Dana Farraj is a lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Birzeit University and a PhD candidate in International Law at the University of Burgundy, France. She is the first Palestinian to complete the Judicial Fellowship Programme at the International Court of Justice. Her research focuses on international criminal law, state responsibility for international crimes, and human rights law. Dana holds an LLM in International Humanitarian Law from Aix-Marseille University and a law degree from Birzeit University.
From this author
The advisory opinions issued by the International Court of Justice on Palestine reveal both the possibilities and the limits of international law, which has come under intense scrutiny amid the Israeli regime’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and broader settler-colonial project across Palestine.
Acknowledging the persistent gap between legal principle and political enforcement, this policy brief examines how these opinions can be leveraged to strengthen legal and diplomatic accountability at both the international and domestic levels. It argues that the opinions provide an opportunity to move legal discourse on Palestine beyond the dominant UN framework of statehood within the 1967 borders and to reassert the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination within a broader liberation-oriented framework aimed at ending settler colonialism and advancing justice for Palestinians as a whole.
In October 2022, PA President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree ordering the establishment of the Supreme Council of Judicial Bodies and Authorities that he would head. Through this and other decrees, Abbas and the ruling elite entrench the domination of the executive authority over the judiciary. Al-Shabaka policy analyst Dana Farraj examines these decrees and offers recommendations for confronting them.
Reports that Israel is compiling lists of officials who might be arrested during travel abroad if the International Criminal Court decides to investigate war crimes in Palestine highlight the power and potential of the Court. Al-Shabaka policy analysts Dana Farraj and Asem Khalil discuss three key indicators that support the strong possibility of ICC intervention against alleged war criminals.
