Israel - Hamas War VII

[Varysblackfyre321]

16 minutes ago, Ran said:

Still early days, but I think it would be for the best if countries other than Israel were involved in administering Gaza afterwards, and hopefully managing to find partners who aren't jihadists and want peace.

This presumption of Israel being interested in doing anything but cleansing Gaza and repopulating it with its own people is bizarre to me.

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

This presumption of Israel being interested in doing anything but cleansing Gaza and repopulating it with its own people is bizarre to me.

No surprise there, I have to say.

[Relic]

5 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

But what would do if you determined said evil fuck needs to be killed or captured while using human shields? There really are no good answers. 

Such bullshit. 

[Craving Peaches]

8 minutes ago, Ran said:

No surprise there, I have to say.

Given the (leaked) proposed idea appears to be to have the Palestinians live in 'tent cities' in Sinai, followed by permanent cities there, why should people be surprised? 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/gaza-ap-palestinians-egypt-israeli-b2438627.html

Quote

The document proposes moving Gaza’s civilian population to tent cities in northern Sinai, then building permanent cities and an undefined humanitarian corridor. A security zone would be established inside Israel to block the displaced Palestinians from entering. 

Note how the options that didn't involve ethnic cleansing were not 'sufficient for the security of the state':

Quote

The document dismisses the two other options: reinstating the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority as the sovereign in Gaza, or supporting a local regime. Among other reasons, it rejects them as unable to deter attacks on Israel.

Now, the Israeli government said that this plan was 'hypothetical' and I hope it stays that way.

[Varysblackfyre321]

10 minutes ago, Ran said:

No surprise there, I have to say.

Understandable. I’m sorry I can’t watch their spokesmen, former PMs and UN reps grizzle in rage and disgust at the mention of post “Destroy Hamas=ISIS” when interviewed by Piers Morgen(whose historically been pretty sympathetic to Israel) see Netanyahu compare Palestinians to a people Jews genocide during in their holy books and read plans by a Netanyahu’s ally think tank on how to best get rid of all the Gazans.

I suspect any “talks” about a co-operative project for a a future peace with the people of Gaza are peformative.

They’re done so western liberals don’t feel so bad when they hear about another refugee camp getting bombed to get that 1 terrorist staying there.

[Mudguard]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

I'm definitely not going to enter any conversation on IDF strike decisions on the assumption that they're lying to the rest of the world about each strike. If the US starts saying they're full of shit and there's no evidence of tunnels or Hamas fighters in the area, fine, but the IDF has trained legal advisors who sign off on these these things as being appropriate within the laws of armed combat and I think it'd be insane that they're just randomly deciding to hit places when in fact they have a care and duty to do things that protect their troops during the conflict.

This was a very interesting comment, so I did some googling.  I found a post by a US Army JAG on the Westpoint website.  One section talked about human shielding:

Quote

Human Shields

Human shields pose a continuing challenge. Gaza is a densely populated urban environment with roughly 2 million inhabitants, and Hamas has a long history of employing human shields to deter attacks on civilian objects that have lost their protection. AP I, Article 57(7) forbids the use of human shields. By it, which the IDF finds to generally reflect customary law, Parties may not use “the presence [of civilians] to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular . . . to shield military objectives from attacks” and may not “direct the movement of the civilian population . . . in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks.” So, Hamas’s intentional use of human shields is clearly unlawful.

However, violations of this rule by Hamas do not relieve the IDF from the requirement to consider the presence of civilians when performing a proportionality analysis or determining what precautions are required in the attack. This raises the question whether the prohibition on human shielding has any teeth. In this regard, the law is complex, with many variations in approach in State practice and scholarly opinion. A majority view among scholars, and the view held by many States, including Israel, is that involuntary human shields (those forced by Hamas to remain in the vicinity of military objectives or taken there) retain their protection from attack and must be accounted for in the proportionality analysis. With respect to voluntary human shields, physically blocking or shielding a military objective amounts to direct participation in hostilities, and civilians who do this accordingly lose their protection. However, there is a debate in the international law community about voluntary shields who do not physically block or shield a military objective but instead use their mere presence to try to influence the attacking force not to attack. The ICRC takes the position that they retain their civilian protections under LOAC, while States, including Israel, see them as direct participants in hostilities.

