As violence surges, experts warn of war crimes in Israel-Hamas conflict

As the conflict between Israel and the Hamas militant group intensifies, experts and rights group accuse both sides of committing war crimes.

The confrontation, the deadliest in 50 years, began last week after the Hamas, which has governed the Palestinian territory of Gaza since 2007, launched an unprecedented multifront attack across its border with Israel, killing 1,300 people and taking some 150 hostage.

“Shooting civilians en masse, taking hostages, including women and children — undeniably grave abuses of international law, for which there’s no justification,” Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director of Human Rights Watch, told the Associated Press.

But Israel’s retaliation, in which it carried out thousands of air strikes, killing more than 2,000 people in six days, and besieging the Gaza Strip, also violates several international laws, including specifically the 1949 Geneva Conventions and additional protocols.

“Civilians are at grave risk between hostilities between Palestinian armed groups and Israel government forces,” Meenakshi Ganguly, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, told HT on Saturday.

“The suffering need solace, sympathy and support but rights violations under humanitarian law should not be condoned under any circumstances,” Ganguly said.

In international relations, the rules of war — a combination of international treaties, humanitarian law and common practices — explicitly prohibit causing harm to civilians and non-combatants.

The Geneva Conventions also prohibits attacks on installations and civilian infrastructure “whose attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population”.

These laws came into focus after the Palestinian Red Crescent Society was given a deadline by Israel on Saturday to evacuate its Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City. The association said it cannot evacuate the hospital and will continue providing humanitarian aid.

Israel has said it is directing it its attacks against the Hamas and its military sites, but civilian infrastructure, including at least 19 medical centres, 22,600 residential units and 90 education facilities have been destroyed.

Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), “intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population” or “civilian objects,” constitute a war crime.

While only the Geneva Conventions have been signed by all 193 members of the United Nations, the rules of other international humanitarian law treaties, that have not been so widely accepted, fall under customary law – i.e. a general practice accepted as law.

Collective punishment

Israel on Monday, two days after the Hamas attack, cut off electricity, food, water and fuel supplies to the territory of 2.3 million Palestinians and bombarded it with unprecedented air strikes. Authorities say at least 2,200 people have been killed, including over 700 children, and nearly 10,000 wounded.

An independent group of UN experts on Thursday decried this as collective punishment.

“They have lived under unlawful blockade for 16 years, and already gone through five major brutal wars, which remain unaccounted for,” the group, said in a statement.

“This amounts to collective punishment. There is no justification for violence that indiscriminately targets innocent civilians, whether by Hamas or Israeli forces. This is absolutely prohibited under international law and amounts to a war crime,” the group added.

President Isaac Herzog statements on Friday indeed confirmed that Israel views the Hamas attack as the responsibility of all Gazans.

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said at a press conference on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

On Friday, Israel ordered the 1.1 million of northern Gaza residents to move south within 24 hours that ended Saturday morning ahead of a possible ground offensive — a deadline the United Nations called “calamitous” and impossible to adhere to without “devastating humanitarian consequences”.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said the order to leave along with the siege “are not compatible with international humanitarian law.”

The Gaza Strip’s exits are blockaded by either Israel or Egypt.

White phosphorus

The Human Rights Watch also on Thursday accused Israel of using white phosphorus munitions in its operations in Gaza and Lebanon, saying it puts civilians “at risk of serious and long-term injury”. The Israeli military has denied the allegations, calling them “unequivocally false”. On Friday, Amnesty too said it was investigating the “use of white phosphorus in Gaza”.

White phosphorous is a toxic, chemical substance that burns at 800 degrees Celsius when it comes in contact with air. Protocol III of the Convention on the Prohibition of Use of Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), though Israel is not a signatory, prohibits its use against military targets among civilians because the substance causes serious burns and start fires.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi should become a leading voice in calling for an end to the horrific violations of humanitarian law that amounts to war crimes, call for vital humanitarian assistance to those besieged in Gaza, and point out that opposing the Hamas assault does not require putting lives of Palestinian civilians at risk,” Ganguly said.