Comment by nickff 2 days ago
It seems like the purpose was to disable enemy combatants, and prevent those combatants from striking Israel; which would be a legitimate and targeted strike. Your phrasing makes it seems like the explosives were targeted at damaging the restaurants and stores (along with, perhaps all the occupants), which would not be a legitimate and targeted strike.
> Do you think the IDF considered whether civilians would be harmed, or have a good possibility of being harmed?
Presumably that would be why they didn't use bigger explosives. Or -- taking a step back -- why they used this tactic rather than dropping bombs from the air.
Eh, deniability and international response is another reason not to drop bombs from the air.
I'm not sure deniability is something Israel is prioritizing here. They know that the world will immediately know that nobody but Israel would/could have done this.
But avoiding civilian harm and managing the international response are definitely interrelated goals here, to say the least.
Deniability doesn't mean "no one thinks they know you did it." There need only be seeds of doubt (even if it's only motivated doubting) to prevent consensus from forming.
Even the tiniest seeds of doubt can be sufficient to prevent certain parties from being obligated to go to war.
Yes, it’s clear they considered it. It’s the only reason they didn’t make the explosions much more powerful. Why else?
Well there is only a limited amount of space in the container (pager housing.) Early reports were that the shaped charge was about the size of a #2 pencil eraser.
I am not making assumptions about their intentions, only relating facts as I am aware of them.
Not really. If you fire a rifle into a crowd and manage not to injure someone, you're still recklessly disregarding lives, or more poignant to this discussion, if a terrorist attack fails in some way, you'd still call it terrorism - but this is getting pedantic - the amount of videos I've seen surfacing suggests that more than a few bystanders have been injured or killed.
If they didn’t consider civilians, they could have been a lot more effective. But, they targeted combatants devices, which also limits the destruction capability of the bomb.
There is no law or custom of war that prohibits fighting in urban areas.
Except,
Rule 15:\
“In the conduct of military operations, constant care must be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects. All feasible precautions must be taken to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.”*
*Provisions common to the territories of the Parties to the conflict and to occupied territories - Article 27*
“Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity.”
*Article 51 - Protection of the civilian population*
“1. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances. 2. The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited. 3. Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this Section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities. 4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are: (a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective; (b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or (c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol;
and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction. 5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: (a) an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects; and (b) an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. 6. Attacks against the civilian population or civilians by way of reprisals are prohibited. 7. The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations. 8. Any violation of these prohibitions shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians, including the obligation to take the precautionary measures provided for in Article 57.”
*Article 48 of the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (1977):*
“In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.”
You've posted several paragraphs. It would be helpful if you'd identify the part of this you think Israel has violated, because I see none.
Broadly speaking, the Geneva Convention calls for the use of "all feasible precautions" to be taken in protecting civilians, but does not require perfection in doing so. In the context of a world where wars are normally fought with missiles and bombs, I would have thought that Israel's decision to instead target Hezbollah via tiny explosives hidden in devices known to be sold to Hezbollah members would be an extreme way of complying with this rule. If not even this is good enough, how else would you advise a nation to defend itself without violating this principle? Surely any use of conventional weaponry must also be out of the question.
None of that bans urban fighting. While the Conventions strive to minimize civilian deaths they (even the effectively optional 1977 Conventions) do not ban civilian collateral as it would simply be unrealistic and have the rest of Conventions not taken seriously.
Come off it, the design of an attack like this is absolutely designed to instil fear in the general populace as well as injure the people carrying the electronic devices. If something similar happened in a military base or a military administrative office, sure. But if you're setting off thousands of explosions in commercial and residential districts assurances that none of the bystanders need to worry about it are meaningless.
The european union for example, only considers the military wing a terror organisation.
And the claim above was that only combatants were targeted, which is wrong, even if the political wing would be universally considered a terror organisation. The term combatant is clearly defined.
People misconstrue (naively or purposefully) what it means to target as opposed to collateral damage.
My phrasing says exactly what it says - that this was indiscriminate. Do you think the IDF considered whether civilians would be harmed, or have a good possibility of being harmed? Surely blowing up thousands of devices in a major urban area would fall somewhere under this consideration.