International Humanitarian Law (IHL) makes it a war crime for Hamas to target civilians but also limits how Israel wages war, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth has said.

“They are unconditional requirements, not contingent on the behaviour of the other side,” he said.

“The most serious violations are subject to prosecution by the International Criminal Court, whose involvement is urgently needed.”

The law stipulates that military forces must refrain from launching indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas, even when there are valid military targets present. “The Israeli military’s flattening of certain Gaza neighbourhoods appears to violate this rule,” Roth stressed.

IHL also mandates that combatants must avoid targeting a military objective, even if it is a legitimate one if the expected harm to civilians is excessive. The Israeli military’s destruction of extensive residential complexes, leading to the displacement of numerous families, appears to contravene this principle.

“In the past, the Israeli military has cited a Hamas presence in these large complexes to justify the destruction, but it is hard to see how the military advantage justifies the enormous civilian cost. The point seems to be the destruction,” said the former HRW director.

Moreover, the “warring parties are required to allow humanitarian aid to civilians in need” yet soon after Oct 7, the Israeli government blocked all food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity to the 2.2 million people of Gaza — an act of illegal “collective punishment”. It has also not allowed in the much-needed fuel to “run desalination plants and the generators that hospitals require to treat the many civilians injured by Israeli bombing.”

Israeli also did not give an effective warning to allow civilians to flee, rather its “evacuation order for the 1.1 million civilians of northern Gaza made a mockery of the humane purpose of this requirement, because the Israeli military continued to bomb southern Gaza as well as the route to get there, and Israel’s siege left southern Gaza with no resources to receive this huge influx of people”.

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