Are there any innocent civilians among Palestinians in Gaza?

Juan Cole 02/15/2024

www.juancole.com

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israeli President Isaac Herzog said last October that “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

Herzog’s statement is perhaps itself a war crime. But it has become a consensus in Israel. Rami Igra, a former Israeli intelligence operative, just said that “there are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza over the age of four.”

Needless to say, these heartless and fascist sentiments most resemble the attitude of the al-Qaeda terrorists, who targeted civilian buildings in New York, on the grounds that there are no innocent Americans and all of us are guilty of the crimes of US imperialism. US imperialism has committed many crimes, killing millions of innocent people. But the individuals in the World Trade Center weren’t responsible for those crimes by virtue of being Americans. (By the way, this sentiment contravenes settled Islamic law, which forbids killing non-combatants.)

What Herzog said is wrong every which way from Saturday. Hamas did not come to power in a coup. It won the 2006 election that was sponsored by the US and Israeli governments, which allowed the party to run. Since its unexpected victory was unpalatable to the then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israeli and US intelligence conspired with the Palestine Liberation Organization to overthrow the elected Hamas government. They succeeded in the West Bank but failed in Gaza.

Moreover, half of Palestinians in Gaza are children, and anyone under 18 hadn’t been born in 2006. A lot of non-minors were too young to vote for Hamas in 2006. Of the people who actually did vote, all middle aged or elderly now, some voted for the secular PLO. The proportion of people in Gaza who actually voted for Hamas in 2006 is small. And even they didn’t do anything wrong. The Bush administration pushed hard for Hamas to be able to participate in the election.

In fact, only a minority of Palestinians has ever belonged to Hamas. Much of its staying power derived from the support of Israeli intelligence, which wanted to keep the Palestinians divided. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu pleaded with the Gulf gas giant Qatar to send millions of dollars annually to Gaza, and Qatar complied, putting the money in Israeli bank accounts. It was Netanyahu who then transferred the funds to Gaza.

So it was the Israeli voters who kept putting Netanyahu into office who were bankrolling Hamas. Maybe they aren’t innocent civilians, Mr. Herzog?

This money funneled to Gaza by Israel made Hamas richer than the rest of the population and allowed it to dominate them. Hamas’s paramilitary, the Qassam Brigades, had the weaponry to put down dissidents. Israel slapped an illegal blockade on Gaza commerce in 2007, which impoverished the people, creating an unemployment rate of 54% and a youth unemployment rate of 70%.

It is well established in the social science literature that poor populations are less able to mount successful revolutions and rebellions than better-off ones. By keeping Palestinians in Gaza poor, Herzog’s government deprived them of the means to rebel against Hamas.

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There are only about 30,000 Qassam Brigades paramilitary members in Gaza (less if Israeli claims of killing a third of them are true). Even the vast majority of them were not told about the October 7 terrorist operation. In fact, only the 3,000 fighters who undertook it and the top Hamas leadership knew about it. They did not even tell Iran, since they believe Tehran is infiltrated by Mossad, Israeli intelligence. This was not a democratic decision in which a million people participated. It was the act of a small paramilitary cadre, and only part of it.

Doctors without Borders explains about the status of noncombatants:

“Under humanitarian law, all persons who are not or no longer taking part in hostilities are protected. In the context of international armed conflicts, they are referred to as “protected persons,” but they benefit from protection under humanitarian law in non-international conflicts as well. The Geneva Conventions make a distinction between several categories of persons: the wounded and sick (whether military or civilian), prisoners of war, interned or detained civilians, and civilians in occupied or enemy territory. All individuals must be treated humanely. Each category of persons benefits from a general regime of protection, which is specifically adapted to their situation. Fundamental guarantees are also provided as a minimum to all persons.”

So, Messrs. Herzog and Igra, those are the noncombatants in Gaza. The 60,000 wounded (whom you wounded even though 70% were women and children) are not combatants.

The roughly one million children in Gaza are protected persons.

And women. Doctors without Borders says, “In times of conflict, international humanitarian law gives women both general protection, as civilians, and special protection, which takes into account the fact that women may be particularly vulnerable to certain kinds of violence. This need for special protection focuses in particular on women’s needs as mothers and on the necessity to protect them more specifically from sexual violence.”

Mothers are protected persons and most adult women in Gaza are mothers. Some 60,000 women there are pregnant as we speak. They are not wielding bazookas.

Finally, since everybody in Gaza is occupied by Israel, all of them are protected persons except for the Qassam Brigades and Islamic Jihad paramilitaries that are actively firing at Israeli troops. The Israeli conceit that they are fighing a foreign country rather than militants in a territory they have occupied since 1967 is just a sleight of hand to cover up their responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, to the occupied population.

Here’s what it says:

ART. 15. — Any Party to the conflict may, either direct or through
a neutral State or some humanitarian organization, propose to the adverse Party to establish, in the regions where fighting is taking place, neutralized zones intended to shelter from the effects of war the following persons, without distinction:
a) wounded and sick combatants or non-combatants;
b) civilian persons who take no part in hostilities, and who,
while they reside in the zones, perform no work of a military
character

So, yes. They are noncombatant civilians and you must protect them.