Why Israeli Strikes against Hizballah in Syria Are Legal https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/israel-zionism/2017/03/why-israeli-strikes-against-hizballah-in-syria-are-legal/

March 30, 2017 | Louis René Beres
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In April 2016, Benjamin Netanyahu admitted publicly, for the first time, that Israel had routinely attacked arms shipments in Syria in order to prevent Hizballah from obtaining advanced weapons—a policy that continues to be in force. While these attacks on foreign soil in the midst of a complex civil war might at first seem to fall into a legal gray area, there is a straightforward case for their legality, as Louis René Beres writes:

Legally, there is nothing complicated about the issues surrounding Israel’s counter-terrorist raids within Syria. By willfully allowing its territory to be used as a source for weapons that Hizballah terrorists can use against Israel, and as an expanding base for anti-Israel terrorist operations in general, Bashar al-Assad has placed Syria in unambiguous violation of both the UN Charter and the wider body of international rules identified in Article 38 of the UN’s Statute of the International Court of Justice.

There is more. Because Syria, entirely at its own insistence, maintains a formal condition of belligerency with Israel (that is, a legal “state of war”), [the] charges levied by Damascus or Tehran of “Israeli aggression” make no jurisprudential sense. . . . [Furthermore], express prohibitions against pro-terrorist behavior by any state can be found in Articles 3(f) and 3(g) of the 1974 UN General Assembly Definition of Aggression. These prohibitions are part of customary international law, identified in Article 38 of the International Court of Justice statute as “the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations.” . . .

Under international law, every use of force by states must be judged twice: once with regard to the justness of the cause, and once with regard to the justness of the means. This second standard concerns core issues of humanitarian international law. . . . In defending itself against Hizballah terror, Israel’s actions have always been consistent with humanitarian international law. In stark contrast to the Shiite terrorist militias operating in Lebanon and southern Syria, and similarly unlike the Syrian-supported Islamic Jihad forces, who intentionally target noncombatants, Israel has been meticulous about exclusively striking hard military targets in raids on Syria. . . .

[Above all], the obligation of a sovereign to protect its citizens or subjects is . . . utterly beyond question. Israel need make no apologies for choosing to defend itself against Syrian-sponsored Hizballah aggression. International law is never a suicide pact.

Read more on BESA Center: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israeli-raids-syrian-targets-legal/