Israel’s account of attack raises legal questions
Does Israel have procedures in place to identify civilians and protect them as required by law?
Israel’s account of its attack on a World Central Kitchen convoy raises significant legal questions even if the strike was the result of a series of mistakes, experts say.
The Israeli military announced Friday its preliminary investigation had revealed a string of errors that led to the deaths of seven aid workers, and it took responsibility for the failures.
Even so, the incident raises broader questions about the military’s ability to identify civilians and its procedures for protecting them, legal experts told The New York Times— including new concerns about whether Israel has been complying with international law in its conduct of the war in the Gaza Strip.
Presume civilian status
The first, most basic principle of international humanitarian law is that civilians cannot be targets of a military attack. Militaries must have procedures in place to distinguish between civilians and legitimate military targets.
“In the case of doubt ... one is to presume civilian status,” said Tom Dannenbaum, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and an expert on humanitarian law. “Attacking in the context of doubt is itself a violation of international humanitarian law,” he said.
Humanitarian aid workers and aid facilities are entitled to heightened protections because they deliver relief to endangered civilians, said Janina Dill, co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.
“These are civilian vehicles, first and foremost,” she said, referring to the World Central Kitchen convoy. “They’re also vehicles involved in humanitarian assistance missions, which are specifically protected. The people on these trucks should be presumed to be individuals involved in humanitarian assistance missions, which means they are protected persons.”
Different presumptions
Instead, Israeli soldiers presumed some of the World Central Kitchen vehicles were carrying militants, according to the Israeli military’s explanation.
Some officers did not review the military’s own documentation about the convoy. If they had, they would have discovered the cars had received approvals from the military.
The cars were each marked with the World Central Kitchen logo, but the military said its preliminary inquiry found drone footage had not captured the organization’s logo in the dark and a drone operator had mistakenly identified an aid worker as a member of an armed Palestinian group with a gun. (The worker was most likely carrying a bag.)
Once the Israeli soldiers involved decided to strike one car, they then failed to give a presumption of civilian status to the other individuals riding in the cars, who were not believed to be armed. Instead, the soldiers wrongly assumed all three cars were carrying militants, officials said, and targeted the cars in turn, even as survivors from the preceding strikes sought safety in the remaining vehicles. This failed to meet the Israeli military’s rules of engagement, officials said.
For months, aid organizations have urged the Israeli military to open a direct channel with Israeli soldiers operating in Gaza so as to avoid deadly miscommunications, said Jamie McGoldrick, a senior United Nations relief official. After the strike, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said he had ordered the establishment of a “joint situation room” between the military’s southern command and aid groups.
Insufficient protocals
At least 196 aid workers were killed in Gaza from October to late March, according to the Aid Worker Security Database.
“There’s a pattern here of attacks against humanitarian assistance missions,” Dill said.
“This pattern of attacks is either intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence,” Christopher Lockyear, secretary-general of Doctors Without Borders, an international humanitarian organization with operations in Gaza, said at a news conference Thursday. “Our movements are shared, coordinated and identified already. This is about impunity, a total disregard for the laws of war. And now it must become about accountability.”
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the statements made by the international law experts for this story.