In the context of Gaza, it is not easy to see how the IDF will be able to distinguish between involuntary and voluntary shielding. And how will civilians who do not evacuate to the south, as the Israelis have urged, be treated? Should they be treated as voluntarily shielding Hamas fighters or materiel, or simply as civilians who have chosen to remain in place? After all, civilians are not obligated under LOAC to evacuate. Might they have been forced to stay in place? Do they even know whether there are military objectives nearby? Might they simply lack the means to evacuate? This is a daunting list of possible permutations in civilian behavior. Given the IDF’s position on this matter, we may expect to see significant intelligence and surveillance resources dedicated to identifying and interpreting the behavior of civilians in the vicinity of Hamas positions – an extremely difficult task.

After reading the article, I now view the IDF press conferences in a different light.  I can see that they are making a bunch of conclusory claims to check off the boxes to justify the legality of their strikes.  

If Israel is treating all Palestinians that are remaining in the north as voluntary human shields, they can treat them as direct participants in hostilities under their law, and therefore are legal targets.  It explains why they keep repeating over and over that they told everyone to move south.  We warned them, so everyone that remains is a legal target. 

Nevermind the fact that under the LOAC, which Israel does not follow, civilians don't have an obligation to move, and nevermind the fact that Israel is also bombing the south, making it extremely difficult for people to make the decision to abandon their home and move south, especially when combined with the lack of electricity and communications which puts everyone in the dark about what is going on and what they should be doing.

I strongly disagree with that legal approach, especially with regards to the numerous numbers of children, but this could explain how they are legally justifying all their attacks.  The other justifications are pretty easy to manufacture.  Just claim that the target is Hamas, or that the structure is or could be used in a military way, and you are good to go.  Since Hamas uses all sorts of civilian structures, this pretty much makes everything in Gaza fair game.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Mudguard
ETA: added a link.

[Varysblackfyre321]

2 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Note how the options that didn't involve ethnic cleansing were not 'sufficient for the security of the state':

But have you considered western Liberal?

ISIS=Hamas. 
Hamas made Voldemort cry that’s how bad they are.

[Relic]

8 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

Nevermind the fact that under the LOAC, which Israel does not follow, civilians don't have an obligation to move, and nevermind the fact that Israel is also bombing the south,

In fact, some 40% of the murders Israel is committing are occurring south of the Wadi River. 

[Craving Peaches]

Apparently communications in Gaza have been cut again.

[Ran]

16 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

If Israel is treating all Palestinians that are remaining in the north as voluntary human shields

"If". Big word, lots of meaning.

From the ABC interview Lt. Col. Cornicus did earlier, Israel acknowledges that those who did not go south either chose not to or the decision was made for them (by Hamas), so they seem to recognize involuntary human shield status and all due protections.

But those protections run only so far according to military necessity.

 

16 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

Nevermind the fact that under the LOAC, which Israel does not follow,

I mean, they obviously do, as your own source notes:

Quote

First, the IDF’s MAG Corps is an exceptionally competent group of advisors on the law of armed conflict that is organized to ensure IDF commanders have access to high-caliber legal advice in real time.

...

Second, we concluded that Israeli positions on the law of targeting are well within the mainstream. Israel is not a party to the 1977 Additional Protocol I (AP I) to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which sets forth the key treaty-based targeting rules for parties to the instrument. But like the United States, Israel is of the view that most targeting rules contained therein reflect customary international law in international and non-international armed conflict, which does bind the IDF.

...

 This war began with atrocities, and it is too soon to predict how it will end, but I am confident that the IDF has mainstream legal positions and is equipped with first-rate legal advisors.

[Mudguard]

5 minutes ago, Relic said:

In fact, some 40% of the murders Israel is committing are occurring south of the Wadi River. 

It's just crazy.  Where are they supposed to go?  Leave your home and go south, get bombed.  Stay, get bombed.  If Israel really cared about protecting civilians, they would indicate an area that they would not bomb, but to the best of my knowledge, no such place exists in Gaza.

[Ran]

I don't know anything about murders, but bombing in the north has definitely been much more intense than in the south, but Israel did not say it would be "safe" in the south -- merely that it'd be safer. Which is true, it is in fact safer. They've since given more guidance to try and help people find safety in a place that Hamas has made very unsafe.

