Supporter’s of Israel’s right to exist, and it’s right to respond militarily, following Hamas’s October 7 attack, have often been too slow to conclude that Israel’s response has been disproportionate and breaches customary international humanitarian law.
Part of the problem here is undoubtably the difficulty of describing what a proportionate response would have looked like in the context of a densely populated area like Gaza, where Hamas operates under cover of tunnels built beneath people’s homes or vital civilian infrastructure.
Indeed if you ask opponents of Israel’s right to exist to describe a proportionate response to the October 7 attack they almost invariably fail to do so and end up blaming the atrocity of October 7 entirely on the brutality of Israel’s occupation, as if Hamas, and its ideology, had no responsibility for what occurred.
But in similar vein, supporter’s of Israel usually maintain that Hamas is entirely to blame for everything that has happened in Gaza in retaliation for October 7 either because Hamas broke the ceasefire or because of its use of human shields. True as these two facts about Hamas are, they cannot mean that Israel has had no choice about how to respond.
Whatever a proportionate military response might have looked like, it was evident from fairly early on, that Israel was not really interested in placing proportionality principles on at least an equal footing with its military goal of destroying Hamas.
Israel’s approach has been just as Israel’s defence Minister Yoav Gallant said it would be on 8 October when addressing IDF on the Gaza boarder. The ICJ’s judgement quoted him as follows:
“I have released all restraints. You saw what we are fighting against. We are fighting human animals. This is the ISIS of Gaza. Gaza won’t return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate everything. If it doesn’t take a week it will take weeks or even months. We will reach all places.”
While it would not be expected that a Defence Minister addressing his troops at the border (like a coach with a footy team) would take pause to mention that the IDF must take care to minimise civilian casualties, the words sufficiently convey the reality and describe what has followed. This is that Israel has indeed removed, at least in part, the restraints of international humanitarian law in pursuit of its overriding objective of destroying Hamas. What other restraints might Gallant have conceivably been referring to?
If these words are not enough to convince then consider the deeds.
An early sign of restraint removal was when the IDF shot dead the three Israeli hostages that emerged from a building with no shirts (to demonstrate they were not carrying bombs) and were carrying a white flag. These three could just as easily have been Palestinian civilians, except that in this case, we would likely never have heard about it.
Look also at the level of destruction of residential apartment blocks. There is no tenable basis for arguing that destroying a whole residential block based on intelligence that a few Hamas militants reside there can be part of any proportionate response.
Likewise in December of 2023 CNN reported that its analysis indicated that in the first months of the war israel dropped hundreds of bombs capable of killing or wounding people more than 300 metres away. Bad luck for any civilians, including children, who happened to be within this distance as the bombs fell.
Satellite imagery from the early days of the war, revealed more than 500 impact craters more than 12 metres in diameter, consistent with those left by 2,000 pound bombs. These are four times heavier than the US dropped on Mosul in Iraq during its war against ISIS. These bombs, like much of Israel’s military hardware, are made in the USA.
It’s time for supporters of Israel’s right to exist to stop denying what is blatantly obvious to most of the world-Israel’s response to the October 7 atrocity has been disproportionate and Israel bears responsibility for the choices it has made on how has waged the war.
And it’s time for Biden to stop his hypercritical finger wagging and start conditioning military aid to Israel by insisting on a ceasefire, removal, or at least a freezing of the illegal settlements in the West Bank and demonstration of real progress towards the two state solution he claims to believe in.
This means the Netanyahu government and its band of Jewish supremacists like National Security Minister Ben G’vir must go.
The war in Gaza needs to be seen for what it is-an attempt by the Netanyahu government to cover for its security failures by fostering a narrative for the war around a set of essentially false claims.
These claims are that:
• Without a war of this scale Hamas could simply repeat the October 7 atrocity (which it has promised to do).
• It is necessary to destroy Hamas and it’s infrastructure to prevent more October 7’s.
• Completely destroying Hamas and its infrastructure is an achievable military objective.
• Israel has had no choice other than to pursue the war in the manner it has and with this level of civilian casualties.
October 7- A security failure.
The atrocity committed by Hamas in Israel on October 7 was contributed to by a huge intelligence failure by the Netanyahu government.
The New York Times reported:
‘Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
Then, in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.
Officials privately concede that, had the military taken these warnings seriously and redirected significant reinforcements to the south, where Hamas attacked, Israel could have blunted the attacks or possibly even prevented them.”
Claim 1: Without this war Hamas can simply repeat the October 7 attack.
