{"id":9208,"date":"2014-11-15T14:20:13","date_gmt":"2014-11-15T14:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kohelet.org.il\/article\/when-gravity-fails\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T08:05:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T08:05:41","slug":"when-gravity-fails","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/when-gravity-fails\/","title":{"rendered":"Prof. Kontorovich in Israel Law Review: \u201cWhen Gravity Fails\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">KPF Senior Fellow Prof. Eugene Kontorovich has published an article in the Israel Law Review journal, entitled &#8220;When Gravity Fails: Israeli Settlements and Admissibility at the ICC&#8221;. It focuses on the operationalization of the fuzzy gravity requirement, and its application in the context of other possible situations involving Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>In the wake of the UN General Assembly&#8217;s recent recognition of Palestinian statehood, the Palestinian government has made clear its intention to challenge in the International Criminal Court (ICC or the Court) the legality of Israeli settlements. This article explores jurisdictional hurdles for such a case. To focus on the jurisdictional issues, the article assumes for the sake of argument the validity of the merits of the legal claims against the settlements.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The ICC only takes situations of particular \u2018gravity\u2019. Yet settlements are not a \u2018grave breach\u2019 under the Rome Statute. No modern international criminal tribunal has ever prosecuted crimes that do not involve systematic violence and physical coercion. The ICC&#8217;s gravity measure involves the number of persons killed; for settlements it would be zero. Indeed, the ICC Prosecutor triages situations by the numbers of victims; settlements do not appear to have direct individual victims. Finally, the ICC would at most have jurisdiction over settlement activity only from the date of Palestine&#8217;s acceptance of jurisdiction. Settlement activity in this time frame would not immediately cross the ICC&#8217;s gravity threshold.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">See the full article at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/israel-law-review\/article\/abs\/when-gravity-fails-israeli-settlements-and-admissibility-at-the-icc\/5B8C98D2F67AB9454DEED31FF7CEF34B\" type=\"link\" id=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/israel-law-review\/article\/abs\/when-gravity-fails-israeli-settlements-and-admissibility-at-the-icc\/5B8C98D2F67AB9454DEED31FF7CEF34B\">Cambridge University Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KPF Senior Fellow Prof. Eugene Kontorovich has published an article in the Israel Law Review journal, entitled &#8220;When Gravity Fails: Israeli Settlements and Admissibility at the ICC&#8221;. It focuses on the operationalization of the fuzzy gravity requirement, and its application in the context of other possible situations involving Israel. Abstract In the wake of the [&hellip;]","protected":false},"featured_media":12339,"template":"","article-category":[525],"custom-tags":[550,41,548,2189],"ppma_author":[49],"class_list":["post-9208","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","article-category-publications","custom-tags-icc","custom-tags-international-law","custom-tags-kohelet","custom-tags-paper"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Prof. Kontorovich in Israel Law Review: \u201cWhen Gravity Fails\u201d - kohelet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/when-gravity-fails\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Prof. Kontorovich in Israel Law Review: \u201cWhen Gravity Fails\u201d - kohelet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"KPF Senior Fellow Prof. Eugene Kontorovich has published an article in the Israel Law Review journal, entitled &#8220;When Gravity Fails: Israeli Settlements and Admissibility at the ICC&#8221;. 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