Interview with Professor Michelle Burgis-Kasthala: The Gaza People’s Tribunal, International Law and the Politics of Accountability
Professor Michelle Burgis-Kasthala is Professor of International Law at La Trobe Law School, Melbourne, with a research focus on international law in the Middle East. In this interview, she discusses her role on Chamber 2 of the Gaza People’s Tribunal, a people’s tribunal chaired by former UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk that held hearings in Sarajevo before delivering its final verdict in Istanbul in October 2025, finding Israel guilty of genocide against the Palestinian people.
Q1: How did you first become involved with the Gaza Tribunal, and in your view, what gap in the existing international legal system made a tribunal like this necessary?
A: I was invited to a closed preliminary meeting of the Tribunal in London in November 2024, where scholars, jurists and civil society figures with expertise in international law, history, sociology and international relations shaped the Tribunal’s scope. Participants self-selected into one of three chambers before preparing written submissions for the first public hearings in Sarajevo. I see the Tribunal’s purpose as filling gaps left by formal bodies such as the ICJ and ICC: bringing in Palestinian voices and foregrounding historical context stretching back to 1917–1922, pushing the boundaries of international law itself, even where formal institutions do not acknowledge the Tribunal’s existence. There has been a lot of cynicism around the purchase of international law, but I think we live in an exciting time where we have been thinking about how to be creative within the limits of the law.
Q2: One paradox about People’s Tribunals is that they have all the legal trappings — evidence presented to a jury of conscience, accepted legal standards and processes — yet do not claim formal legal authority. Why is it important for an informal tribunal to adhere so faithfully to these processes, and does this increase its perceived legitimacy?
A: I think legitimacy is a huge challenge for any international institution, including the ICJ, but it’s even more pronounced for people’s tribunals. I see the Tribunal’s legal form as rather performative rather than strictly legalistic. The language of “tribunal” and “jury of conscience” lends the Tribunal credibility and invites participation from audiences who might not otherwise engage with this kind of forum. It gives the Tribunal clout to speak to a broader audience and capture the basic concerns of ordinary people.
Although the Tribunal is quite simplistic in its formulation, that is also the beauty of it. The format’s flexibility and speed avoids the years and resources a formal proceeding would demand. Legitimacy, in my view, ultimately stems less from procedural formality than from the Tribunal’s breadth and representativeness — including testimony from ordinary Gazans, not only legal experts.
Q3: A frequent criticism of People’s Tribunals is that they serve a political agenda, unlike official courts with (nominally) neutral judges who hear both sides. The Gaza Tribunal includes Palestinian activists and lawyers, but the Judgement does not include an Israeli perspective. Do you think it is important for People’s Tribunals to establish a balanced account, and how does this sit against the Tribunal’s mandate to mobilise civil action?
A: The omission of the mainstream Israeli perspective was a deliberate political choice reflecting stark power asymmetries between Israel and the Palestinians at a moment of intense, ongoing violence. The Tribunal did include Israeli voices — historians Ilan Pappé and Avi Shlaim — to situate the genocide within a longer settler-colonial history. The broader aim was to counteract the dominant Israeli-American narrative and restore Palestinians as “fully fleshed out human beings” rather than statistics. And yes, this choice carries legitimacy costs, but including an Israeli perspective in a formulate way may put off interested audience members.
Q4: International law is usually considered the domain of states. The Gaza Tribunal has shown how states have lacked the political will to implement it, and advocates for new forms of legality from the grassroots — students, unions, activists, victims, NGOs, and People’s Tribunals. Should such actors be given formal legal standing to bring disputes before the ICJ or refer situations to the ICC?
A: I see little current political appetite for granting non-state actors formal standing. There are existing informal channels — such as amicus submissions to the ICC and civil society influence on ICJ advisory opinion requests (citing the UNRWA advisory opinion) — as incremental openings. However, the UNRWA advisory opinion is only informal. An actual guarantee to formalise that process or have a pre-People’s Tribunal type of proceeding could be useful, but I worry that most states would be reluctant. Instead, I envision a slow, iterative process in which a growing number of people’s tribunals and greater awareness about their existence invites states to look into their practise and findings, which has the potential to influence formal proceedings at the ICJ and ICC.
Q5: People’s Tribunals like the Tokyo Women’s Tribunal are typically formed to correct or memorialise a historical narrative. The Gaza Tribunal aspires to go further and actually engage with formal institutions like the ICC, ICJ and the UN. How likely is it to realise this aim and set a blueprint for future People’s Tribunals?
A: With the Gaza People’s Tribunal now formally closed, its future contribution rests on how its evidentiary archive is used. The onus is on members of the Tribunal or anyone interested to try to think about creative ways to use the material. There is a large body of testimony and material produced by the Tribunal which can be a useful resource for informing domestic legal proceedings and lobbying governments on trade relations with Israel, even without further Tribunal proceedings. It would also help experts think about how they may continue their own work on Palestinian situation.
Q6: One goal of Chamber 2, which you sit on, was to advocate for reforms to the geopolitical world order and subordinate politics to law. What would be your proposed reform to achieve this, and how would it change the international response to Gaza?
