Hamas strike on Israel - Threadbans in op - mod warning in OP updated 19/10/23

The two state solution rejected by Hamas?

You are starting to sound like Charlie and his expertise around Bird Law. 😂

Israel is trying to get them killed. ✅

They're terrorists because Israel is mean and made them terrorists, right? That's terrorist apologetism.

They had a chance of free election, they had a chance to self govern Gaza, to improve Gaza and make it great. We know how it ended up. Instead they chose "Death to Israel" - 16 thousand rockets fired at Israel civilians, built underground military complexes and committed the largest terrorist attack in history. Whatever issues occurred on the WB are irrelevant to that. Gaza was theirs. This is not how "oppressed victims" behave, sorry.

Stop playing this oppression and victimhood card. It's pathetic.

Apart from the settlers shooting kids and stealing peoples homes/lands all under the watchful eye of the IDF?

Civilians will die. That's a fact. Calling Israel to stop because "innocent civilians" is indeed defeatism. They cannot wage military operation against Hamas in this landscape and avoid civilian deaths.

Do you understand and recognise that?

How many incidents? How many were documented? How many were prosecuted?

VS 16000 rockets mister.

I thought Israel weren't targeting civilians?

Uninformed posters? What about these groups...international law broken by both sides.

Have war crimes been committed in Israel and Gaza and what international laws apply? | Israel-Hamas war | The Guardian

Is there evidence of war crimes in the fighting between Israel and Hamas?

The UN said that Hamas’s indiscriminate killing of hundreds of noncombatants, including children, and the abduction of about 200 others as hostages and human shields in Gaza, is a crime under international humanitarian law.

“Reports that armed groups from Gaza have gunned down hundreds of unarmed civilians are abhorrent and cannot be tolerated. Taking civilian hostages and using civilians as human shields are war crimes,” it said.

Legal experts said that Hamas and other groups such as Islamic Jihad may also be guilty of war crimes for firing thousands of rockets from Gaza into Israel.

The UN also said that Israel may be committing the war crime of collective punishment through its siege of the Gaza territory. The International Committee of the Red Cross agreed.

“The instructions issued by the Israeli authorities for the population of Gaza City to immediately leave their homes, coupled with the complete siege, explicitly denying them food, water and electricity are not compatible with international humanitarian law,” it said.

Amnesty International said it has “documented unlawful Israeli attacks, including indiscriminate attacks, which caused mass civilian casualties and must be investigated as war crimes”.

Human Rights Watch said that “multiple war crimes have been and continue to be committed in Israel and Palestine, with grave concerns that Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups are carrying out unlawful indiscriminate attacks harming civilians”.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza, which is run by Hamas, said more than 8,000 people have been killed in the Israeli assault, including more than 3,000 children.

Some groups have gone further and accused Israel of genocide, although lawyers said that is a harder crime to prove under international law.

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Amnesty, Red Cross, Human Rights Watch...even your beloved Leo calls it revenge.

Do I think Israel will ever be prosecuted? No. They will always get a pass. It would be great to get some of the Hamas monsters into the ICC.

It depends who allign's with who and if things escalate. As we have seen, unilateral sanctions are allowed to be imposed now by groups of states, so no one could go to the UN or WTO and complain.

As it stands it looks like G7 and most of Europe are backing Israel to the hilt and everyone can see that very clearly now. If it went that way probably even talk about sanctions would cool heads very very quickly, or should do.

OPEC countries imposed sanctions of oil in 1973 against Israel and it's backers so it's not as if it can't happen again. Just the Suez canal and straights of Hormuz closed due to missiles flying around would work especially given the Panama canals problems now.

You've tried this repeatedly and I'm going to call you out on it every time I see it.

The conflict did not begin on Oct 7th and it is entirely disingenuous to suggest so.

Continuing to do this proves you know Israel is responsible for illegal and unjustifiable acts and trying to corral the focus to a single act of retaliation (barbaric as it was) is blatantly misrepresenting the facts.

And all of that is outside of the fact that Israel's response has been equally barbaric, disproportionate and counter to international law.

Shame on you and the others gleefully cheering an active genocide.

