Destruction caused by Israeli attacks in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, February 2024, Mahmoud Issa Reuters.
The atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October did not end on that day. More than 130 Israelis remain being held hostage in the Gaza Strip, leaving countless families in deep grief and unable to sleep at night with the prospect of future attacks. While the military operation in Gaza is ostensibly aimed at dismantling the extremist network in order to deter further Hamas attacks, the move has not brought any clear future security guarantees to the Israelis or their neighbors. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now said he wants to take control of the Gaza Strip indefinitely. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's claim at the end of February that the death toll among Palestinian civilians had surpassed 25,000 has prompted the United States**Joe Biden, a staunch ally who supported Israel's retaliation after the Oct. 7 attacks, to put pressure on Netanyahu to exercise restraint and ensure that Israel's military maneuvers are consistent with the fundamental norms of just war and international law.
Israel claims that it is doing its utmost to reduce the presence of civilians in Gaza** and maintain a sophisticated targeting process to ensure that any military action is proportionate and avoids unnecessary civilians**. Netanyahu insisted in October that the Israeli army was "the most moral army in the world."。In November, when confronted with the issue of Palestinian civilians**, Netanyahu said: "The death of any civilian is a tragedy. Our goal is to avoid any tragedy, and we are doing everything possible to protect civilians from dangerous ......That's exactly what we're after: minimizing civilians**.
But the truth is that Israel has failed to do so. In the military operation in Gaza, although Israel has roughly implemented the rules of its army to reduce the number of civilians**, these rules themselves are a piece of paper. Investigations into successive Gaza clashes have shown that Israel's targeting criteria are not precise enough to effectively reduce the number of civilians**. And in the recent Gaza conflict, Israel has failed to comply with even these most basic restrictions, leading to massive ** and further exacerbation of the conflict.
By looking back at past wars, we can lift the fog of current wars. Israel's war group Breaking the Silence spent years studying soldiers' testimonies during military operations in Gaza in 2021. In these conflicts, Israel claims that it is doing its utmost to avoid civilians**, a claim based on three propositions: that Israel only attacks legitimate military objectives and not civilian targets; Israel's actions are based on highly reliable intelligence in order to avoid harm to civilians; Israel has carried out its attacks with precision, thereby limiting the damage to civilians. However, from our study of past wars, there are multiple reasons to doubt the veracity of these claims.
First, not all of Israel's targets in past conflicts can be considered legitimate military objectives. While some of the targets are undoubtedly legitimate, such as warehouses, Hamas headquarters, tunnels used by Hamas militants, and rocket launch sites, Israel has also attacked so-called "militant homes" – mostly homes and apartments – which Israel insists are the homes of militants (usually members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad). Israel often razes entire buildings to the ground simply because an apartment has been flagged for use by militants. In these cases, the target of the attack was not the target of the militant or any reasonably identifiable militant activity; In fact, the militants may not have been present at the time of the attack. Just because the militants lived there, Israel considered it justified the destruction of the entire building.
At the beginning of the operation in 2014, the Israeli human rights organization "Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories" (b'Tselem noted that attacks on militants' homes violate international humanitarian law, as these are civilian homes and not military targets. Since then, an IDF spokesman has insisted that the militants' homes are essentially "Hamas's command centers" – as they did in 2021, when Israeli forces bombed the homes of several Hamas members and destroyed some buildings in Gaza. But soldiers interviewed by Breaking the Silence explained that these were ordinary homes, not centers of militant activity. By distorting the rationale for target selection, Israel has bulldozed an entire building in order to destroy an apartment, putting many civilians unrelated to the fighting at risk.
This unwise approach is further exacerbated by errors in intelligence. Israeli intelligence turned out to be far from reliable. In between military operations, Israeli intelligence agencies conduct research in the Gaza Strip to assess whether a site can be designated as an enemy target. Once a potential target has been identified, they conduct an "collateral damage assessment" to determine the number of civilians likely to result from the attack based on the density of civilians in the target area, the type of use and the nature of the target building. These assessments provide the IDF** with the basis for a proportionality assessment in a conflict to determine whether the value of a military objective is proportional to the expected civilian damage.
Israel has waged a brutal campaign in Gaza, with only a cursory observance of the protocols that its armed forces are expected to follow.One of the major problems with this approach is that Israeli officers often have extremely limited information in their hands. For example, in cases where it is not clear what type or quantity of ammunition is stored in a particular location, the IDF may directly identify it as a storage location. In fact, there is a world of difference in military value between 50 grenades and 50 rockets capable of striking Israeli cities. With such limited information, it becomes impossible to determine the military value of the target, and the Israeli army is unable to carry out a credible assessment of proportionality.
In addition, intelligence can quickly become outdated, and Israeli officers update it infrequently. The use of a particular building may change, and its surroundings may change as well, such as the reuse of a new school or public facility nearby. Especially during large-scale conflicts, or wars such as the present one, Israel has issued evacuation warnings to entire neighbourhoods, dramatically altering the population density and daily life in these and other neighbourhoods. In this case, the previous estimate of collateral damage becomes extremely suspicious and cannot be used to assess proportionality.
