I’ve asked this question to an independent intelligence analyst who specialises in air strikes in the Near East. This is what he had to tell me.
Is the IDF killing Gazan civilians deliberately or is the high death toll a result of collateral damage?
You are basically, asking whether the IDF has committed war crimes and so far, we still need more data to make a proper assessment. The concept of collateral damage is very ethereal, especially in the context of the IDF given they have a rhetoric that says that if you are in Gaza and you don’t denounce Hamas, you are basically a potential target and this is not a black-and-white issue as the IDF tries to project. In theory, you can for example target a hospital or a medical facility if such facilities are being used for military means, and in Gaza you have the major issue that it is a highly dense urban area.
In Ukraine, similar issues arose, where Russia justified its bombing of hospitals by claiming they were being used by the Ukrainian military. Amnesty International condemned the Ukrainian military for fighting in civilian areas, accusing them of endangering nearby civilians in the process. In reality, Russia never had any restraint to target civilian facilities irrespective of whether there was any military nearby.
However, it is very difficult not to have soldiers using civilian hospitals in an urban war. The current rules of engagement have been written when most warfare was conducted on open battlegrounds away from civilians. Surely, we need more data to make a proper assessment however we are documenting the process.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
Leave a Reply