[...]
The elastic nature of the law and the power of military action to extend it in the age of lawfare combine to make the people of Gaza objects of an experiment - in two senses. First, all sorts of new munitions and warfare techniques are applied and marketed. Second, certain limits are tested and explored: the limits of the legal, the limits of the ethical, the limits of the tolerable, the limits of what can be done to people in the name of "war on terror".
The logic of this realisation may be the need for those concerned with the interests and rights of people affected by war to employ a double, even paradoxical strategy: one that uses international humanitarian law, while highlighting the dangers implied in it and challenging its truth claims and thus also the basis of its authority. In any event, international law should not be the only language of protest and resistance to Israeli violence. The attack on Gaza should be opposed not because it is "illegal", but because it serves the logic of Israeli control of Palestinians.
Rather than moderation or restraint, the violence and destruction of Gaza might be the true face of international law.
<http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/legislative-attack>