The Gaza Strip’s humanitarian conditions worsened as a result of the military escalation with Israel. The poor living conditions Palestinians in the Strip had suffered from before the aggression plummeted after Israeli shelling targeted the infrastructure and civilians.
Israeli hostilities in the Gaza Strip violate the two branches of the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) namely, the Fourth Geneva Convention which affords protection to civilians who are not actively involved in hostilities and The Hague Conventions which regulate the conduct of hostilities and establish limitations or prohibitions of specific means and methods of warfare that amount to war crimes. Against this, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) prosecutor issued a formal statement regarding the ICC’S examination of the humanitarian situation after the recent escalation, pointing out that the growing violence in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip is likely to give rise to violations and war crimes under the Rome Statute. It is worth considering that the ICC’s investigations on the 2014 Israeli War on Gaza are still ongoing.
The humanitarian conditions in Gaza after the Israeli bombings
In an interview with the Egyptian Center for Strategic Studies (ECSS), Anastasia Isyuk, head of communications at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Israel and the Occupied Territories, noted that the ICRC is so concerned about the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip arising from the recent military escalation, considered the deadliest in years and that has had dramatic impact on civilians, rendering scores dead or injured.
Isyuk indicated that the recent conflict harked back to the tragic previous conflicts, a situation that is likely to degrade the mental health of Gaza population, noting that the ICRC had called on all actors on the ground to stop escalation and respect the IHL, enabling the ICRC to continue to fulfill its missions, making it to the population, meeting their needs, providing the necessary support, and supporting and facilitating humanitarian actions.
Turning to resources and infrastructure, Isyuk explained that Gaza Strip population face obstacles to access to hospitals whose infrastructure and access routes suffered extensive damage. This was made evident in the barriers to getting the injured to hospitals and the evacuation of civilians while hospitals are facing difficulties and pressures responding to the coronavirus pandemic, besides the vital infrastructure, e.g. roads and buildings, being destroyed and the humanitarian infrastructure devastated.
The ICRC’s priority, said Isyuk, is to support the medical sector and its infrastructure by supplying hospitals with all the necessary needs, covering fuel shortages and supporting the fuel sector, and creating an established mechanism to coordinate ICRC’s movements and ensure employing services and reaching civilians.
In the same vein, several international bodies have issued statements and reports on Israel’s practices in the Gaza Strip that contributed to the deterioration of the humanitarian situation, as follows:
- Targeting civilians: Reports of the Palestinian Ministry of Health indicate that until the ceasefire was declared the UNICEF reported that 248 people in the Gaza Strip were killed, including 66 children and 39 women. Some 1950 Gazans were injured, including 444 children. In the West Bank, 27 Palestinians were killed and 6,300 injured.
2- Bombing residential buildings: The Israeli forces bombed numerous residential and commercial towers and apartments in the Gaza Strip, including the Hanadi, Al-Jawhara, and Al-Gondi Al-Maghoul towers, as well as Al-Shorouk and Taiba buildings, giving residents an hour notice to evacuate. The building that houses the Associated Press and Al Jazeera offices was bombed. As reported by the Ministry of Housing, Israel continued the attacks until the last moment before the ceasefire came into effect, causing damage to a total of 16,800 residential unit in the Gaza Strip, of which 1,800 were left uninhabitable and 1,000 completely destroyed, besides the destruction of 53 educational institutions, affecting more than 600,000 children in Gaza.
3- Shelling humanitarian facilities: On 18 May, Israel bombed the Qatar Red Crescent Gaza office. This came as part of a series of the Israeli attacks on humanitarian sites, including 18 hospitals and care centers, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that 800,000 persons had no access to water due to the damage done to water networks.
4- Forced displacement: CARE International underscored that the violence practiced through threats and forced displacement of the Sheikh Jarrah population has increased significantly over the course of the escalation. The displacement practices, destruction of houses, and confiscating Palestinians’ property left over 970 Palestinians (420 of whom are children) at risk of being displaced or evicted.
5- Increase of the displaced population: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reported that, since the outbreak of the conflict, more than 77,000 Palestinians have been forced to flee their homes, taking refuge in schools and mosques for fear of falling under the Israeli bombardment. However, this number had fallen after the ceasefire agreement, reaching roughly 35,000.
Israel’s breaches of IHL
The aggression carried out by Israel since the outbreak of the recent conflict are a clear violation of the IHL. These violations took the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip from bad to worse. And how typical of Israel, it hadn’t taken into account any legal or humanitarian obligations, particularly with the ICC declaring resumption of investigations respecting war crimes carried out in the 2014 Gaza War which provoked heavy backlash from Israel that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, described the step as a “pure anti-Semitism” and an insult to the democratic systems, confirming that Israel is not a member of the ICC; hence the ICC doesn’t have the territorial jurisdiction to investigate the matter. The ICC, however, declared that the court’s jurisdiction extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Israel hopes that Karim khan, who will assume the position of ICC prosecutor by June 2021 succeeding the current prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, will be less hostile towards it or may even close out the current investigation on the 2014 Gaza War crimes.
