Guest: How can Israel defend itself without accusations of disproportionality?
JERUSALEM — The images of destruction after the battle between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas that began July 20 in the Shajaiya neighborhood in the Gaza Strip have caused many to declare, in a now-frequent refrain, that the IDF is behaving “disproportionately.” Some commentators are simply dressing up in sophisticated language their belief that Israel is using excessive force, but others clearly mean to accuse Israel of violating the laws of war — specifically, of violating the doctrine of proportionality. These accusations have no merit.
Shajaiya was not just another neighborhood in Gaza, but rather a crown jewel of Hamas’ effort to intertwine civilians and terrorists to complicate Israel’s ability to defend itself. Shajaiya was crisscrossed with an elaborate network of underground bunkers and tunnels containing production equipment for the manufacture of rockets, storage facilities for rockets and other weapons, and launching sites from which the rockets were fired at Israeli towns. It was a civilian area where Hamas embedded its most important military capabilities, precisely to encourage condemnation of Israel should the IDF be forced to fight there.
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Israel had three choices in how to deal with Shajaiya. First, it could have decided that it had every right to use overwhelming force to neutralize the neighborhood with air power, ignoring the question of collateral damage to civilians, much like the Allied bombing campaigns of World War II, or NATO’s three-month campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, in which 40,000 homes were destroyed. This option was not even a consideration for the IDF.
Second, looking at how Hamas had embedded its military capabilities within civilian neighborhoods, Israel could have decided there was nothing it could do, thus allowing Hamas to strike at Israeli population centers with impunity. Such a decision would have granted Hamas a license to kill Israelis, something no Israeli government — indeed any accountable democracy — could do.
Finally, there was the decision that Israel ultimately made: Separate, as much as possible, the civilian population from the Hamas fighters and arms in their midst. This required getting the Palestinian population to evacuate potential target areas by multiple means: dropping leaflets with evacuation routes, breaking into Hamas radio broadcasts with warnings about specific areas, Arabic-language telephone calls to homes and text messages to cellphones. While the notification process was under way, an Israeli drone would hover over the area that was to be cleared to ensure that residents had left.
Against this Israeli effort, Hamas employed a counter-strategy of trying to prevent civilians from heeding Israeli warnings. On July 8, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri appeared on local television and called on Gazans to serve as human shields against Israeli air attacks. Hamas enforcers sought to dissuade civilians from fleeing. And, anticipating a ground incursion into neighborhoods like Shajaiya, Hamas booby-trapped whole rows of homes, hoping to collapse them on Israeli soldiers. This only magnified the scale of the destruction.
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