A video broadcast earlier this week captured the horrifying moment rescuers and journalists were killed in a “double-tap” strike on the Nasser hospital in southern Gaza.
They had rushed to the scene of an initial Israeli attack, only for the same location to be bombed minutes later. Five journalists and several medical staff were killed by the second strike.
The attack prompted a wave of international condemnation. UK foreign secretary David Lammy wrote on social media: “Horrified by Israel’s attack on Nasser hospital. Civilians, healthcare workers and journalists must be protected. We need an immediate ceasefire”.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, initially called the strikes a “tragic mishap”. He added: “Israel values the work of journalists, medical staff and all civilians”. But the strikes have now been characterised by Israel as a targeted attack on Hamas fighters.
An initial inquiry by Israel’s military says “it appears” its troops “identified a camera that was positioned by Hamas in the area of the Nasser hospital that was being used to observe the activity of IDF troops” in order to direct attacks against them.
Whether or not charges relating to the attacks are ever brought remains to be seen. But James Sweeney of Lancaster University’s School of Law believes there should be no doubt that the double tap tactic falls into the category of acts of war that are prohibited by the law of armed conflict.
Professor Sweeney examines how international law operates in situations like this, identifying four fundamental rules on methods that govern the conduct of hostilities: humanity, necessity, distinction and proportionality.
He says the Israeli strikes almost certainly breached the rule on distinction, which requires that only lawful objectives should be targeted for attack. He explains that there are very limited circumstances in which a hospital or its medical staff could ever be a lawful target. The same goes for journalists. Both are protected under the Geneva Conventions.
Professor Sweeney also sees Israel’s attack as violating the rule on proportionality, which says expected “collateral damage” should not be excessive to the expected military advantage of the attack. Even if the claim that the hospital was being used by Hamas to stage attacks on Israeli forces stands up, thus possibly making it a lawful target, the collateral damage was likely going to be vast.
Excessive collateral damage has been a grim theme of the war. Israeli government officials consistently say their military works hard to keep civilian harm to a minimum, for example by making phone calls and sending text messages to those residing in buildings designated for attack.
However, Israel’s own numbers cast doubt on this claim. Figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database, reported by the Guardian last week, indicate that 83 per cent of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians. This is a rate of civilian killing far higher than other modern wars, says Neta Crawford of the University of Oxford.
Professor Crawford, an expert on international relations, reports that western militaries began to take steps to minimise inadvertent harm to civilians after the Vietnam war in 1975. These practices, which include making collateral damage estimates prior to carrying out a strike, have not always been adhered to.
But when they have been followed, the rate of civilian killing has been reduced. In American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Professor Crawford reports, civilian casualty rates were 68 per cent and 26 per cent respectively – far lower than in Gaza.
“Given the kind of war Israel is fighting – using large, indiscriminate weapons to destroy buildings and failing to distinguish between combatant and noncombatant – it has unsurprisingly produced high civilian casualty rates,” she says.
