Breadcrumb
Israel distorts international law to justify its executions in Gaza
On Tuesday, 9 May, the Israeli militaryâs official Twitter account published (and ) a short animation, depicting missiles being fired towards locations in the Gaza Strip.
The short clip shows the missiles bearing down on their destination, as the twinkling lights of Palestinian homes get ever closer, before smashing into a family home.
The clip did not show the destruction wreaked by the state-of-the-art weaponry â but shortly before the âillustrativeâ animation was tweeted, 12 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli airstrikes. A 13th, 17-year-old Iman, died of her wounds later that day. Since then, more than ten more Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes.
Aimed at family homes, the airstrikes took place at around two oâclock in the morning, when people would most likely be at home, and children sleeping.
"The story of Israelâs 'targeted killings', then, is another chapter in a story of Israeli 'innovations' in understandings of international law...Ìę(mis)interpretations intended to undermine the very basis of such law to weaken the protections afforded to people under occupation"
The attacks were ordered and carried out in order to assassinate three members of Islamic Jihadâs Al-Quds Brigades â this was, in other words, yet another bloody expression of an Israeli state policy of so-called âtargeted killingâ, or as Amnesty International has put it,.
Israelâs targeted killing policy is often traced back to the first such incident in the Second Intifada, on 9 November 2000, when six weeks into the uprising, an Israeli helicopter fired missiles at a vehicle carrying Fatah activist Hussein âAbayat, killing him and two women nearby.
According to a count by BâTselem, by 31 August 2007, 367 Palestinians had been killed as a result of Israelâs policy of targeted killing (only 218 of whom were the targeted individuals).
In July 2002, a particularly disturbing extrajudicial execution took place when the Israeli Air Force dropped a one-ton bomb from an F16 fighter jet on the home of Al-Qassam Brigadesâ Salah Shehadeh. Shehadeh was killed, along with, including nine children.
Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of pushing his problems onto Gaza, amid a deadly escalation that has so far killed more than 20 Palestinians.
â °źÂț”ș (@The_NewArab)
đ„:
â:
In the aftermath of the bombing, then-Air Force commander Dan Halutz (who went on to become the armed forcesâ Chief of Staff), refused to countenance any criticism, and even that the few Israelis who denounced the attack as a war crime should be tried for âtreasonâ.
In 2014, Israelâs targeting of family homes in the course of carrying out extrajudicial killings was a striking, and horrific, feature of its 50-day bombardment of the occupied and blockaded Gaza Strip.
According to the UN Commission of Inquiry, 142 Palestinian families âhad three or more members killed in the same incident owing to the destruction of residential buildingsâ. In a study by AP of 247 Israeli airstrikes on homes, children under 16 made up a third of the total fatalities (280 out of 508).
Israel justified these large-scale, deadly strikes on family homes through a âbroad of what constitutes a âmilitary objectiveâ that may be targeted.â On the eighth day of the summer 2014 offensive on the Gaza Strip, a senior Israeli officer the media: âYou call it a home, we call it a command centre and a military post for all intents and purposes.â
As BâTselem noted in its analysis of the policy, âno official claimed that there was any connection between a house that was targeted and any specific military activity there.â The âactual reasonâ, therefore, was âthe identity of the occupantsâ â strikes which effectively constituted âpunitive house demolitions â themselves prohibited â carried out from the air, with occupants still insideâ.
The story of Israelâs âtargeted killingsâ, then, is another chapter in a story of Israeli âinnovationsâ in understandings of international law, and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in particular â (mis)interpretations intended to undermine the very basis of such law to weaken the protections afforded to people under occupation.
In January 2009, shortly after the conclusion of âOperation Cast Leadâ â the first large-scale assault on the Gaza Strip after the 2005 redeployment â an appeared in Haaretz with unnamed officials inside the international law division (ILD) of the Military Advocate Generalâs Office.
It was the ILD, Haaretz reported, which âinducedâ the military to fire munitions at peopleâs homes as a form of warning (the âknock on the roofâ procedure) ahead of the building being destroyed. And according to senior figures in the unit, once a warning is used, civilians can be killed as âcombatants.â
Amid Israel's latest deadly assault on Gaza, read 's article from last year exploring how military attacks are carried out knowing that Palestinian civilians will be killed:
â °źÂț”ș (@The_NewArab)
âThe people who go into a house despite a warning do not have to be taken into account in terms of injury to civilians, because they are voluntary human shields,â said one interviewee. âFrom the legal point of view, I do not have to show consideration for them.â
It is Orwellian concepts like âvoluntary human shieldsâ which mean that the Israeli military can publicly tout a policy as intended to minimise civilian casualties when, in fact, that same policy strips Palestinian civilians of their protected status under international law.
Since the start of the Second Intifada, Israel has repeatedly pursued âunprecedentedâ measures and policies that then become the new starting point for what is considered exceptional or otherwise.
Extrajudicial killings, airstrikes on family homes, and stripping occupied civilians of their protected status are all violations of international law which international inaction or even support have served to normalise, the consequences of which have been seen, once again, this week in the Gaza Strip.
Ben White is a writer, analyst, and author of four books, including âCracks in the Wall: Beyond Apartheid in Palestine/Israelâ.
Follow him on Twitter:Ìę
Have questions or comments? Email us at:Ìęeditorial-english@newarab.com
Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of °źÂț”ș, its editorial board or staff.