WASHINGTON – As Israel and Hamas return to arms on Friday after the terrorist group ended a week-long pause in fighting across the Gaza Strip, the Jewish state once again finds itself under international pressure to stop its war and eliminate the jihadists who brutally massacred more than 1,200 people. including 33 Americans, on October 7.
But how exactly can the Israel Defense Forces avoid harming civilians when its enemy hides behind innocents and conducts its operations from the most sacred safe spaces – including hospitals – in violation of international norms of warfare?
“[Hamas’] MO is deliberately using the civilian sphere for its own human shield protection in the most cynical way,” IDF Lt. Col. Amnon Shefler told reporters at the Israeli embassy in Washington this week.
“I can show you endless amounts of photographs and videos of how rockets are made in schools, how they are housed in schools, and how they are fired from schools, mosques, and homes. We have found rockets and ammunition under the girls’ beds and, unfortunately, also in hospitals,” she added.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Friday emphasized Hamas’ apparent lack of care for Palestinian civilians, noting that by refusing to release more hostages, they prevented humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza.
“The people who suffer the most from this are the people of Gaza, the Palestinian people,” he said. “So if Hamas really – as they claim – cares about the Palestinians, it will do what it can to draw up a list of hostages that can be exchanged, so that aid can continue to flow.”
A Palestinian inspects damage following Israeli airstrikes in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip, December 3, 2023. Photo by Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images
An unfair fight
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday demanded that Israel not restart fighting until it establishes a “clear plan” to prevent harm to civilians, and threatened to withdraw support if it does not comply with “humanitarian law.”
But hours later, Hamas terrorists opened fire at a Jerusalem bus stop, killing three civilians and Blinken’s aspirations in one fell swoop.
Despite accusations that Israel forces have killed thousands of Gazans in the nearly two-month war, Shefler said the IDF is “the world’s leading army” in fighting in dense urban environments. and at the same time minimize civilian casualties.
A Palestinian boy crying after being taken to Nasser hospital following an airstrike December 3, 2023. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
“For years we have been building capabilities, first out of necessity and also because it is what we believe in,” he stated. “That in fighting these types of complicated battles, we must find the best ways to defend morality and our values, and also the law of armed conflict.”
The problem, however, is that when only one party respects international rules of conflict – or even cares about saving civilian lives – the law itself can become an obstacle.
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“It was probably written in many ways [to support moral fighting], but it was not written to address these types of circumstances: dealing with terrorist organizations,” Shefler said. “That’s why we find ourselves in a very, very complicated space of a war zone with a terrorist organization deeply embedded within all of this. [civilian] infrastructure and underground.”
Footage of the Oct. 7 attack reviewed by The Post shows Hamas terrorists massacring children, beheading the dead and encouraging each other to “play with” the bodies.
Palestinians gathered in a crater in Rafah after an Israeli attack on Gaza on December 3, 2023. Photo by SAID KHATIB/AFP via Getty Images
But the terror did not end there. Until fighting briefly ceased on Nov. 24, Shefler said Hamas was “firing more than 10,500 rockets at Israeli civilians, schools, hospitals and religious institutions” in Israel each day.
“They did everything they could with the goal of killing as many civilians as possible,” he said.
Mitigate damage by taking risks
The terrorist group’s war crimes strategy makes it nearly impossible for Israel to defend itself without more casualties. But that doesn’t mean they don’t try to avoid losses.
“How can you deal with a terrorist infrastructure that is under the hospital? We can attack it from the air, but of course that has its implications and that’s why we decided not to do it,” Shefler said.
The military leader also detailed many other creative strategies the IDF uses to mitigate harm to Gazans, from the use of technology to more rudimentary tactics, putting its own soldiers at greater risk in doing so.
An injured Palestinian woman is rushed to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
For example, the IDF has sent ground forces to clear Hamas centers hidden in civilian infrastructure and underground, a strategy the Israeli military has learned as best practice from previous confrontations.
“For many years, we have been building our special forces to be able to carry out these types of missions based on very precise intelligence,” he said. “Going to very, very specific areas to find those weapons, that infrastructure that needs to be dismantled, sending these units with Arabic speakers, with medical equipment, and that’s how we were able to [mitigate harm,]”he added.
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The IDF is also open to learning from the experiences and mistakes of others. For example, Shefler said Israeli leaders have daily contact with the U.S. military, which has been offering advice on hand-to-hand combat in urban environments learned during its 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Israel has also used information sharing as a tactic to rule out unwanted deaths. In the early days of the war, the IDF used leaflets to urge civilians to move south to safety ahead of its planned attacks on Hamas in northern Gaza.
The Israeli military has since implemented a text messaging feature that alerts civilians in areas that will soon be attacked before attacks are carried out.
“At first, civilians did not listen to us when we left a house where we knew the terrorists were. [when we told them] We were going to strike, but they learned to trust us,” Shefler said.
Now, Palestinians have learned to trust IDF messages so much that “you can find so many videos of Palestinians standing outside buildings they had been told to leave, filming the attack from their own phone there because they know we’re going to go out.” hit.
An Israeli soldier in a tunnel beneath Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City November 22, 2023. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/File Photo
“Now they also know that they have to trust that when we ask them to move to different areas that they listen to us, and we hope that that is another level of mutual learning that is happening about how to deal with this really catastrophic situation,” he added.
While the strategy has saved countless lives, it comes at a cost to the IDF, Shefler said. For example, the Israelis gave advance warning to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza before their attack last month, posing a danger to troops by giving potential warning to terrorists hiding in underground tunnels.
“There are many threats to our forces without using a very important tool: military surprise,” he said, adding that the Israelis had staged a coup by “saying in advance that we would go, and then entering and discovering that all that infrastructure is there.” , and there is not even a wounded person: a civilian, a patient or a doctor at the scene.”
Inside the hospital, the IDF discovered that Hamas had “a booby trap” in a vehicle in the center of the facility intended to “kill civilians and soldiers who would approach the table,” Shefler said.
“If we had [launched a strike] from the air, then it would have exploded. But being on the ground, [we] “They are allowed to dismantle it and not allow it to explode,” he said.
It’s another lesson learned from previous experiences in unfair fights.
“Many times when we attack other buildings there are explosives and rockets inside that explode with them and create a lot of collateral damage by themselves,” he said. “So we needed to risk sending our troops there for a lot of things, risk dealing with these munitions, with these booby traps, with the potential of Hamas fighters jumping from different wells.”
Still, Shefler admits that Israel can do more to prevent more civilians from becoming collateral damage. The IDF spent the week-long pause thinking about additional ways to mitigate the damage and continues to analyze past operations for lessons learned, she said.
“Can we do better? Always. Can we inform and learn? Absolutely,” Shefler said. “Can we bring other things that will help the situation? Definitely.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn