Clashing Behavior, Converging Interests: A Legal Convention Regulating a Military Conflict

Abstract

This Article examines a unique experiment in international law. In April 1996, Israel and Lebanon publicly announced an Agreement that would allow the hot military conflict between the Israel Defense Forces and the Lebanese militia Hesbollah to continue, but would bind the forces to an explicitly agreed-upon set of rules intended to protect civilians. Moreover, a special commission, the Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group (the "ILMG"), would be established to handle complaints regarding violations of the Agreement Israel and Lebanon abided by the April Agreement from the time of its inception in April 1996 until Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000. During this four-year period, the ILMG met 103 times to resolve 607 complaints of violations of the April Agreement. Employing a methodology rooted in the New Haven School of jurisprudence, this Article studies the April Agreement and the monitoring mechanism as a system of law. The Article seeks to explore why the parties were driven to agree on such an exceptional convention and to explain how the Agreement and the Monitoring Group satisfied the converging interests of warring parties.