JERUSALEM (AP) — The head of surgery at Gaza’s largest and most advanced hospital held up his phone Saturday to the hammering of gunfire and artillery shelling. “Listen,” said Dr. Marwan Abu Sada as fighting raged around Shifa Hospital.
Given most people aren’t reading the article, the particularly relevant points:
International humanitarian law lends hospitals special protections during war. But hospitals can lose their protections if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. […]
In an editorial published Friday in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan issued a warning to combatants that the burden of proof is on them if they claim hospitals, schools or houses of worship have lost their protected status because they are being used for military purposes. And the bar for evidence is very high.
“If there is a doubt that a civilian object has lost its protective status, the attacker must assume that it is protected,” Khan wrote. “The burden of demonstrating that this protective status is lost rests with those who fire the gun, the missile, or the rocket in question.”
TL;DR: If Hamas is conducting military operations from hospitals, they can be legitimate targets in the eyes of international law, but precautions still need to be taken to avoid civilian casualties and the case for their military use should be overwhelming, not amorphous or tenuous.
That’s up to them to figure out how to do it with the least amount of civilian casualty then. Moot point anyway considering nothing has come out with overwhelming proof of Hamas using the hospital as cover.
Estimates of the total number of deaths in the Syrian Civil War, by opposition activist groups, vary between 503,064 and about 613,407 as of March 2023
Most civilians aren’t but they’ve found out in 3 weeks time that they live all live in pretend democracies and not real ones. Mask off we’re the Russia now.
Ever seen an oil tanker turn? That is the the way the world works with Israel slowly and not quick to judge. The rest of us though have had enough, fuck Israel and no funding of them whatsoever.
Because if you don’t support genocide you are an antisemite, and only one of those can destroy your political aspirations (hint, it isn’t supporting genocide).
From the ISW report today: Israeli forces fought Palestinian militia fighters near the Square of the Unknown Soldier less than half a kilometer from the al Shifa Hospital complex.[1] A Palestinian journalist reported that the al Qassem Brigades—the military wing of Hamas—ambushed Israeli forces south of the Square of the Unknown Soldier on Shuhada Street.[2] Other Palestinian militia fighters fought Israeli forces on Omar Mukhtar Street, which bounds the square.[3]
If you build your defense in urban environment you are supposed to evacuate the civilians. This is standard for any half competent army.
It’s no accident Hamas keeps their HQ’s and ammunition depots near civilian population aswell as regularly shoots rockets from near mosks and hospitals. They know Israel is atleast trying to minimize civilian casualties so they’re probably not going to just level that building without a warning as they would if it was located in the desert.
If Hamas had the military capabilities that Israel does and Israel would put their military HQ in the basement of Israeli hospital hoping to use their own population as human shields Hamas could not care less. They would level that building in a heartbeat and collateral damage would just be a bonus.
Israel has the capability to level both Gaza and West bank in a week and kill every single person in there. They haven’t. What would Hamas do if they had this capability?
You seem to have a different understanding of capability than I do. They could do it, so they have the capability, but that says nothing about the consequences.
Israel killed at least 122 of the 1200 themselves. Most likely more
350 of the israelis killed were IDF
This mean the civilian casualty rate was around 70%. On Oct 7.
Hamas has a far better civilian casualty rate than America which goes around 80-90 while committing their supposed genocide attack. This is not an accident you can realize by blind firing into civilian areas.
Purely from these numbers we can conclude in ACTIONS not words that Hamas takes decent care to avoid civilian deaths even when attacking. Far better than israel which just bombs everything that moves.
Israel does a good job of making the world forget their actions.
According to testimonies, in several cases Israeli forces also forced unarmed Palestinian civilian males (mostly adults but in two cases also children) to serve as “human shields”, including making them walk in front of armed soldiers; go into buildings to check for booby traps or gunmen; and inspect suspicious objects for explosives. These practices are not new. Numerous such cases have been documented in recent years and the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that such practices contradict International law and prohibited them in October 2005.73
Because the Palestinian elected government which happens to be a globally recognized terrorist organization decided to build headquarters below hospitals in hope of exploiting the rule of war you mention.
Except: doing what they did negates that rule, and all they did was put that entire hospital of their own people in the crosshairs.
This blood is 100% on the hands of the Palestinian elected government.
A significant portion of the Palestinian population in the Gaza strip were not even born when this ‘goverment’ was elected. They came to power over a decade ago and grabbed it by force so it is more or less a forced millitary leadership at this point
Hey look, another person that would have shit on Nelson Mandela and the AFC in the 80’s for necklacing and being terrorists and not accepting the legitimacy of apartheid south Africa.
Because someone decided it was such a funny idea to use these places to launch missiles at their enemies.
Fucking godawful people Hamas are, ruining the lives of 2 million people and assuring untold suffering for probably generations. The sooner those fucks are gone, the better.
What a terrible headline. If APNews thinks it’s a war crime, it has a duty to say so. You can’t just write a headline like this without drawing the obvious inference.
Well it’s kind of open to interpretation, which may be why they didn’t want to directly say that, just imply it.
Article 19 of the Geneva convention:
The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit, and after such warning has remained unheeded.
Now are firing qassam rockets “harmful to the enemy”? Probably.
Has due warning been given? Maybe? It’s not well defined what that means. Does roof knocking count? Do you need to submit a form to their embassy?
I think the big problem is that the kind of warfare we are seeing here is unlike what they saw when they wrote those laws.
Just to be clear, you are telling me to go fuck myself because I’m pointing out how shitty Hamas is? I’m not defending Israel. You are really taking the mask off there buddy. I would tell you to go fuck yourself, but I have a feeling you already do that anyway
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