Israel’s New Air War in the West Bank: Nearly Half of the Dead are Children
Around 9:30 p.m. in late February, a white Mazda pulled up near a game cafe in the Jenin refugee camp on the northern edge of the West Bank, where a crowd of boys and young men often gathered to socialize.
As the car stopped, a few people walked by on the narrow street. Two motorbikes weaved past in different directions. “Everything was fine at the time,” according to an eyewitness sitting nearby in the camp’s main square.
Then the car erupted in a ball of flame. Two missiles fired from an Israeli drone had hit the Mazda in quick succession, as shown in a video the Israeli Air Force posted that night.
According to the IAF, the strike killed Yasser Hanoun, described as “a wanted terrorist.”
But Hanoun was not the only fatality: 16-year old Said Raed Said Jaradat, who was near the vehicle when it was hit, sustained shrapnel wounds all over his body, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International-Palestine. He died from his injuries at 1 a.m. the next morning.
Jaradat is one of 24 children killed in Israel’s airstrikes on the West Bank since last summer, when the Israeli forces began deploying drones, planes, and helicopters to carry out attacks in the occupied territory for the first time in decades.
He was suspected of involvement in a shooting at a kibbutz near the West Bank. There is no right to attack settlements with no military value.
You mean like a game cafe
The military value depends on who is inside.
Fascinating that “a bunch of civilians” doesn’t factor into that valuation
If there are only civilians inside, then it's not a military target.
If there are any combatants inside, then it's a military target.
Not according to Articles 51 and 54 of Protocol I of the Geneva Convention, but then again who cares about war crimes, right?
Article 51 and Article 54 do not have anything to do with this.
Article 51 bans pardons and article 54 discusses the use of the red cross emblem.
Those are articles of the Geneva Convention. Protocol I of the Geneva Convention is different. It was added later. The protocols are like amendments.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/article-51
It clearly lays out what constitutes targeting of civilians. But the fact that you need to be told that killing civilians is wrong says everything that should be said.
Yes, it says you cannot target civilians. Which is why I said if there are only civilians in a game cafe, then it is not a military target.
On the other hand, it does not prohibit targeting combatants. Which is why I said if there are combatants in the game cafe, then it is a military target.
And it does not say that killing civilians is prohibited when attacking a military target, only that any death of civilians must be balanced against the value of the military target.
No, explicitly wrong:
What you are describing is unequivocally a war crime. the ICC didn’t charge Netanyahu with war crimes just for the fun of it.
Killing an enemy combatant is a military objective, so attacking a building containing an enemy combatant does not meet any of those criteria.
The ICC charges against Netanyahu all relate to interference with the delivery of aid. He has not been charged with making indiscriminate attacks.
You seem to think that the presence of a military objective justifies any amount of civilian damage and death. A plain text reading of Protocol I - which you have clearly read for the first time, considering you linked the wrong articles earlier - says exactly the inverse of that. You are interpreting Article 51 of Protocol I to mean what you want, not what it says.
No, I never said it justifies "any amount of civilian damage and death". Quite the opposite, I said the death of civilians must be balanced against the value of the military target.
Likewise, per the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC:
Finally, I linked the articles that pertain to Israel. Israel is not a signatory to Protocol I.
90% of Israelis are military or reservists, making them non-civilians under International Law. So yeah, a kibbutz can be seen as a valid military target.
Not true. Until they are activated for service, they are noncombatants under international law.
Was what I said not true?
They are noncombatants under international law. Noncombatants are not valid military targets.
So Israel is killing a bunch of non-valid military targets and justifying it by saying they were Hamas. Got it.
You don't actually have any standards or morals, and just want to justify everything as "With us or against us"
Using that same logic, most of the Hamas members targeted by the Israelis are also civilians.
Remember, Hamas is a singular governmental organization that kept the militant wing separate from the civilian wing. i.e. Gazan Hospital Administator? Hamas.
That is a literal justification Israel has used to justify killing Gazan civilians, including police officers.
So, which is it? Are IDF reservists military, or are Gazan police and hospital administrators civilians?
You don't get to have both.
So they assassinated him instead of arresting him?
Sooo much legal.
They can't arrest him, he doesn't live in Israel. And killing enemy combatants is legal, for example Osama bin Laden.
I'm sorry I just spent that entire time laughing. The IDF and Israeli Police absolutely have the run of West Bank. It's not called an occupation for nothing.
And when you kill someone without even trying to arrest them inside your civil jurisdiction, it's called murder. At least it is in civilized countries.
Israel is not the civil authority of Gaza. Hamas is.
More important, the attack on the kibbutz occurred during a war between Israel and Hamas. That makes the attacker a combatant, not a criminal. In fact, you cannot legally prosecute combatants unless they commit war crimes.
That's all great. But this is in the West Bank. Not Gaza.
And you can absolutely be prosecuted for a war crime. Your own link says that.
Yes the link said that, and so did I.
Are you suggesting Yasser Hanoun committed a war crime?
If he specifically attacked civilians as part of a war then yes.
Aren't settlements military outposts?
No. And this wasn't a settlement, it was a kibbutz within Israel.
Which kibbutz did he shoot at and was he convicted of anything or is a suspicion enough to kill Palestinians?
Settlers have no right to be in the settlements, either.
Also, suspected isn’t enough.
The kibbutz was in Israel, and Israelis have the right to be in Israel.
And as an armed member of Hamas, he was a military target even if he wasn't involved in the kibbutz shooting.