A Legal Analysis of the Attacks on Civilians and Infliction of Collateral Damage in

[alexbmn]

....The Middle East Conflict. A long and a rather technical article but it dispells all the anti Israeli BS. In PDF format.

http://fed-soc.org/Laws%20of%20war/c...20cvr%20pg.pdf

[freethepeeps]

Ah, a "Right Wing" Association that says in paragraph 2:

Although the death of innocents is always to [be regretted, the law makes a clear distinction between attacks that deliberately target
civilians (which are emphatically illegal) and civilian casualties that result from
otherwise lawful attacks on proper military targets.

Their purpose was to condemn Palestinian actions, whilst legitimising Israeli ones. There was no attempt to even investigate the widespread claims that forces deliberately target children and use unnecesary, lethal force to respond to non-life threatening incidents.

This document is a complete waste of time if you want any kind of balanced view on the situation.

Particulalry obnoxious was this assertion:

Moreover, it also is important to note that, once a civilian object is occupied by combatants, or otherwise converted to some military use, it loses its civilian character and
protected status, and becomes a lawful military target, which may be attacked and
destroyed.

based on this note:

As noted in the ICRC Commentary to Protocol I: “it is clear that if fighting between
armed forces takes place in a town which is defended house by house, these buildings . . .
will inevitably become military objectives because they offer a definite contribution to
the military action.” ICRC Commentary on Protocol I, supra note 19, at 621.

Which obviously they interpret as, all we have to do is attack a town, get a response and hey presto everyone in it is a military target.

Of course, they don't apply this same claim to settlements, many of which have a military purpose.

[alexbmn]

if IDF would target Pal's kids there wouldnt be any left.

[IsraelAdvocate]

Originally posted by freethepeeps
. There was no attempt to even investigate the widespread claims that forces deliberately target children and use unnecesary, lethal force to respond to non-life threatening incidents.
.

Not true.

There was is an ongoing investigation by the UN and international community, particularly after Israel's incrusion into Jenin. The trouble is that those claims were not substantiatable, simply because they were not true. They were shown to be little more than Palestinian propoganda.

Seriously, Israel has F-16s, M-1s, F-14s, B-1s, etc..
Armed to the teeth with Military hardware. Do you really think they could not kill thousands upon thousands in a very short time if that was thier intention?


While we are on the subject of Military occupation, it is rather curious that your country has not yet removed British occupation forces from OCCUPIED NORTHERN IRELAND. Why don't you petition your own government to end it's military occupation, and behave in civilized fashion before you misguidedly advise others to do the same.

[freethepeeps]

Originally posted by IsraelAdvocate


Not true.

There was is an ongoing investigation by the UN and international community, particularly after Israel's incrusion into Jenin. The trouble is that those claims were not substantiatable, simply because they were not true. They were shown to be little more than Palestinian propoganda.

Seriously, Israel has F-16s, M-1s, F-14s, B-1s, etc..
Armed to the teeth with Military hardware. Do you really think they could not kill thousands upon thousands in a very short time if that was thier intention?


While we are on the subject of Military occupation, it is rather curious that your country has not yet removed British occupation forces from OCCUPIED NORTHERN IRELAND. Why don't you petition your own government to end it's military occupation, and behave in civilized fashion before you misguidedly advise others to do the same.

I meant that the report made no attempt to investigate the claims . It just accepted that the is "moral and ethical", and that civilians died "accidentally." Amnesty has recently given case studies that show this is not always the case. Many Internationals who have visited the WB and Gaza have similar testimony to offer.

I remember the Jenin investigation, thats the one Israel refused to participate in, isn't it? It's also the one they denied the investigating team access to Jenin for, isn't it? And the report merely said that not enough people died for if to be an "official" massacre. I remember Israel getting all cockahoop about the result, after obstructing the process.

Israel could indeed kill thousands, but the US would not be able to support that. The level of killing is just enough for everyone in the WB to understand that their lives are at risk every time they see a soldier.

Perhaps you can show me the reports on NI occupation which show how many kids and civilians get killed on a routine basis. I haven't seen it. Just remind me, whilst you're getting those reports, how many UN Resolutions is Britain in breach of? . And Britain, whilst being where I live, is not MY country. You of course have no idea about what my beefs with the British Government are, nor how active I am in my protests against Britain. Be sure of this - I am not a "Britain Advocate".

[Jorge]

Part I

The present thread appears to be of particular interest because of the ongoing debate about the subject which is taking place in the last weeks at various levels of israeli society.

In such a heated subject it is no easy to adopt a purely legal attitude, isolated from the ethical and humanitarian aspects of this violent conflict. However since the article presented by alexbmn in post #1, purports to be strictly legal one should try to restrict its criticism within the framework of legal arguments.

