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The Americans Want Israel to Avoid Evacuating Palestinians from Combat Areas, But This Will Put More Civilians in Harm's Way

(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser - Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence, spoke to the Jerusalem Center on Nov. 29, 2023, about the intelligence challenges surrounding the war in Gaza. Q: There have been complaints that Israel's attacks in northern Gaza weren't precise enough and that there was extensive collateral damage. As Israel begins to operate in southern Gaza, to what extent will Israel be able to better target just the terrorist infrastructure and to make our attacks more precise? Kuperwasser: It's not going to be easy. We are under pressure from the Americans to not evacuate people from civilian areas that are used by Hamas in order to shield them from our attacks. If we are not going to evacuate them, we will have to shoot at Hamas operating in those areas that we are going to confront. Then I'm not sure we can minimize the number of people who are hurt as collateral damage. The Americans, on the one hand, want us to avoid the use of evacuation, but, on the other hand, this will actually expose more civilians to harm's way. It's a strange situation. We shall have to finish the job. We will have to resume the military operations. When we finish taking over the northern part of Gaza, we shall have to move to the south. And Hamas is going to again use the people of the south as human shields. And when we fight them, I'm not sure that we can really avoid collateral damage. The Americans live in some sort of wishful world where we can hit every Hamas operative with pinpoint weapons. Whenever we can do that, we do that. Of course we make a big effort to avoid collateral damage. And the IDF has gotten very high marks compared with other militaries around the world for everything we do in order to avoid collateral damage. But the best way for us to avoid collateral damage was to tell the people in Gaza City to move south. About a million did that and they saved their lives. Hamas has managed to create an atmosphere in which the Americans are worried about a humanitarian disaster and that's why they ask us to fight with one hand tied behind our back. Not that we can't win the war this way as well, we can, but it's just going to prolong the war, make it more difficult, and not necessarily lessen the number of civilian casualties, maybe to the contrary. If they leave Khan Yunis when we operate in Khan Yunis, if they leave Rafah when we operate in Rafah, they are going to be safer. The question is, to what extent can we find places that are safe for them inside the southern part of Gaza. I don't think that's such a big problem. The southern part of Gaza, unlike the northern part, is much less populated and there are empty areas that can be turned into locations where the evacuees can stay until we finish the job.
2023-12-01 00:00:00
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