In this respect, the legal violations committed by Israel can be clarified as follows:
- Violation the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 relative to the Protection of Civilians in time of war. Deportations effected by Israel replacing residents of East Jerusalem with Israeli settlers are a blatant violation of Article 49 of the Convention stipulating, “Individual or mass forcible transfers from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”
- Targeting civilians is another violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Israeli bombardment of civilian sites in the Gaza Strip failed to take into account the three ground rules of the IHL that regulate the way in which a party to an armed conflict may carry out military operations. These rules are:
1- Distinction: The rule of distinction states that “parties to a conflict are obliged to conduct military operations exclusively against Military objectives and must therefore always distinguish between Civilians and Combatants as well as between Civilian objects and Military objectives” and that “attacks shall be restricted to military objectives. In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.” Accordingly, Israel’s targeting of civilians and residential buildings without distinction is a clear violation of the IHL.
2- Proportionality: This rule stipulates that, “Launching an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, is prohibited.” Looking at the number of casualties on both sides, it appears that the Palestinian victims of civilians and children substantially exceed the Israeli victims. Israel practices in the Gaza Strip seems more of a form of mass punishment. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor stated that Israel’s escalation of violence and widespread bombardment has no respect for the principle of proportionality.
3- Precaution: This principle sets forth that, “In the conduct of military operations, constant care must be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians, and civilian objects. Each party to the conflict must do everything feasible to cancel or suspend an attack if it becomes apparent that the target is not a military objective or that the attack may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” The ICRC defines a combatant as someone who has a continuous combat function or has been engaged in the fight at the time of attack. Given this widely accepted definition, even if any of the targeted buildings was over-crowded with members of Hamas, legal experts don’t consider it a legitimate military target as long as those members haven’t been involved in the fight. If part of a building serves for military operations, then the Israeli forces shall find attack ways that minimize loss of civilians and avoid damaging their property.
• Israeli military attacks on the infrastructure, the headquarters of the Qatar Red Crescent, and health facilities are another breach of IHL rules, i.e. humanitarian relief personnel rule. The IHL obliges Israel to ensure civilians are provided supplies, support, and medical aid. Israel’s closure of the Karim Abu-Salem crossing to UNICEF relief convoys is a violation of this rule. In addition, there has been an increase in casualties among women and children who, according to the IHL, are included within categories with specific needs in times of conflict. According to the UNICEF, Palestinian children’s mental health is sharply deteriorating.
• Tied to the aforementioned point is the other consequence of targeting the infrastructure represented in failure of the affected state to assume its responsibility to protect. The principle of Responsibility to Protect stipulates that, “a state has a responsibility to protect its citizens from mass atrocities; the international community has a responsibility to assist the state if it is unable to protect its population on its own. If the state fails to protect its citizens from mass atrocities, the international community has the responsibility intervene through coercive measure.” The United States endorsement of a weapons sale deal worth $753 million to Israel and its holding of the Security Council meeting scheduled on May 14 is quite revealing of its intention not to engage with the international community to provide support.
Politics of humanity
Although the Biden administration lifted the sanctions and Visa restrictions imposed last year by former US President Donald Trump on the ICC Prosecutor and another ICC official, after the ICC opened an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by U.S. military soldiers in Afghanistan, the United States continued to oppose this investigation as well as the investigation respecting the Israeli war crimes in Palestine. It is worth mentioning that the United States is still not a member of the ICC.
If this is any indicator, it suggests that assessment of war crimes is usually subject to principles of international politics and power balances. The same is true of human rights politics. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been critical of the United States non-compliance with the International Bill of Human Rights, establishing its own concept of human rights different from those included in the UN international conventions and treaties.
In this sense, the judicial and legal investigations of war crimes and the violations against civilians in time of war are subject to international policy standards as has been evidenced by the movements of the US administration, which shows signs of US foreign policy blunder.
That said, the judicial history wasn’t completely free of international trials and condemnations of war crimes. Since the Second World War, a series of trials found their way to international bodies, most notably Nuremberg Trials on the Holocaust, Postwar Trial of Japanese General, Tokyo War Crimes Trials, International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (1993-2017), Tribunal for Genocide in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Guatemala, Ivory Coast, and Kosovo. The customary international humanitarian law obliges countries to investigate war crimes and prosecute the perpetrators.
In conclusion, the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is indicative of the many IHL violations Israel has committed against civilians, blocking any support for the Palestinians. As the humanitarian file faces a political crisis between the global powers and their interests, Egypt backed the Palestinians, fulfilling its humanitarian role, by sending medical convoys, opening the Rafah crossing, and allocating $500 million for the rebuilding of Gaza.
