Rubble in Gaza
Daphne Eviatar has a good article on the Gaza invasion under the photo and caption shown above. I had to reproduce this because “a mosque damaged by Israeli airstrike” sort of understates the condition of the mosque. “Damage” for me is like a shell hole in one wall—it doesn’t really get into “rubble.” Her article begins:
Although human rights advocates breathed a sigh of relief when Israel and Hamas declared a cease fire last weekend, that tentative arrangement — already violated on Tuesday by Hamas rockets and Israel’s retaliatory air strikes — isn’t likely to silence the the broad claims of war crimes on both sides.
Incidents like the Israeli shelling of a UN relief agency in central Gaza last week prompted claims that its response to Hamas’s rocket attacks were indiscriminate, disproportionate and violated international law. Meanwhile, Israel, the United States and others have blamed Hamas for provoking the battle and breaking the law itself by targeting civilian neighborhoods with its rockets for years. On January 12, the UN’s Human Rights Council issued a non-binding resolution charging Israel with “grave violations” of human rights and called for an international mission of inquiry. (Thirteen countries abstained.) The next day, the former Canadian justice minister and McGill University law professor Irwin Cotler, a past president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, wrote in The Jerusalem Post that there is “almost no comparable example” anywhere in the world today of a group that so systematically violates international agreements regulating armed conflict as Hamas. Other, more neutral observers, such as Human Rights Watch, have criticized both sides – Hamas for firing rockets into civilian territories in Israel, and Israel for responding by using heavy artillery in residential neighborhoods and not providing sufficient access to humanitarian groups trying to alleviate civilian suffering.
The three-week war reportedly left more than 1,300 Palestinians, including about 700 civilians, dead; attacks by Hamas killed about 10 Israeli soldiers and three civilians.
There’s no question that international law is supposed to govern the Israel-Hamas conflict; but the persistent recriminations raise an important question: Does it matter? So what if Israel and Hamas are violating international humanitarian law, or even intentionally committing war crimes? Who’s going to stop them? It’s an age-old problem of international law; while the laws have been carefully negotiated and in some cases, interpreted over centuries, they’re notoriously difficult to enforce. And because they rely heavily on international pressure, advocates say the United States’ own refusal to apply international humanitarian laws such as the Geneva Conventions to its own conflicts with al Qaeda and the Taliban has undermined the influence of these laws on conflicts around the world.
“In general when you’re talking about international law enforcement, measures are weak and uneven,” said Jessica Montel, Executive Director of B’Tselem, a human rights group in Israel that monitors the occupied territories. “You don’t have …