In my view the key arguments are summarized in the following paragraph of page 1:

In fact, the alleged equivalency between Israeli military strikes and Palestinian suicide attacks, is without foundation in international law — particularly in the laws and customs of war governing armed conflicts. Although the death of innocents is always to be regretted, the law makes a clear distinction between attacks that deliberately target civilians (which are emphatically illegal) and civilian casualties that result from
otherwise lawful attacks on proper military targets.
Such “collateral damage” has been accepted as an inevitable part of armed conflict for centuries, and violates the laws of war only if the number of civilian casualties is wholly disproportionate to the military advantage originally expected from the attack. Moreover, attacks directed by Israel against individual members of armed Palestinian groups constitute lawful acts of war and cannot in any manner be characterized as “extra-judicial” killings.

It is quite clear that the "equivalency" bet. israeli military attacks and palestinian suicide bombings does not hold because of the aspect of "intent". In the later case there is an obvious, declared intent to kill civilians and, according to the perpetrators, the more the better, so that there is no attempt to contain the damage but actually the opposite. The contention that Israel practices some sort of state terrorism against the palestinian population , may, at the most, be used as attenuating circumstances.

In cases of premeditated murders ( and suicide bombing attacks fit perfectly as that kind of murder), lawyers may invoke the socio-economic background of the perpetrator as attenuating circumstances. But these are directed towards getting a more lenient sentence and not towards the qualification of the murder.

As a parenthesis from the legal framework : In my opinion the claim of "equivalency" raised by supporters of the palestinian cause, has done more harm than good. It is absurd to claim that a cause is just and noble and at the same time to justify actions, which are neither just nor noble, like cold blooded murder, on the principle of being beneficial for the cause. These double standards have muddled considerably the legitimacy of the palestinian struggle and its supporters should take a clear and unequivocal stand against these murders.

The principle of "equivalency" has however been used as well by certain(fringe) elements on the israeli side. A number of killings of palestinian civilians has been carried out by israeli settlers in the territories. Extremist leaders have attempted to justify those killings using the said principle of equivalency. This is unacceptable because in so doing we lower ourselves to the same moral level of the assassins of the other side. The fact that law enforcement authorities have proved largely ineffectual in tracing the perpetrators and, in the rare cases brought to trial, extremely lenient, constitutes a blemish on our legal and moral standing.

[Jorge]

Part II

The second main argument of the article in question concerns the issue of "collateral damage"(see quote in post # ). Although the question of "equivalency" is in my view, unequivocal, the issue of collateral damage, as presented by the authors, is rather ambiguous.

"Collateral damage" that is civilian casualties that result from otherwise lawful attacks on proper military targets has been, as the authors say, accepted as inevitable. This inevitability does not mean however that they should be condoned without further analysis.

In a conflict such as the present one, it's not at all clear cut what constitutes or not a "proper military target". Who's to define what is a proper or improper target? The aggressor, the aggressed or some independent body as well acquainted with the fighting ground? To give just a few examples:does Arafat's residence in Ramallah, recently demolished, constitute a proper military target?. A few months ago most of the offices of the PLO together with barracks of palestinian police were bombed and erased. The three cases have in common the fact that they were chosen as an attempt to "teach a lesson" and not because their elimination gave a certain military advantage. What about a person that violates the curfew is he a military target and should be killed on the spot? The answer is yes or no depending which side you ask, so that only independent observers can decide. In the case of the UN commission for Jenin, Israel claimed that civilian observers were not qualified to asses the situation and would accept only military experts that were clearly neutral.
This demand was a reasonable one. (The problem being that if such experts were asked to examine the whole "collateral damage" of nearly 2000 killed in the present intifadah they would probably arrive to a conclusion not quite supportive of israeli claims)

Even more ambiguous is the issue of "proportionality" (more fully explained in page 8 of the artcle), that is the ratio between the number of civilian casualties and "the military advantages originally expected from the attack". This principle is questionable at least on two points: First, who's going to evaluate the advantages originally expected and how ?
Can you grade them in an scale of 1 to a 100 and, more important who's going to assign the marks? In a given attempt against a terrorist mastermind a number of civilians may be killed. In turn this may result in an adverse result in
diplomatic and public opinion terms, which should be taken into account when grading the advantages. Moreover it may result in an increased number of attacks as a retaliation for the killed leader. To evaluate, to ascribe a number of points to such an action considering the complexity of the situation is clearly not an objective valuation.

Against this complex question of military advantages we have to weight the number of acceptable civilian casualties. What is the value of one civilian life? Is it possible to measure it in dollars or rupees? Is it possible to measure it in terms "military advantages"? It is difficult to imagine a court of law that could give an answer to such questions.

Again as a parenthesis from the legal framework:
The sad part of the story of the present confrontation is that the "military advantages" achieved by israelis and palestinians have been equal to zero. The advantages "originally expected" may have been large but the advantages achieved are nil or negative. It is against this result that we should weigh the thousands of human beings killed and realize that this violent confrontation should be stopped right away.