Daily Alert Archives

Will the UN Report on Gaza Constrain Future U.S. Military Action?

(Lawfare Institute-Brookings Institution) Benjamin Wittes and Yishai Schwartz - Israel is, as always, the canary in the international humanitarian law (IHL) coal mine. Approaches that begin as a way of constraining Israeli military action quickly migrate to constraining U.S. military action. It is always tempting to look at large numbers of dead civilians and assume that the fact of the bodies implicates a targeting decision. But that's rarely right without knowing who the target was, what calculations as to civilian deaths commanders made, and what the expected military advantage of the strike was. The commission of inquiry gives the benefit of the doubt to armed groups that made no secret about their intentional targeting of civilians, describing Hamas' military wing as focused chiefly on attacking military targets. "Security experts have noted that while the Al Qassam Brigades may have targeted civilians in the past as part of its military strategy, in 2014 its declared official policy was 'to focus on military or semi-military targets and to avoid other targets, especially civilians.'" Yet the commission cites Israeli government statistics that 4,500 rockets and mortars were aimed at Israeli cities, towns and communities. Benjamin Wittes is a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and editor in chief of Lawfare, where Yishai Schwartz is an associate editor.
2015-06-26 00:00:00
Full Article