Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director of Human Rights Watch, told the international development committee in Westminster that even if Israel’s claim that Hamas was using civilians in hospitals and schools as human shields was true, the burden was on the “attacking party” to evacuate them.
That is absurd. International law does not say this anywhere.
The ICRC IHL Rule 28 says:
Medical units exclusively assigned to medical purposes must be respected and protected in all circumstances. They lose their protection if they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy.
State practice establishes the exception under customary international law that the protection of medical units ceases when they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy. This exception is provided for in the First and Fourth Geneva Conventions and in both Additional Protocols.[37] It is contained in numerous military manuals and military orders.[38] It is also supported by other practice.[39]......It is further specified in State practice that prior to an attack against a medical unit which is being used to commit acts harmful to the enemy, a warning has to be issued setting, whenever appropriate, a reasonable time-limit and that an attack can only take place after such warning has remained unheeded.[42] These procedural requirements are also laid down in the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols.[43]
Logic dictates that it is obviously the responsibility of the party that violated IHL to remediate it.
In fact, according to IHL, a hospital is either a medical unit or it is a military target. As soon as it loses its protection as a medical unit it can be attacked. Patients must be protected as much as possible under the principle of proportionality as with any other human shields, but the hospital itself loses its status as a protected site. Israel is going way above and beyond this law, by saying that it is only targeting specific parts of the hospital and allowing most of it to remain functioning. Israel is even providing medical equipment.
This is probably unprecedented in military history.
Yet "human rights groups" have a much higher principle of international law they adhere to, an unwritten Rule 162: whatever Israel does is illegal by definition, and if they cannot find what Israel is doing wrong, they will fabricate something.
Here is yet another example of "international law" that has been made up out of thin air just for Israel.
Ahmed cemented her own status as a liar when she added:
“We know all roads out of Shifa are blocked,” she said. “There is no way for people to leave.”
Yet thousands of people who were sheltering at Shifa did leave over the past couple of days using evacuation corridors set up by Israel, after more than adequate Israeli warnings for weeks.
HRW lies about Israel. Consistently, knowingly and maliciously.
