The law is clear that military targets may be attacked, even if civilian casualties are anticipated, so long as the importance of the military target is proportional to the anticipated civilian casualties and that reasonable efforts are made, consistent with military needs, to minimize civilian casualties. This sensible rule of proportionality was devised in the context of ordinary military encounters, in which the enemy is not using their own civilians as human shields. If the enemy is deliberately using civilians as human shields, the rules of proportionality should allow for more anticipated civilian casualties, especially if the target is of great military significance, as these terror tunnels were. The reason that civilian casualties, as well as military casualties among both Hamas terrorists and Israeli soldiers, could be anticipated, is because the entrance to these terror tunnels were deliberately placed by Hamas in densely populated civilian areas, including mosques, schools and private homes. These tunnels could not be destroyed from the air without causing a far greater number of civilian casualties than those resulting from a ground attack. Moreover, the only way to ensure their destruction was for ground troops to go from tunnel to tunnel and to blow them up one by one. This inevitably risked civilian casualties. Had Hamas built the entrance to the tunnels in the many open areas of the Gaza Strip, away from the most densely populated urban centers, the number of civilian casualties would have been considerably reduced.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 17:56:17 +0000
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