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Fisking the UN's Gaza War Report
Must read: Robbie Sabel fisks the latest UN report on the Gaza war.
- ". . . the report should surely have explored why a military force needed to take action against an enemy in a built-up area at all."
- "It might also have been instructive for investigators to examine how far the staff of Unwra, which is composed mainly of local Palestinians from Gaza, was working with Hamas . . ."
- "The report goes on at length about Israel's use of smoke shells, hinting that there is something nefarious about their use. Yet it ignores the fact that every army in the world uses phosphorous smoke shells."
- "Only one party in the conflict cooperated with the UN, and that was Israel – a point stressed clearly by Ban Ki-moon. Hamas is unlikely to cooperate with an investigation that would open [its tactics] to full scrutiny . . ."
- ". . . despite the fact that this report, by its own admission, cannot, for example, identify whether or not Hamas was firing from near the Jabaliya school on 6 January, as Israel's own inquiries have found, it nevertheless managed to conclude that Israel was responsible for the deaths there, because Israeli troops fired the fatal shells. A just conclusion cannot be reached based on such unsubstantiated means of apportioning moral responsibility."
- Israel's routine cooperation with the UN protected more than 1,800 facilities and allowed movement of 500 vehicles and numerous convoys. It was not only a moral imperative for Israel not to harm UN facilities, but in its interests for the international legitimacy of its military campaign not to be undermined. But Israel has been rewarded for its attempts to work with the UN by receiving almost all of the blame.
Read the whole thing.
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A good article, except for an error of omission - the author should have quoted from the relevant source texts which bind Israel (signed up to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, but not to the 1977 equivalents) - and an error of fact. UN buildings enjoy immunity in normal circumstances, when all sides are observing the laws of war, but not an "absolute" immunity.
Here follow the relevant texts.
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/380?OpenDocument
Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949.
Part II. General Protection of Populations Against Certain Consequences of War
Art. 19. The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit and after such warning has remained unheeded.
Part III. Status and Treatment of Protected Persons
Art. 28. The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.
Posted by: Paul at May 7, 2009 2:46:31 PM
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