humanitarian law as well as on the application of domestic criminal law. The latter is of particular importance for the Israeli perspective. This is not because Israel is more affected by the violence conducted during the intifada than the Palestinian side. Instead, due to the well-established criminal justice system, Israel is challenged to balance and justify the (non-)application of its conventional criminal law on the one hand and international humanitarian law on the other. This situation is very much different in the Palestinian territories where the domestic judicial system is extremely weak.