In 2019, the lack of conclusive intelligence led to the deaths of nine members of the Al-Sawarkah family in Deir Baileh in central Gaza. IDF intelligence officers believe that the complex in which the family lives is a military installation of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Haaretz reported that "the building where the family lived was on the list of potential targets," but the Israeli Ministry of Defense confirmed to Haaretz that it had not been inspected or inspected prior to the attack in the past year. An intelligence ** explained to Haaretz that "in most cases, no significant intelligence activities will be carried out against targets that have already been identified, since the creation of new targets is considered more important." "It's difficult to determine the total number of civilian incidents due to practices that rely on outdated intelligence, but there's no doubt that the pressure to approve attacks today has led to many incidents like the killing of the Sovaca family.
Even when intelligence is reliable, Israeli airstrikes have not been carried out in a process that prioritizes the safety of civilians. In previous military operations, the IDF authorized junior officers to authorize air strikes that could cause significant collateral damage to civilians because of the need to accelerate the pace of additional air strikes. As a result, the priority of avoiding civilians** is reduced. The new AI system is able to identify new potential targets, which speeds up the frequency of attacks. A system designed to generate targets in bulk will inevitably sacrifice accuracy and increase civilian harm, as evidenced by the high death toll in Gaza in recent months.
In the past, Israel has indeed tried to take some measures to reduce civilians**, such as using the "knock on the roof" tactic – firing small missiles at buildings to warn residents of an imminent and more intense attack. Obviously, if the intended target is located inside the building, the IDF will not use this warning method and will consider the expected civilian death as acceptable collateral damage. The knock on the roof method is only used when the building itself is the target, and does not treat the people inside the building as acceptable collateral damage.
But even if the roof knocking tactic is employed, it will still end up with civilians**. Israel** often does not know exactly how many inhabitants are in a particular building, and is not always willing to verify. One soldier explained that although Israel has the technology to confirm the exact location of residents by tracking **, doing so requires a lot of time and resources and slows down the airstrikes. As a result, even if an air raid warning is issued, many people may not be able to leave the building in time because they are sick or elderly. Sometimes, people mistake the warning missile for an actual attack, or think it's a nearby ** and don't leave.
In the current war, Israel has significantly reduced the number of times it uses roof knocking, claiming that it cannot continue to issue such warnings because of time constraints. Reduced knocking on the roof operation is indicatedThe IDF is now less concerned with how to avoid civilians than in the past**.
In the past, Israel has been unable to distinguish civilians from militants in the Gaza Strip; And in today's war, its distinguishing actions seem to be further weakened. In fact, according to a December report by the New York TimesIn the current conflict, Israel has broadened its definition of "worthy targets" and appears willing to increase the harm it inflicts on civilians. This echoes a recent report by CNN that in the first month of the war, Israel dropped hundreds of bombs weighing up to 2,000 pounds, which were capable of killing or injuring people within 1,000 feet of the point, and that nearly half of the munitions Israel dropped in Gaza were "duds" with low accuracy. The fighting conducted in this way has led to the belief that Israel's actions in Gaza are not just pursuing military objectives, but also value retaliation.
The innocent sacrifice of civilians in the Gaza Strip has become an indisputable fact, and more cases will be revealed after the war, demonstrating Israel's indifference to the deaths of innocent civilians. The United States has an opportunity to use its political and military support for Israel to push the Israeli army to abide by international law in the fighting and to do its best to reduce the number of civilians**.
There is no quick fix to these Israeli wrongdoings, because they stem from the same fundamental problem: Israel regards "managing the conflict" as an absolute priority, delaying any real solution, and both Palestinian and Israeli civilians are being harmed by such a policy. It is this attitude that has fueled the ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip over the past 15 years and has allowed Israel** to continue the war in the absence of clear, viable objectives.
The real and only way out lies in acknowledging each other's humanity and finding a path for both peoples that does not depend solely on military force. The first step is to end the war immediately. Hamas must release the hostages, and Israel must provide humanitarian assistance to the people of the Gaza Strip. Only then will this catastrophe be an opportunity for change.
About the author: Avner Gvaryahu is the executive director of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli non-** organization founded by IDF veterans.Article source: Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine with far-reaching influence in the field of international relations, published by the Council on Foreign Relations. Founded in 1922, the journal aims to provide in-depth analysis and discussion of global political, economic and social issues. Known for its serious scholarship and high-quality articles, it covers all aspects of international relations, including foreign policy, global security, economic development, environmental issues, and global governance. It is not only an important reading for scholars and policymakers, but also attracts a wide range of public readers. It regularly invites politicians, academics, experts, and journalists from around the world to write articles, providing readers with in-depth analysis and insights from different perspectives. Due to the professionalism and influence of its content, Foreign Affairs enjoys an excellent reputation in the field of international politics and diplomacy.
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