Can Israel Still Claim Self-Defense To Justify Its Gaza War?

2025-06-10 03:11:15

(MENAFN- Asia Times) On October 7, 2023, more than 1,000 Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel and went on a killing spree, murdering 1,200 men, women and children and abducting another 250 people to take back to Gaza. It was the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

That day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the country,“Israel is at war .” The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) immediately began a military campaign to secure the release of the hostages and defeat Hamas. Since that day, more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed , mostly women and children.

Israel has maintained its response is justified under international law, as every nation has“an inherent right to defend itself”, as Netanyahu stated in early 2024.

This is based on the right to self-defence in international law, which is outlined in Article 51 of the 1945 United Nations Charter as follows:

At the start of the war, many nations agreed Israel had a right to defend itself, but how it did so mattered. This would ensure its actions were consistent with international humanitarian law .

However, 20 months after the October 7 attacks, fundamental legal issues have arisen around whether this self-defense justification still holds. Can Israel exercise self-defense ad infinitum? Or is it now waging a war of aggression against Palestine?

Self-defense in the law

Self-defense has a long history in international law.

The modern principles of self-defense were outlined in diplomatic exchanges over an 1837 incident involving an American ship, The Caroline , after it was destroyed by British forces in Canada. Both sides agreed that an exercise of self-defense would have required the British to demonstrate their conduct was not“unreasonable or excessive.”

The concept of self-defense was also extensively relied on by the Allies in the Second World War in response to German and Japanese aggression.

Self-defense was originally framed in the law as a right to respond to a state-based attack. However, this scope has broadened in recent decades to encompass attacks from non-state actors, such as al-Qaeda following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks .

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