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The War over the Gaza War

(The Hill) Gregory J. Wallance - Israel and human rights groups are still fighting over whether the Israeli army committed war crimes in this summer's Gaza War, just as they have after every major Palestinian-Israeli clash. What makes the current fight unusual is that Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has sided with Israel, telling the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs earlier this month: "I actually do think that Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties." The essential inquiry is whether Israel used proportionate force, that is, pursued military objectives while making reasonable efforts to minimize civilian casualties. Dempsey explained that in the Gaza battlefield, underground tunneling had turned Hamas into "nearly a subterranean society" directly beneath the civilian population. He cited the tactics used by Israel to minimize civilian casualties, including leaflets and "roof knocking" by small rockets with low-yield explosives on buildings to warn civilians sufficiently in advance of a coming strike to evacuate. He noted that the Joint Chiefs were sufficiently impressed that they sent an American military observer team to Israel to "get the lessons from that particular operation in Gaza." In September, Human Rights Watch issued a report accusing Israel of war crimes in connection with civilian casualties. Amnesty International recently issued a report accusing Israel of displaying "callous indifference" to civilian lives in the Gaza conflict. Israel is being found guilty of war crimes not based on a measured military assessment of whether proportionate force was used, but simply because the battlefield dynamics of the Gaza War made civilian casualties inevitable despite tactics designed to minimize them.
2014-11-28 00:00:00
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