[Varysblackfyre321]

3 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

It's just crazy.  Where are they supposed to go?  Leave your home and go south, get bombed.  Stay, get bombed.  If Israel really cared about protecting civilians, they would indicate an area that they would not bomb, but to the best of my knowledge, no such place exists in Gaza.

Because then a  Hamas=ISIS may go there and they’d have to bomb it all anyway.

[Ran]

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

36 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Now, the Israeli government said that this plan was 'hypothetical' and I hope it stays that way.

Shlorger’s ethnic cleansing.

They’re not serious about it unless they feel they can get away with it.

[Relic]

Let's say you are on a bus. A bus crowded with people. I'm on the bus as well, and I want to kill you. I stab you, you pull out a gun and shoot me, but I'm hiding next to the bus driver, and you also shoot the bus driver. The bus crashes, and 30 percent of the people on the bus die. Who killed the people on the bus?

Edited November 1, 2023 by Relic

[Mudguard]

17 minutes ago, Ran said:

"If". Big word, lots of meaning.

From the ABC interview Lt. Col. Cornicus did earlier, Israel acknowledges that those who did not go south either chose not to or the decision was made for them (by Hamas), so they seem to recognize involuntary human shield status and all due protections.

But those protections run only so far according to military necessity.

 

I mean, they obviously do, as your own source notes:

To clarify, I was referring to the LOAC as defined by the Geneva conventions, which Israel is not a party to.  Of course they should be following their own Israeli version of the LOAC.  They follow most rules of the Geneva version, but there are key differences, which apparently includes the forced evacuation of the civilian population.

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

which Israel is not a party to. 

Israel absolutely is party to the 1949 Geneva Convention, and also to Protocol III. But it is not party to Protocols I and II, which deal with some of the relevant aspects of the conflict, which is something we got into way back in the first days of the conflict.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Ran

[Mudguard]

5 minutes ago, Ran said:

Israel absolutely is party to the 1949 Geneva Convention, and also to Protocol III. But it is not party to Protocols I and II, which deal with some of the relevant aspects of the conflict, which is something we got into way back in the first days of the conflict.

That's correct, but this focus on the exact name of the statute misses the practical point, which is that it is very easy to have legal justification for all the attacks, especially given the current situation in Israel.  There has been around 10000 strikes by now in about 3 weeks, and how big is the Israeli legal group that is reviewing all these strikes?  There can be no meaningful legal oversight of each operation given the pace at which strikes are being ordered.  At best, they can quickly review a request and make sure all the boxes are ticked off, and that's pretty much it.  I'd be curious to know how many, if any, requests have been denied.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Mudguard said:

which is that it is very easy to have legal justification for all the attacks, especially given the current situation in Israel. 

This is true for any military power even if they adhere to the LOAC precisely. The US is constantly questioned over pretty much anything it ever does.

There are no requirements for transparency, especially at the time of conflict, and you basically have to trust that they are adhering to the principles they have set out as being important or a matter of international law. I think for the most part, after reading and listening more about this from not just members of the IDF but scholars in the field of the laws of war, experts in urban combat, etc., that broadly speaking the IDF is in fact serious about its efforts to hit appropriate targets and to minimize collateral damage.

1 hour ago, Mudguard said:

I'd be curious to know how many, if any, requests have been denied.

Take it for what it's worth, but an IDF spokesperson who used to be an infantry commander in Gaza before the disengagement was discussing a lot of this  stuff with John Spencer (former US Army officer, now chair of Urban War Studies at the US Military Academy) on Spencer's podcast, and from his personal experience it was extremely rare for the advice of the legal corps to be disregarded (but it did happen, with the authorizing commander taking full responsibility), and it was much more common to see a strike scrubbed and a reassessment made or the munitions being used getting adjusted to try and narrow and better target the lethality.

"Of course an IDF officer will say that," but I don't know, it seems to me like to sustain the idea that it's all bad faith requires believing in a vast conspiracy of silence in the military. But this is the same military whose pilot corps were about ready to go on strike to protest Netanyahu's attack on the judiciary, so I don't think it very likely at all that the IDF only pays lip service to the laws of armed combat, because otherwise I expect it would leak and the left-wing press in Israel would eat it up.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Ran