Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa) says that Gaza is “becoming the graveyard of international humanitarian law”.
International humanitarian law (IHL), regulates the conduct of armed conflict, which is the legal expression for war. It covers everything from what is a lawful target, to the treatment of prisoners and injured people, and even to the testing of new weapons. The main rules of IHL can be found in the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
Lazzarini, though, has gone so far as to say that we “have made the Geneva convention[s] almost irrelevant. What is happening and being accepted today in Gaza is not something that can be isolated; it will become the new norm for all future conflicts”.
