Comment by ristlane
2 years ago
Hamas is hiding among civilians. I don’t want innocent people to be hurt, but their use of human shields is simply the standard playbook in this type of warfare. Hamas rationally wants Gazan civilians to be nearby and indistinguishable from combatants.
This is true but not the whole story. If Hamas were dug in under an Israeli school or hospital, would it similarly by okay to treat civilian deaths as 'just Hamas fault'? Obviously not. The problem here has that the situation is between a war and a policing situation. Gaza is not a state, but it is not a suburb of Israel either. So who is responsible for the safety of Palestinian civilians?
If Hamas were entrenched under an Israeli school or hospital, the civilians would vacate the area so the IDF could take care of it.
In Gaza, Hamas may be preventing civilians from leaving (but I’m not there to verify). It would help to have civilian corridors into the south and into Egypt, but again that’s not in the best interests of Hamas.
I’d like the IDF to do their best. They are indeed responsible for trying not to kill civilians. There’s only so much they can do, short of a so-called “ceasefire”.
> It would help to have civilian corridors into the south and into Egypt, but again that’s not in the best interests of Hamas.
Such a corridor is in nobodies interest but Israels, as they would happily expel the entire Gaza population and then forbid them from returning. It's not like high ranking Israeli officials haven't alluded or outright said this, and Israel has quite a history of illegal annexation in the West Bank.
Providing such a corridor would just be asssisting in ethnic cleansing.
Hamas rules Gaza, Israel doesn't (or at least didn't) have a military presence inside of Gaza. Israel withdrew all Israelis and all military forces from Gaza, as was often demanded of it ("End the Occupation"). I'm not sure what makes the situation unclear (for the specific things you talked about).
The way you have phrased your question invites discussion of legal definitions. Moral questions are not answered in this way. What is the moral difference between soldiers and police as regards civilians? Both have the same moral obligation not to harm civilians. The difference is that police have a monopoly on violence and soldiers do not, because there is another belligerent force. Hence, it is clear that under some circumstances, the moral obligations of soldiers would reduce to that of police (when the opposing beligerent force is nearly eliminated). The degree to which this is the case depends on the tactical state of play, which is unclear (and likely to remain so).
I have to say that it's also unclear to me personally whether the current rate of civilian deaths could be justified under any circumstances. Since Israel has not stated what it wants the end-goal of the war to be, we don't know how it could justify it either.
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Would Israel allow Gaza to have a conventional standing army? With barracks, heavy weapons and maybe airbases?
Isn't it a bit silly to complain about their lack of adherence to conventional military practices?
No state will tolerate a hostile army near its borders. But if representatives of Gaza/West Bank recognized Israel and made a peace agreement with delineated borders - they would have their army like any other government.
Today it sounds highly hypothetical, but was definitely possible at many points in Israel's history.
I find it hard to imagine a future in which Israel allows a Palestinian state to have its own army of any reasonable capability. Almost as much as I find it improbable that such an army wouldn't be mobilised against Israel as soon as it was sufficiently established - regardless of any pretext of peace.
However, my point was based on the situation today. The import of building materials into Gaza is strictly controlled because those materials could be used to build and fortify military positions.
It is contradictory to prevent the creation of military positions and also complain about civilian structures being used for military purposes.
The IDF HQ is in a heavily populated part of Tel Aviv. If a country dropped an enormous bomb on it which flattened nearby civilian homes and populations, would it be okay because the IDF is "hiding" among civilians? The IDF also literally used human shields until 2005 when it was banned (and a bit more afterwards trying not to get caught), so is it okay to kill ~20000 Israeli civilians as a result of that?