Israel will not bow to international pressure

Israel is fighting a war on many fronts. There is a ground war in Gaza, as the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) seek to pinpoint terrorists hiding among civilians, and to free the hostages brutally abducted by Hamas. There are attacks from Israel’s northern border by Hezbollah terrorists, who threaten to unleash 150,000 rockets on Israel’s civilian population. These battles between Islamist-fundamentalist terror and liberal democracy are painfully evident.

But there is another vicious war being waged against Israel and Western values. It is conducted not from the Hamas tunnels under Gaza’s schools, hospitals and mosques, but from the political, academic and media institutions of the West.

International law is being misrepresented, and even inverted, to attack the only democracy in the Middle East and to justify and defend Hamas’s terrorism.

This “lawfare” has focused on three aspects of Israel’s response to Hamas’s October 7 massacre – Israel’s proportionality, its siege of Gaza, and its efforts to distinguish between terrorists and civilians.

Proportionality under the law of armed conflict is not a comparison of the casualty figures on each side. Proportionality requires that the risk to civilians in any strike must not be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage. This principle requires responsible armies to mitigate civilian casualties as far as possible.

The laws of war acknowledge that collateral damage is unavoidable in armed conflict. Indeed, according to UN statistics, the global average ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths is a disturbing 9:1. In Israel’s last operation in Gaza, in May this year, the IDF achieved a civilian-to-combatant ratio of 0.6:1. Hamas’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields consistently seeks to undermine Israel’s unparalleled efforts in this regard.

The IDF goes further than any army in the history of warfare to protect civilian lives. By giving advance notice of its military targets, the IDF provides civilians (and, of course, the terrorists) with opportunities to evacuate, often at the expense of achieving military objectives. By contrast, Hamas has used roadblocks to prevent civilians from evacuating, cynically increasing casualties in an effort to pile international pressure on the nation to cease its self-defence. Awful footage from Gaza shows Hamas gunning down its own people as they evacuate southwards.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza is a lawful response to Hamas’s well-documented use of Humanitarian supplies to support its terrorist activities. Water pipes are used to build rockets, ambulances to transport terrorists, and fuel stolen from hospitals and UNRWA compounds supplies 300 miles of Hamas terror tunnels.

There is no requirement in international law for any state to supply its enemies with electricity. Hamas has claimed for three weeks that hospitals in Gaza are running out of fuel. Since the October 7 attacks, 10,000 rockets have  been fired on Israeli civilians, powered by resources intended for Gaza’s civilians.

In accordance with international humanitarian law, Israel distinguishes between Hamas terrorists and Gazan civilians. This is a distinction that, unsurprisingly, the Hamas-run Gaza “Health Ministry” does not make when it announces casualty figures. Their figures – if they are to be believed at all – likely include many legitimate military targets. They also include civilians killed by the hundreds of Palestinian rockets that have fallen short in Gaza, such as the one that hit the Al-Ahli hospital car park, which was initially, without any evidential basis, blamed on Israel.

Distinguishing between civilians and legitimate military targets in Gaza is no easy task. Some of the 18,000 Gazan “civilians” with permits to work in Israel collected valuable intelligence for the Hamas attack on October 7, down to whether or not families had dogs, and how many children were in each household. CCTV footage and eye-witness accounts indicate that, after the initial wave of terrorists, ordinary Gazan “civilians” descended on the ruined southern Israeli communities to kill, kidnap, loot, and vandalise.

International humanitarian law was developed after the Second World War to prevent Nazi atrocities from being committed ever again. These same laws are now being abused in an attempt to discredit Israel’s legitimate response and prevent the only Jewish state from ensuring “never again”.

We are seeing the same “lawfare” conducted against Israel that we have seen in every conflict it has endured with Gaza. But this time, there is a crucial difference –this time, Israel will not succumb to international pressure. This time, it will eliminate Hamas. 

Natasha Hausdorff is a barrister and legal director at UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust