Collective Punishment

So, apparently the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza had some number of its staff involved in the October 7 attack on Israel.  This has resulted in numerous countries halting funding of UNRWA.  The best estimates I can find are that somewhere in the range of a dozen employees of UNRWA are involved.  That’s 12 people - in an organization of thousands, just in Gaza.

There’s a problem here.  The problem is that this amounts to little more than collective punishment. I know that Israel takes the position that anyone near or around someone who had anything to do with the October 7 attacks must be Hamas-aligned.  

In some ways, this is a variation on the “Nazi Bar” analogy, which basically postulates that if you don’t deal immediately and aggressively with Nazis in your bar, you will end up with a Nazi bar in fairly short order.  Israel is essentially arguing that anyone within 10’ of a Hamas supporter is Hamas, and therefore UNRWA is Hamas.  

The problem with the approach being taken in Gaza, and with UNRWA is this:  It isn’t dealing with holding the offenders responsible for their actions, it is in fact holding everyone in the room responsible for their actions.  Returning to the Nazi Bar idea for a moment, it’s as if we have a single Nazi in the bar, so we blow the whole bar up immediately without regard for the other patrons in the bar.  Is the couple sitting at a table having a quiet conversation a pair of Nazis?  No - we have a patron in the bar that is a Nazi, and by blowing up the whole establishment, we are engaging in collective punishment.  

In fact, Israel’s whole approach to the current situation in Gaza demonstrates a collective punishment approach.  They have systematically levelled infrastructure in Gaza regardless of whether it is explicitly Hamas militant or civilian housing.  In essence, Israel has said “we’re going to carpet bomb Gaza into the Stone Age”, and clearly has no interest in distinguishing between Hamas militants and civilian residents.  Sadly, this approach will do little except harden people against each other further, lending further internal justification to the hard line approach taken on both sides of this conflict.  

Let’s say the current focus on UNRWA ends up dismantling the organization for a moment.  What does that accomplish besides making life that much worse for the Palestinian people already marginalized and abused under Israel’s bombardment of Gaza?  Does it solve anything at all?

Now, before anybody starts “yabutting” at me about what Hamas did on October 7, 2023 as justification, let me be abundantly clear here:  What Hamas did on that day was wrong for many of the same reasons that what Israel’s government is doing in Gaza is wrong.  When it comes to this conflict, we can trace it back centuries, and longer - and I assure you that neither side has a lock on “right”.  The simple fact of the matter is that collective punishment for any wrong is never successful.

How War In Gaza Should Change The Rules Of War

Current international law on war is largely derived from the fallout of WWII.  It’s seen a little bit of trimming around the edges, but for the most part it is the child of WWII.  That it has lasted over 70 years with only minimal change is in some respects creditable.  Israel’s actions in Gaza should result in massive changes to it.

Let me explain.  Gaza presents unique challenges to the conduct of war.  We have a region that is half the size of a major North American city - Calgary, AB - with a population that is at least double that of Calgary.  To say it is densely built is an understatement. That necessarily means that just about any major action in Gaza is going to result in massive civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure. 

Where this represents a serious challenge for current laws is that current international law doesn’t really deal with the kind of messy, asymmetric situation we have in Gaza, where the belligerents in Gaza are embedded deeply with the civilian population, and actual military assets are commingled with civilian infrastructure.  

This necessarily means that heavy-handed strategies like “carpet bombing” are simply invalid - the odds of massive damage that unreasonably harms civilians is far too high.  To this point, Israel has simply bombed the hell out of locations and then turned around and claimed “but Hamas was there”.  That seems to be something of a truism - in the 15 years since Hamas took control of the Gaza, they no doubt have built an enormous infrastructure for their military ambitions and have embedded it in the densely built up urban areas for both military and political reasons.

Here is where Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ runs up against the rights of the civilian population of Gaza.  Israel cannot justifiably claim “Hamas” and exempt itself from the impact on Gaza’s civilians.  Regardless of where the conflict is taking place, we have to recognize that the belligerents are fundamental military and governmental constructs, not civilian.  Recognizing the nature of political and governmental power, we cannot claim that the civilians are directly responsible for the actions of their governments.  

This raises the first point of rights in tension - in asymmetric warfare like we see in Gaza, where do the rights of the civilian population take precedence?  Intuitively, it seems a little too simplistic to have one side simply claim “bad guys here”, and bomb it into oblivion from the air.  Yet, at the same time, we also know that “street by street” fighting is just as messy and even more brutal.  

Is Israel’s “evacuate this region” approach adequate?  Or is it simply another military tactic that puts a veneer of respectability on an otherwise heavy-handed approach to the conflict?  Demanding people evacuate makes the assumption that people are in fact able to do so.  Factors ranging from poverty to illness, age, and disability can make such orders utterly impractical for some.

Allegedly, Hamas has built a huge network of tunnels underneath Gaza.  I don’t doubt that is the case, in fact the attacks on October 7 made it quite clear that is the case.  Does that give Israel the blanket right to start dropping “bunker buster” bombs on Gaza?  Or would the level of destruction that would wreak on densely populated regions render that unacceptable?  Israel’s argument is that Hamas is using the civilian population of Gaza as “human shields”.  I’m not sure that the complication that presents for military action erases the rights of those civilians.

WWII era doctrines tend to focus on destroying an enemy’s ability to arm, supply, and defend itself.  For the most part industrial and military infrastructure was separate from civilian.  In Gaza, all three are commingled, and that changes the dynamics of warfare.  My personal feeling is that if Israel wants to destroy all of the underground infrastructure, they need to resurrect the pre-aerial era roles of sappers who specialize in underground warfare.  Hamas has a tunnel network that needs to be rendered unusable?  Cool - get in there and do that.  You can make tunnel systems unusable with minimal damage to civilian infrastructure - but if you think street by street combat is ugly business, a network of tunnels is going to make that look like a walk in the park for the troops. 

Lastly, when we examine the actions of the belligerents, we cannot simply examine a singular event.  There are often years, if not decades, of grievances on both sides.  Proponents of Israel’s approach in this conflict point to decades of actions on the part of Hamas - and Hamas has a very ugly history that it is very valid to criticize.  One can also understand that the Palestinian governments are also operating in an environment that has to respond to the pressures that Israeli policy creates.  

Unfortunately, Israel’s history here is arguably no better.  Increasingly heavy-handed approaches to events have effectively walled Gaza off, and severely limited the ability of Gaza to develop itself economically.  Other aspects of Israeli policy have isolated Palestinian peoples from each other, as well as promoted division.  It’s no secret that Netanyahu has been quite happy to “feed Hamas” because it keeps the Palestinian peoples divided, and enables him to argue that there is nobody to “talk peace” with.  

This is not a simple conflict, but in its wake, the assessment of the actions of the belligerents needs to be assessed through a new lens, one that sees the right to self defence not merely as a “right in the moment”, but as a right that exists in tension with other rights, and exists in the full context of events leading up to open conflict.  We cannot simply look at October 7 and make a declaration, we must examine the full picture.

Unfortunately, such an examination will invalidate a lot of people’s presuppositions about the actions taken, regardless of their sympathies. 

About That Hospital in Gaza

There’s been a lot of discussion back and forth about the explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza.  Hamas claims it was an Israeli bomb or missile attack, Israel claims it’s the result of a failed rocket launched from within Gaza. 

I have thoughts about this.  Certainly, I agree that the site does not look like a typical high explosive device went off.  That is a point that leans away from the standard bombs that Israel has been using.  

The Israeli claim is that the rocket failed, sprayed fuel around which subsequently caught fire after something at or near ground level exploded.  The part about this that doesn’t add up entirely for me with this is twofold: 

1). The alleged rocket appears to have failed at a fairly high altitude, and if it exploded, there should be evidence of  both fuel and rocket debris in the vicinity.  That hasn’t been identified yet. 

2). IF the rocket’s fuel canisters had managed to fall to the ground, and exploded there, that might explain the smaller crater at the site, but where’s the bits of the canister?  

3). The cars - the cars really bother me here.  The pictures I’ve seen show cars that clearly were subjected to intense heat - not the kind of heat that you see when a car catches fire and causes the one adjacent to burn as well.  Assuming that the Gaza rockets use something like Hydrogen Peroxide as a fuel (it’s relatively easily made, and burns plenty hot), I’m not sure that a fuel load would result in a strong enough fire to do what has been observed.  

*For clarity - I am not an explosives or rocket expert, so I will concede that it seems possible that it could have been a failed rocket.

My concern with the failed rocket scenario is it seems just a little too pat, and too specific.  It’s the kind of specificity that I would expect with an actual forensic report of the site itself, and yet Israel trotted it out within hours. 

It also seems that the world is ignoring another line of explanation:  The use of a Thermobaric Weapon.  Those devices are designed to produce exactly the kind of effect that we see at the hospital, and they’re intended to explode above ground level as a rule.  According to Wikipedia (perhaps not the most reliable source), Israel is rumoured to have had these weapons since about 1990, and they could easily have bought them from the US as well.  

Dropping a moderate sized thermobaric weapon in the courtyard of the hospital would produce a considerable amount of damage, and more specifically could explain the damage to the cars, which were clearly subjected to an intense blast of fire.  Further, thermobaric munitions can be delivered in a variety of ways, ranging from aircraft to traditional ground based artillery.  

Even here, we need to go through the site and find any pieces of whatever container held the explosive.  That requires a far more detailed forensic analysis than is likely possible in the heat of active warfare, but it seems necessary.  Both parties in this conflict have too many reasons to assign blame to the other side to be credible. 

[Update Oct 22, 2023]:  Independent reviews by people with more knowledge than I do are lining up on the “errant rocket” hypothesis.  Although I remain somewhat skeptical of that explanation, I have no compelling evidence to the contrary.