BY ISABEL DEBRE
Updated 8:59 PM GMT, November 11, 2023
The claims and counterclaims over Gaza’s hospitals have raised pressing questions about what is allowed under international laws governing war.
International humanitarian law lends hospitals special protections during war. But hospitals can lose their protections if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
Nonetheless, there must be plenty of warning before attacks to allow for the safe evacuation of patients and medical workers, ICRC legal officer Cordula Droege said.
Even if Israel succeeds in proving Shifa conceals a Hamas command center, the tenets of international law remain in place, said Jessica Wolfendale, expert in military ethics at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.
“It doesn’t license an instant attack,” she said. “Steps need to be taken to protect the innocent as much as possible.”
If the harm to civilians is disproportionate to the military objective, the attack is illegal under international law.
In an editorial published Friday in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan issued a warning to combatants that the burden of proof is on them if they claim hospitals, schools or houses of worship have lost their protected status because they are being used for military purposes. And the bar for evidence is very high.
“If there is a doubt that a civilian object has lost its protective status, the attacker must assume that it is protected,” Khan wrote. “The burden of demonstrating that this protective status is lost rests with those who fire the gun, the missile, or the rocket in question.”
Hospitals have been caught in the crossfire during the Israel-Hamas war — both literally and in the clashing narratives of the conflict.
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www.theguardian.com