Just pointing out the international law realities.

I have consistently stated that my observations on the international law points should not be taken as a moral endorsement of Israeli actions, just that in my opinion, they have acted within the parameters of international law.

Both sides are violating international law. If you dont see that, you are deliberately being stubborn. Ok, lets hear from an Irish expert in Bird Law.

Ruth FitzGerald SC: International humanitarian law in the conflict between Israel and Hamas | Irish Legal News

Article 49 of the Fourth Convention provides that individual, or mass, forcible transfer, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, “regardless of their motive”.

Proportionality

The scale of the bombing by both Israel — on 12 October 2023 Israel said it had dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza in six days — and Hamas is such that it is hard to see how the rules in connection with proportionality are being met. These rules require an individual analysis of each target of a bombing. There is simply not time in the bombing that is occurring for this to be achieved.

Article 55 of the Fourth Convention requires the Occupying Power, to the fullest extent of the means available to it, “to ensure food and medical supplies to the population. It should, in particular, bring the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate”.

Collective punishment

Common Article 33 provides that collective punishment is a war crime. Collective punishment is a penalty imposed on a group for acts allegedly carried out by members of the group and applies to international and non-international armed conflicts.

Contrary to its duty under Article 55, the act of Israel in cutting off water, electricity, food, and fuel to the population of Gaza punishes the entire population of Gaza for the acts of Hamas — is a collective punishment — as the objective of the siege is that of destroying Hamas.

Article 58 of Additional Protocol I requires parties, to the maximum extent feasible, to “avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas”. The rule applies in non-international conflicts under customary international law. The population density in Gaza of 5,751 per square kilometre (just slightly greater than that of Greater London).

Allowing third-party aid

Article 61 of the Fourth Convention requires the Occupying Power to agree relief schemes for the population of an occupied territory if it is inadequately supplied.

That Article goes on to provide, in addition, that all Contracting Parties shall endeavour to permit the transit and transport, free of charge, of relief consignments on their way to occupied territories. The question then arises as to whether Israel, in controlling the borders of Gaza and failing to provide safe transit to aid agencies, has done so for security reasons or in support of its siege.

No quarter given

Article 41 of Additional Protocol II prohibits an order that there should be no survivors. Israel’s threat to destroy Hamas could be viewed as a breach this prohibition. Declaring that no quarter will be given is also a war crime under Article 89(2) of the Rome Statute.

Protecting hospitals

Article 19 of the First Convention provides that medical facilities shall not be attacked in any circumstances, but shall at all times be respected and protected. It goes on to provide that the responsible authorities shall ensure that those facilities are, so far as possible, situated where attacks against military objectives do not imperil their safety.

I will stick with the UN link you provided already which supports my position. Hamas IS commiting war crimes, Israel MAY be committing war crimes.

I have also produced numerous articles and links which point to the opposite conclusions to Ruth Fitzgerald about Israel, which only demonstrates the level of doubt. For example, much of her analysis relies on the definition of Israel as an Occupying Power, something which is contested and is not settled law.

On the other hand, there isn't a single serious argument anywhere that Hamas are innocent of war crimes. Surely, even you can see the difference between an unarguable position and a debatable argument?

The Geneva convention prohibits the application of collective punishment.

That is what is being applied now.

This is is why the comparisons with the troubles and the querying of hypothetical British responses on communities in Northern Ireland. And each time Israel supporters dismiss such hypotheticals, it's an indication they realize how disproportionate that would be.

And yet here we are, reading people supporting the fact that a couple hundred kids will not be alive next week after they screamed about the barbarism of Hamas killing children.

It's completely unjustifiable and one of the most depressing observations of the Human race I've seen in my lifetime.

Collective punishment

Common Article 33 provides that collective punishment is a war crime. Collective punishment is a penalty imposed on a group for acts allegedly carried out by members of the group and applies to international and non-international armed conflicts.

Contrary to its duty under Article 55, the act of Israel in cutting off water, electricity, food, and fuel to the population of Gaza punishes the entire population of Gaza for the acts of Hamas — is a collective punishment — as the objective of the siege is that of destroying Hamas.