The Guardian reports:

A prominent Palestinian human rights lawyer whose Gaza home was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in the early weeks of the war has called on western powers and global institutions to do more to prevent the territory becoming “the graveyard of international law”.

Raji Sourani, who founded the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in 1995 and was a key member of the South African legal team that took Israel to the international court of justice on a charge of genocide, met the UK attorney general last week to urge him to assume a leadership role in defending humanitarian law.

At the age of 70, Sourani has spent more time battling Israel in the domestic and international courts than probably any other Palestinian lawyer. He believes the world is at a turning point.

In October 2023 his two-storey home in Gaza was blown up with a 900kg bomb shortly after he gave an interview to Amy Goodman, the founder of the leftwing independent broadcaster Democracy Now. Sourani escaped with his wife and son and returned to inspect the ruins the following day. He is sure that his house was deliberately targeted. Like many, he had vowed never to leave Gaza, but he was persuaded that if he stayed he would be killed, and now lives in exile in Cairo. [Continue reading…]