Thursday, February 12 2004

Hamas' Use of Human Shields

IMRA says photos like this one from Reuters yesterday in Gaza go a long way toward explaining why Palestinian civilian casulties are so high:

Says IMRA:

A Reuters photograph taken in Shijaia in the Gaza Strip published in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz today shows armed masked terrorists taking up firing positions surrounded by Palestinian boys and young men. ( www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/images/printed/P120204/a.0.1202.20.2.9.jpg )

The reckless attitude of the Palestinian terrorists towards Palestinian
civilians plays a key role in the fatalities statistics as presented by the
International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at the
Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya (see below).

While 40% of Israeli non-combatant fatalities 27 September 2000 through 10
February 2004 were female, only 9.3% of Palestinian non-combatants killed
were female. While Palestinian terrorist murdered 221 Israeli
non-combatants aged 45 and over, there were a total of 80 Palestinian
fatalities aged 45 and over.

The data shows that the deaths of Palestinian "Non-Combatants" is far from
the random result one would expect from the deaths of non-combatants who die
because they happened by chance to have the bad fortune to be in a
"non-combatant location (on a bus, in a cafe, etc. in the course of a normal
day).

This is also a direct transgression of international law. Article 28 of the 4th Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War reads:

The presence of a protected person [e.g., civilians] may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.

Posted at 10:28 PM

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