Midcoast Forum on Foreign Relations

Two Articles from Jeremy Konyndyk

Posted on Thursday October 10 2024

“War Unbound: Gaza, Ukraine, and the Breakdown of International Law,” by Oona A. Hathaway, Foreign Affairs, April 23, 2024.

Hamas’s attack on Israel and Israel’s response to it have been a disaster for civilians. In its October 7 massacre, Hamas sought out unarmed Israeli civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, killing close to 1,200 people and taking around 240 hostages. Israel’s subsequent air and ground campaign in Gaza has, as of March 2024, killed more than 30,000 people, an estimated two-thirds of whom were women and children. The Israeli offensive has also displaced some two million people (more than 85 percent of the population of Gaza), left more than a million people at risk of starvation, and damaged or destroyed some 150,000 civilian buildings. Today, there is no functional hospital left in northern Gaza. Hamas, Israel maintains, uses civilian structures as shields, operating in them or in tunnels beneath them—perhaps precisely because such buildings have been considered off-limits for military operations under international law.

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Having been a student myself in Jesuit schools, it means a lot to be here for the first time! It is also a significant moment to be speaking at a university campus – and such a prestigious one at that. Complex and controversial as this may be, what is happening in universities in the United States and around the world proves that young people remain as engaged in international events as ever. This is good, because — and forgive an older man’s remark — there was a perception that such an interest, so prominent in my own youth, was fading. But thankfully and obviously it is not — whether it is about conflicts, climate, rights, justice and other causes. And this is vital if we want the world to remain a vibrant, responsive place at a time of such steep global challenges.

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