Is the IDF attempting to balance out the Arab demographic advantage by its targeting of civilians?
I always found it strange that you see only camera shots of hospitals in Gaza. Yesterday a news report, people were brought to a hospital after an Israeli grenade hit a market place and killed only women and children (of course ... the guys were hiding?).
Damn, if there are a few basic rules for "how to I not become victim of unfriendly air attacks", the people in Gaza seem either on purpose or on external pressure violate them all.
I don't want to say the people killed are to blame for it, that would be cynic, but I guess a five year old could see that the Hamas want only two things to come out of the Gaza strip: Kassam rockets and pictures of wounded & dead children (womens marginally acceptable, too, but dead guys don't count), and actually I think the Israelis are currently more concerned about civil losses in Gaza than the Hamas is.
Ok, lets drudle that up a bit:
Actually, the civilians in Gaza have nowhere to go, not only in the town but in th strip as a whole (graphic:
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2008/graf ... _gaza.html).
I am not sure you are aware of the infrastructural situation in Gaza strip (I have been there): The strip is very small, just 4-6x30km, a total of 340+ sqkm, thats just slightly more than Amsterdam (300 sqkm), populated with 1.5 million inhabitants + 1 million refugees (thats 3.5x the population density of A´dam).
It simply is impossible for the government infrasturcture, police stations, the university, etc - those were the targets up to now - not to be not surrounded by civilians. The people targeting Israel with rockets enter through tunnels and dont live within the strip (and hence dont hide within civil populaation), so bombarding the government installations wont do anything but hurt just those.
Check details and political status for yourself:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... tml#People
I have already stated that both sides follow cynical, straightforward caluclated plans IMHO (money, money and money, and elections), and I have no doubt that Hamas was starting the thingy by breaking (overtly, it had been violated by both sides several times before) the cease fire. To allow that (from both sides) is the real scandal.
Apart from this one there are several more:
- The comment of the Israeli Foreign Minister, Ms. Tzipi Livni, who is a rising star in Israel's centrist Kadima party, heading the polls and aiming to be the next prime minister in February on the humanitarian situation in Gaza: "The humanitarian situation in Gaza is as it should be"... (water, gas, petrol, electricity turned off, no aid allowed in, no civilians out, hospitals have closed dwon and medics by now have turned off their mobiles and resigned themselves to prayer:
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/01/0 ... 33093.html, again in Spanish, pass by
http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=es#)
- Seperating women and children (up to 11 yrs) and old men (over 45 ?) from the masculine population yesterday in the refugee camp, stripping naked the masculine refugees (and I am sure there are some activists under them, but we are talking hundreds here) between 12 and 45, tying their hands behind their backs and closing them in inside barbed wire fenced compounds at temperatures around zero degrees centigrade for all the night:
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/01/0 ... 32186.html (in Spanish I am afraid, pass it by the translation engine at
http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=es#)
- bombardin UN installations like the UN reigned school:
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/01/0 ... 32106.html, use same translator (and dont tell me they dont know where they were, or their precision bombs
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/i ... ts-dr.html went astray)
etc..., etc..., etc...
Now, Israel is executing it´s right of self defense?
Well, read article 51 of the UN charter and the legal comments on it again: While the right of self defense is granted *until SC takes measures*, intl law limits those (non SC ordered defense actions) to "porportionality" which I cannot see given the threat (4 dead - however sad those are - by terroist rockets in one year? ETA killed 12 in 2008, and still Spain isn´t bombarding Bilbao/San Sebastian or other Basque cities and the quarters where the Kale Borroka live; 500 dead and 2000 wounded dont sound proportional to me).
I know others see it differently, but all the articles I see taking this stance are somehow related to Israel media or US American Israel supporters:
http://www.hudsonny.org/2009/01/israels ... ndable.php,
http://theneweditor.com/index.php?/arch ... diocy.html So, its nt only Hamas reigning the media...
But, the majority of media that take a (from my POV) unbiased stance always fall always into the same categories to evaluate the rights and wrongs (like in the Iraq war, where I had stated almost the same before on the old forum):
http://www.economist.com/printedition/d ... D=12853965
In general, a war must pass three tests to be justified. A country must first have exhausted all other means of defending itself. The attack should be proportionate to the objective. And it must stand a reasonable chance of achieving its goal. On all three of these tests Israel is on shakier ground than it cares to admit.
It is true that Israel has put up with the rockets from Gaza for a long time. But it may have been able to stop the rockets another way. For it is not quite true that Israel’s only demand in respect of Gaza has been for quiet along the border. Israel has also been trying to undermine Hamas by clamping an economic blockade on Gaza, while boosting the economy of the West Bank, where the Palestinians’ more pliant secular movement, Fatah, holds sway. Even during the now-lapsed truce, Israel prevented all but a trickle of humanitarian aid from entering the strip. So although Israel was provoked, Hamas can claim that it was provoked too. If Israel had ended the blockade, Hamas may have renewed the truce. Indeed, on one reading of its motives, Hamas resumed fire to force Israel into a new truce on terms that would include opening the border.
On proportionality, the numbers speak for themselves—up to a point. After the first three days, some 350 Palestinians had been killed and only four Israelis. Neither common sense nor the laws of war require Israel to deviate from the usual rule, which is to kill as many enemies as you can and avoid casualties on your own side. Hamas was foolish to pick this uneven fight. But of the Palestinian dead, several score were civilians, and many others were policemen rather than combatants. Although both Western armies and their foes have killed far more civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, Israel’s interest should be to minimise the killing. The Palestinians it is bombing today will be its neighbours for ever.
This last point speaks to the test of effectiveness. Israel said at first that, much as it would like to topple Hamas, its present operation has the more limited aim of “changing reality” so that Hamas stops firing across the border. But as Israel learnt in Lebanon in 2006, this is far from easy. As with Hizbullah, Hamas’s “resistance” to Israel has made it popular and delivered it to power. It is most unlikely to bend the knee. Like Hizbullah, it will probably prefer to keep on firing no matter how hard it is hit, daring Israel to send its ground forces into a messy street fight in Gaza’s congested cities and refugee camps.
Oh, and three of the four killed Israeli soldiers fell to freindly fire:
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/01/0 ... 05757.html (same translator will help)
My 2c,
Rattler
