Law in the Service of Injustice

A salient feature of Israel’s half-century long rule over Palestinian lives – and deaths – is the great effort it devotes to lending a veneer of lawfulness to the many systematic violations of Palestinians' human rights in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and in the Gaza Strip. Through its on-going work, B’Tselem has offered a detailed account of this legal structure put in place by Israel to absolve itself of any meaningful accountability for killing or injuring Palestinians, be it in the course of routine policing by the military in the West Bank or during major military operations in Gaza.

Yael Stein is the Research Director of B’Tselem. She holds an LLB from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an MA in human rights from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London. Yael is the author of three previous reports for B’Tselem: The Occupation’s Fig Leaf (2016), Whitewash Protocol (2016), and Getting Off Scot-Free (2017).

Daniel Levy is the President of the U.S. / Middle East Project. From 2012 to 2016, he was Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He was a member of the Israeli negotiating team to the talks with the Palestinians under Prime Ministers Rabin and Barak.

Hugh Lovatt (@h_lovatt) is a Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). He has worked extensively to advance the concept of “EU differentiation” between Israel and its settlements, which was enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (December 2016). His most recent publication is Occupation and Sovereignty: Renewing EU Policy in Israel-Palestine (December 2017).