#111 Bob —

You sir are of course correct: were Israel to have sunk the ships, then that would put a dampener on future activity of this sort. I prefer to deal with the current situation, however. It’s unlikely that sinking the ships now that they are in Israeli hands would make the same impact.

#147 Papa Ray –

International “Conventions” are formulated in the UN. The adoption process for each country goes Signature -> Ratification. Signing a convention may be done by the executive, and indicates general agreement with the principles of the convention in question, as well as non-binding commitment to ratify. The UN likes to badger countries that sign in order to get them to ratify. Ratification must be done by the legislature, is (supposedly) binding and implies that national laws will be modified if needed to accommodate the Convention.

Of course, if a state does not ratify a given convention–as Israel has not for the Law of the Sea–then it has exactly zero impact on that state. If a state is not a party to a convention, then appropriate international law defaults to “International Custom”–which just means the normally accepted means for treating a given situation, assuming the state has not formally indicated that they vary from that custom.

International law is a rather vague area to be making proclamations in, which is why you so rarely see any State actually being called to account for “violating” it. The one-worlders like to imagine that the UN has some kind of enforcement authority, but even if a state is party to a given Convention, that convention may not have any enforcement mechanisms unless a State is willing to give up its sovereignty over the matter in question.

–JC