International Law: On the Edge of a Dream? Reflections on the Middle East Wars

The worsening of the crisis in the Middle East, following the Hamas attack within Israel's borders, on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli troops, with the expansion of the conflict to South Lebanon, dominated by Hezbollah forces, create new challenges to international law, imposing at each step the revision of concepts and the considered analysis of the facts that occur in the theater of war, trying to subsume them to the abstract norms enshrined in the international legal order. The very existence and subsistence of such mandatory and binding international legal norms is not in question. What is at stake is the possibility of its violation by the parties to the conflict and the consequences of such violation. The susceptibility of the respective violation is what precisely characterizes the essence of a legal norm, as a norm postulating an order that, unlike the natural order, is not pre-established. And the eventuality that the violation may not be followed by any sanction – a circumstance that can also occur in domestic law – in no way changes the legal nature of international norms. The indispensable force for the coactivity of the norm is not part of its essence nor is it a condition of its validity. We propose, in this essay, to try to place in their historical and legal context the latest developments in the current confrontation in the Middle East, notably the recent attack by the Israeli defense forces (IDF) on the troops of the UN peacekeeping operation in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the launch of drones by Iran over Israeli territory and its response.