Almost a week after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, called for a global peace conference and a ceasefire. China’s messages can be boiled down to three main points: 1) condemning attacks on both Israeli and Palestinian civilians and the breaking of international law, 2) calling for dialogue between the warring sides, and 3) emphasising the necessity of a two-state solution. China’s messaging follows a similar pattern expressed after previous Israel-Palestine escalations, whereby Beijing refuses to take sides explicitly, urging restraint and promoting peace talks. Chinese-Palestinian & Chinese-Israeli relations: China’s ‘neutrality’ leans in support of Palestine, at least rhetorically. While insisting on both Israel and Palestine’s right to statehood, Wang Yi …

Despite the appalling course of events since 7 October, the continuing fighting and the suffering of the bereaved and displaced in Israel and Gaza, people are beginning to ask where this will all end, how it will end, and even whether it will end? It is essential to address these questions now, because a lasting solution can only be found once people on both sides have some hope for the future The emergence of the two-state solution Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration declared support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and fuelled the two growing national movements of Jews and the Palestinian Arabs, there have been only three possible solutions to the question of who lives in the land between …

Over Gaza, the international criminal justice system (ICJS), spearheaded by the International Criminal Court (ICC), must pick a trench: Does international criminal justice entail the active involvement in humanitarian relief and prevention in conflict zones? I call those who support this proposition, “legal activists”, for a lack of better terminology. Or might, in contrast, the sole objective of ICJS operations be the realisation of ex-post justice, as “purist” interpreters of international criminal justice usually espouse? This post argues that these two objectives are not mutually exclusive. Instead, I argue that a legal activist approach in situations of acute conflict facilitates ex-post justice in the long run. Gaza, War Crimes, Silence The ICC’s Chief Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating war crime allegations in …