In Gaza today, we see international humanitarian law in turmoil.
The law comes from the previous war, not the next one. The landscape of war and the ways in which conflicts are fought have shifted dramatically over the past eighty years.
The Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.Credit: Samar Abu Elouf
Wars are now fought mostly within cities, and increasingly, well-organised and equipped terrorist forces such as Hamas, Al-Qaeda and ISIS are the main military aggressors, not armies. Urban guerrilla warfare tactics are boosted by new weapons and techniques. States are using artificial intelligence to operate robot weapons. Rules intended to be reciprocal between states are not found anywhere in Hamas training manuals.
Despite all this, core principles of international humanitarian law that aim to civilise armed conflict remain as pertinent today as when they were first formulated, in the 19th and 20th centuries.
When Foreign Minister Penny Wong listed the three principles of humanitarian law as distinction, precaution and proportionality in an interview on ABC’s Insiders program, missing from the list was the most important one: necessity.
A military objective can be targeted if it is necessary because it contributes to enemy military effort. The principle of necessity is what legitimises a use of military force. The other principles clarify how it is to be implemented.
The principle of distinction requires distinguishing combatants from civilians, who have no combat function. Proportionality requires that an attack not cause incidental civilian loss of life or damage excessive relative to the necessary military objective. The principle of precaution requires that available battlefield information be assessed prior to attack to decide what is proportional, and that measures be taken to ensure the minimum incidental loss of civilian life and property that is feasible.
A democratic and humane country seeks foremost to protect its civilians, and then the civilians of an enemy party. The aim of non-state terror forces, though, is to kill, terrorise and take hostage enemy civilians and to use its own as shields to hide behind.
In subverting humanitarian laws, Hamas has changed the state of war as we know it
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15.11.2023
In Gaza today, we see international humanitarian law in turmoil.
The law comes from the previous war, not the next one. The landscape of war and the ways in which conflicts are fought have shifted dramatically over the past eighty years.
The Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.Credit: Samar Abu Elouf
Wars are now fought mostly within cities, and increasingly, well-organised and equipped terrorist forces such as Hamas, Al-Qaeda and ISIS are the main military aggressors, not armies. Urban guerrilla warfare tactics are boosted by new........
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