Author Archives: Victor Kattan

About Victor Kattan

Victor Kattan is an Associate Fellow at the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute where he heads the law cluster. He is the editor, most recently, with the late Peter Sluglett, of the book Violent Radical Movements in the Arab World: The Ideology and Politics of None-State Actors (London: I.B. Tauris. 2019).

The Return of the “savage”: Gaza and the Dark Side of International Humanitarian Law

March 3, 2026 by and
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Abstract Following the 7 October 2023 attacks, scholars have offered myriad legal views arising from the ongoing hostilities. What is missing from these debates is an exploration of the “dark side” of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), which, as classically conceived, was not developed for urban wars or for conflicts between states and armed groups resisting occupation or colonialism. It was originally developed in the late nineteenth century on a clear distinction between the international (European) and colonial spheres. According to this distinction, conflicts between so-called Continue reading → Continue reading →

The U.S. Military and Just War Theory: A Response to Jessica Whyte

August 21, 2019 by
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This post is part of a symposium on Jessica Whyte’s essay “The ‘Dangerous Concept of the Just War.’” All contributions to the symposium can be found here. Jessica Whyte has written a compelling and erudite critique of claim in the 2015 United States Law of War manual that the laws of war are “rooted in the Just War tradition” (314). She convincingly demonstrates that this seemingly innocuous statement is completely at odds with those made by U.S. officials during the negotiations of the Additional Protocols Continue reading →