A: I believe the central need is to sanction Israel itself and cut ties with Israel. Although there has been pressure within Israel itself due to internal political shifts, this cannot be relied upon while Gaza is shrinking by the day and there are plans to systematically expel both Gazans and West Bank Palestinians. There has to be extreme external pressure driven largely by civil society in the Global North. This remains a struggle as there are various attempts to shut down free speech and threats to the ICC itself. There are powerful forces pushing against the story in Gaza being told, so any space to capture repressed Palestinian voices or even Jewish Israeli voices would be extremely important.
Q7: The genocidal acts the Tribunal forefronted in its Judgement were not the conventional categories of killing or serious bodily harm, but less familiar acts such as starvation, domicide, ecocide, reprocide and scholasticide. Why focus on these when there is ample evidence for the more conventional categories?
A: There are three main reasons. First, timing: the judgment was issued just after the October 2025 ceasefire, and the Tribunal was concerned that a lull in violence might cause public advocacy to wane — so it wanted to keep the horror of events in the public’s mind through creative, innovative framing.
Second, on terminology: the Tribunal made a deliberate choice to use the word “genocide” outright rather than deferring to the ICJ or ICC. The word genocide itself is extremely powerful rhetorically, and there’s still discussion as to whether or not people have chosen to use the word or not. Pro-Israel supporters may argue that the ICJ hasn’t made its decision and so it is inconclusive, but the Tribunal’s response is that there is massive evidence of genocide. We are competent and confident in our abilities to determine that we have reached the threshold of genocide. This is a way of putting states, the ICJ and even the ICC, who has yet to actually issue an arrest warrant in relation to genocide, to be on notice.
Third, public understanding of genocide is still very much anchored to the Holocaust’s “factory-based killing,” which makes the crime narrowly defined and hard to prove. By spotlighting harms like ecocide domicide, reprocide and scholasticide, the Tribunal aimed to convey the scale of destruction and test the law’s boundaries. It is still jurisprudentially unsettled whether these acts fold into the existing crime of genocide. However our intention is to challenge the presumption that genocide is extremely difficult and onerous to prove, and show that widespread forms of destruction may contribute to genocide. The alternative that the Tribunal is gesturing toward is recognising some of these acts (e.g., scholasticide) as standalone crimes.
Q8: The Tribunal stressed the importance of historical context dating back to 1948 in proving genocidal intent, yet history is contested — the term “Nakba” is not used universally, and Israel refers to 1948 as its War of Independence. How has the Tribunal handled this complexity, and how might a different historical account affect its legal analysis of genocidal intent?
A: The Tribunal did not attempt a rigorous historical-legal argument connecting 1948 to present-day genocidal intent. I do not think that was the Tribunal’s intention and it is clear that its finding of genocide is anchored in October 2023.
Still, I think it is important that we invoked 1948 rather than the more conventional legal starting point of 1967: international law’s fixation on 1967 (and the resulting law of occupation) treats “Palestine” as only the Occupied Territories, whereas for many Palestinians — particularly refugees in the diaspora — Palestine extends across the whole territory “from the river to the sea”.
We wanted to situate the Nakba within a longer settler-colonial project beginning in 1922. Nakba is more respectful way of trying to capture what happened to Palestinians who, overnight, were just eradicated from their homelands. So while the 1948 war wrought by the issue that then became the State of Israel, it was equally a Nakba.
And very prominent, well-respected Jewish Israeli historians would make the same case. It was part of the Israeli policy to destroy villages, to push people out and to ensure that they didn’t return. That is the trauma that international law until today has not addressed. Even the ICJ Advisory Opinion in 2024 had to work within the framework starting from 1967. There has to be a way to take the clock further back and think about ways to address historic wrongs.
Q9: Corporate media has played a role in suppressing or inverting the truth about Gaza, while #FreePalestine is common across social media. How effective do you think social media has been for reportage and advocacy — has it pressured governments, corporations or universities to act, or is it just virtue signalling?
A: I see social media as a valuable resource primarily for those already sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, and a channel that may inform future domestic or international trials. I think the next stage is to try to harness online anger and sympathy into domestic political organising and policy change. Media fragmentation may limit our reach, but I believe the scale of destruction in Gaza is such that it is hard for even disengaged observers to ignore. Our job is to keep on reminding people so that we can galvanise larger bodies of society to bring pressure for policy change.
Q10: The Judgement states that “Gaza is the last bastion of the genocidal history of Western civilization,” and Professor Dabashi argues Western philosophy sees non-white life as “expendable,” leaving Western governments unwilling to intervene. Can the Global South fill this gap and take on moral and legal leadership for the Palestinian cause?
A: The Global South can help fill this leadership gap, but we should note that support for Palestine cuts across the Global North/South divide. Spain is an example of a Global North state that has taken a strong pro-Palestinian stance. The Hague Group, formed by Global South states in response to the Gaza genocide, is a significant new initiative to carve out space for advocating around key concerns of the Global South, the most important one being Palestine.
Members of the Hague Group have actually come under real sustained pressure, which is expected when a group of states try to take a contrary position to those of the hegemon. It will be interesting to see how the Hague Group evolves, and they need to continue being informed by civil society activity. Having the Hague Group or the Gaza People’s Tribunal in conversation will be essential to keep such initiatives in the Global South going.
Please note that the full interview may be found on the AsianSIL YouTube channel here.
