Friday, July 12, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
Most of the article is a restatement of well-known international law that one can see elsewhere on the ICRC website. But then it adds something I have never seen elsewhere in a situation where the hospital had been turned into a legitimate military target by being used as a base for attack:
When they are used to interfere directly or indirectly in military operations, and thereby cause harm to the enemy, the rationale for their specific protection is removed. This would be the case for example if a hospital is used as a base from which to launch an attack; as an observation post to transmit information of military value; as a weapons depot; as a center for liaison with fighting troops; or as a shelter for able-bodied combatants.....
An attacking party remains also bound by the obligation to take precautions in attack, in particular to do everything feasible to avoid or at least minimize harm to patients and medical personnel who may have nothing to do with those acts and for whom the humanitarian consequences will be especially dire. The following measures should be taken to minimize the direct and indirect impact of such an attack on the provision of health-care services, whenever feasible and operationally relevant:• Prepare a contingency plan to address the estimated disruption to health-care services and to re-establish full delivery as soon as possible.• Consider measures both for the evacuation of patients and medical personnel and for them to be taken properly in charge.• Interrupt the attack if the facility no longer meets the criteria leading to the loss of protected status (e.g. combatants have fled from the medical facility).• After the attack, facilitate or implement measures for the rapid restoration of health-care services (e.g. provide military medical support for the civilian medical facility).
I have never seen anyone else ever tell an army that they had to actively work to help fix the enemy's medical system. Certainly they should avoid unnecessary damage and minimize the operations to do everything to avoid civilian harm. But to demand that they create plans and implement measures to rebuild the facilities goes way beyond anything I've seen in international law.
Yes, the ICRC adds caveats. They say the attacking army "should" (not "must) take these measure and only when feasible. But that is a slippery slope towards demanding Israel do things that no army in history has ever done, or has been expected to do, without a full occupation of the territory.
I could not find anything close to this on the ICRC website. Their Customary IHL section on medical units does not mention any of this. I'm not aware of any nation's army manuals that say anything remotely like this.
Once again, Israel is being expected to act in ways that no one else is. Those ways generally make it more difficult to win the war.
It is not a coincidence.
(h/t Irene)
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