16:30 til 17:30
The Gaza Crisis: Military Drones, Settler Colonialism, and International Law
Dr Yaar Dagan, law lecturer and researcher at Bournemouth University, gives a talk on the Gaza crisis, military drones, settler colonialism, and international law, at Veröld – House of Vigdís on 17 January at 16:30.
The presentation, organised by the programme of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Iceland in collaboration with the Vigdís International Centre, will be in English. All are welcome.
"This talk explores the development and use of military drones in my home country, Israel/Palestine while considering the recent events that have been unfolding since the 7th of October, 2023. Although Israel has roughly 0.1% of the world’s inhabitants, the country’s arms industry is 30 times its share of the world population. By 2013, Israel became the world's largest exporter of military drones, with sales of over $4.6 billion (USD) in the course of eight years. This technology combines two of Israel’s largest industries, high-tech and military. But what drove Israel to develop this particular technology?
Drones, initially endorsed as a ‘safer’ weapon that reduces risks to civilians, have, in most cases, been fatally harmful to innocent victims. They are becoming more autonomous, relying on big data algorithms and Artificial Intelligence. As a result, an innocent deviation from a behavioural pattern might result in launching a deadly missile on a newly selected “target”. Mass surveillance facilitated by drones made millions of Third World civilians and indigenous peoples feel vulnerable and defenceless, in constant danger of being injured, maimed, or killed. Many, too many, especially children, suffer from deep psychological trauma that haunts them for many years – which amounts to collective punishment.
International Law is seemingly unable to tame this violence. More particularly, International Humanitarian Law, the set of rules that seeks to restrain the devastating consequences of warfare on civilians and hors de combat, has proven highly ineffective in governing drone violence and ensuring more humane conduct.
Why has international law been largely incapable and ineffective in taming this violence? Is it possible that international law has been enhancing imperial, colonial and settler colonial violence?
To answer these questions, it is crucial to consider the settler colonial situation in Israel/Palestine, a situation that many scholars and NGOs have already been considering as a new form of apartheid."
Background on the speaker
Dr Yaar Dagan is a law lecturer and a researcher at Bournemouth University, the Department of Humanities & Law, Faculty of Media & Communication. He currently serves as a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics, and Ethics (CAPPE) at the University of Brighton and as a visiting lecturer at Lviv Polytechnic University (Ukraine). He previously served as a visiting researcher at the Sussex Centre for Human Rights Research, as well as the European University Institute (Italy). In 2019, Yaar was shortlisted as one of the 12 UK national semi-finalists for the Vitae Three Minute Thesis competition. Earlier that year, he won the Erasmus+ Teaching Mobility Award from the British Council and Ecorys UK for teaching at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Iceland.
Yaar holds his PhD from Keele University, School of Law, as well as an LLM (2012) and LLB (2010) from the Haim Striks School of Law, the College of Management Academic Studies, Israel.