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Is It "OK to Drop a One-Ton Bomb in the Middle of a Neighborhood" if You're at War?
(Washington Post) David Bernstein - Mary McGowan Davis, who headed the UN commission that investigated last summer's Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, told Ha'aretz: "It is not OK to drop a one-ton bomb in the middle of a neighborhood." Yet if the rule was "you may never bomb in a residential neighborhood if civilian casualties may result, regardless of the value of the military target," it's pretty obvious what would happen - enemy forces would simply plant themselves in residential neighborhoods, knowing they would be immune from attack. So, for example, Hamas could launch all the missiles it wanted at Israel from the middle of Gaza City, and use apartment buildings, schools, etc. as staging grounds and headquarters, and Israel would be helpless to respond. Surely it can't be the rule that if you're at war and there are high-value military targets in a civilian neighborhood, you are absolutely forbidden from using "explosive weapons" against them. (And it's not like the alternative, sending in ground forces to fight house-to-house, is likely to result in fewer overall civilian casualties than precision bombing campaigns.) Has any country actually adopted such a policy? Would the public of any country stand for its leaders adopting such a policy, exposing the country's own population to attack while their own military stands down? The writer is a professor at the George Mason University School of Law.