Civilian deaths from Israel’s air strikes in Gaza raise questions about proportional response, say experts

Civil Life LOSE

According to Dr. Ong Weichong, director of the National Security Studies Programme at RSIS, the laws of armed conflict forbid the target of schools, institutions, places of worship, and other protected places.

However, if Hamas militants purposefully use protected areas for their military operations, they may lose their safety. However, he added,” armed forces must make a distinction between civilians and combatants and make sure that proportionate military force is employed when targeting such places.”

In the crowded metropolitan area of the Gaza Strip, he continued, it is” really challenging” to carry out precise air strikes on Hamas violent infrastructure.

In highly developed Gaza, strong penetrator bunker-busting bombs are used to destroy Hamas’ tunnel network, which is incredibly destructive because they not only destroy the tunnels below but also the structures above it.

According to Dr. Pascal Vennesson, senior colleague and head of research at RSIS, there is no proof that Israel consciously targets residents during airstrikes. & nbsp,

Dr. Vennesson studies global surveillance, including corporate thought, wisdom, and decision-making in battle. He is also a professor of political science at the University Pantheon – Assas, Paris II.

The air strikes cause collateral damage because Hamas’ features are” deliberately embedded in civilian facilities and really close to where human populations live,” according to him.

He also emphasized the much more ambitious goal of Israel’s recent military campaign, which is to undermine Hamas’ military and political abilities. The Israel Defense Forces ( IDF) do not employ force in a” more limited and measured way” for this reason.

According to Dr. Vennesson,” such an objective implies a little wider set of goals which instantly increases the possibility and magnitude of lending damage.”

Dr. Jean-Loup Samaan, a senior research fellow at the Middle East Institute, said the IDF has cameras to detect Hamas’ underwater equipment in the Gaza Strip in response to Israel’s accuracy in locating military targets.

However, he claimed that those caverns, which are 20 to 80 meters below the surface, are” unlikely to have a complete picture.”

” Any attack against the team will ultimately result in civilian casualties because Hamas operates among the Gazan people.” The question then becomes,” Does Israel intentionally shoot civilians, or are they just bystanders?” he remarked.

Given the number of casualties and the fact that the Israeli government has so far argued that it is the former case, it also raises the question of proportionality: Knowing how many civilians are likely to perish in a single strike, what level of tolerance does Israel have to allow for indirect damage?