The October 7 attack was the result of intelligence failures and by addressing these failures Israel can protect itself against such attacks in the future. This is not to suggest that Israel can protect itself from all instances of terrorist violence. It cannot. But it managed to protect itself from incidents of the magnitude of October 7 for the 16 years since Hamas took power and it could do so again without fighting a war of this scale and magnitude incurring such heavy civilian casualties. It could do this by avoiding the intelligence failures that contributed to the success of Hamas’s October 7 attack.
Netanyahu has stated that through his war “Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel.”
But despite its ability to have carried out the October 7 atrocity, and its ongoing ideological commitment Israel’s destruction, Hamas does not pose an existential threat to Israel.
Figures from the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs figures on the number of casualties inflicted on Israel since 2008 indicate that, prior to October 7, due to military related conflict in Israel and the occupied territories, Israel suffered 319 casualties of which 135 were military and 185 were civilians. 94 of the civilians killed were Israelis settlers. There have been 6419 Israelis injured.
Over the same period, and prior to the current war in Gaza, there were 6,779 Palestinian causalities. 1,529 were under 18. 157,773 Palestinians were injured. There is no breakdown between civilians and military casualties because the Palestinians have no formal army, and it is too difficult to tell who a Hamas fighter is.
Hamas took power in Gaza in June 2007 after having been elected and then fighting a bloody war with Fatah. The number of fatalities is not known but is estimated to have been several hundreds. Add to this the number of Palestinians killed by Hamas from executions (including public executions) conducted from its harsh application of Sharia law and it is possible that, since it came to power up until 7 October, and if the UN figures are accurate, Hamas had killed a similar number of Palestinians as it had killed Israeli’s.
Other figures from the Jewish Virtual Library state that over the longer period since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, at least 1,342 Israeli civilians have been murdered through terrorist violence. This includes 21 Israeli’s murdered abroad. Whichever figures are right it remains the case that Hamas is simply too weak militarily to pose an existential threat to Israel and it always has been.
The fact that Hamas poses no existential threat to Israel does not make its violence less abhorrent. In some ways it makes it worse. It is not as if Hamas is engaging in armed conflict against Israel as a means of forcing Israel to the negotiating table for a two state solution. Hamas seeks an Islamic caliphate from the river to the sea and is a fellow traveller with Netanyahu in opposing any two state solution, one of the reasons why he initially encouraged its development as a foil against the Palestinian Authority.
The only thing Hamas is interested in negotiating with Israel is hostage for prisoner swaps. The other goal of its violence may be to goad Israel into actions that might spur a broader regional conflict that could result in an existential threat to Israel.
Claim 2&3: Destroying Hamas and its infrastructure.
To prevent further October 7 events Netanyahu argues that it is necessary to destroy Hamas and its infrastructure.
Hamas’s hard infrastructure consists of its network of underground tunnels and the stockpile of armaments it has hidden there.
But Hamas also has a social infrastructure including its fighters- estimated at around 30-40,000 and an unknown number of domestic supporters, who provide political support and logistical support in the form of safe houses, intelligence information etc. Hamas also has important external sponsors- principally Iran. But also, Qatar, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthi’s in Yemen.
The US’s efforts to remove the Taliban from power and to destroy Al Qaeda hardly inspire confidence that Israel can succeed in destroying Hamas and its infrastructure.
David Aliberti and Daniel Byman from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies write:
“The United States commenced military operations to remove the Taliban from power and destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001. U.S. forces killed thousands of militants and dozens of leaders, including al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011, but the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda continued for another ten years. When U.S. forces left Afghanistan, the Taliban was triumphant and al Qaeda, while far weaker, endures.”
Claim 4: This level of civilian casualties unavoidable
Hamas’s tunnel network is constructed under civilian infrastructure with the entrances to tunnels often located near residences. The IDF argues it does try to minimise civilian casualties, for example, by warning them about impending air strikes. But the high incidence of civilian casualties is unavoidable due to the way in which the tunnel network has been deliberately built to provide human shields.
I do not doubt Hamas’s appalling use of human shields. But it does not follow that Israel could not have taken more care to avoid the extent of civilian casualties. (see above).
There is nothing to stop Israel from addressing its security failures so that Hamas is unable to again carry out an operation like October 7. There is no need for Israel to destroy Hamas and its infrastructure to achieve this goal. And the goal is likely unachievable in any case. Most importantly there is no need for Palestinians civilians to be paying such a heavy price for Israel to ensure its security.