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International Solidarity Movement
Source: The Electronic Intifada
On Sunday, Nov. 19, hundreds of Palestinian civilians crowded
into the building where the family of Mohammed Baroud and a number
of other families live in Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli military forces had warned that the building would be
attacked. The planned Israeli attack was deterred by this action.
Two hours later, the scene was replicated at the family home of
Mohammed Nawajeh, with the same results.
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) applauds the
people of Jabalya for their courageous and effective use of
nonviolent resistance, and we express our full solidarity with their
actions, which are positive initiatives in the struggle to defend
Palestinian rights. We encourage international volunteers to
participate in these actions, as did Father Peter Dougherty and
Sister Mary Ellen Gundeck of the Michigan Peace Team.
We note with disappointment that Human Rights Watch (HRW)
chose to condemn these actions, suggesting that they could
constitute a "war crime." In a November 22, 2006 press release
entitled, "OPT: Civilians Must Not Be Used to Shield Homes Against
Military Attacks" HRW Middle East Director Sarah Leah Whitson said,
"There is no excuse for calling civilians to the scene of a planned
attack. Whether or not the home is a legitimate military target,
knowingly asking civilians to stand in harm's way is unlawful."
HRW's press release is factually, legally, and morally
flawed.
HRW based its statement on contested factual information. HRW
claimed that "Palestinian armed groups" and Mohammed Baroud
encouraged civilians to gather around the homes. However, while some
press accounts mention Baroud's role, numerous other press and
participant accounts from Gaza suggest that the mobilizations
resulted from calls by civilian leaders and a groundswell of popular
anger against Israeli home demolitions.
As just one example, Eyad Bayary, a head nurse at Jabalya
Hospital who went to Baroud's home with another twenty of his
neighbors, told ISM that he did not hear a call from Baroud asking
people to protect his home. He and his neighbors went to support
Baroud and his family and to protest the shelling out of their own
volition. "I live next to Mr. Baroud's family home. If his home is
shelled at best my home would be damaged. My wife is in the six
month of her pregnancy. God forbid, a shelling of the house next
door could endanger her and the child she is carrying. All our
children would be affected. We went to the Baroud family house
because we were scared and angry. No one asked us to come."
In addition to this factual weakness, we believe that HRW's
position reflects serious errors in the interpretation and
application of international humanitarian law (IHL), in two
fundamental respects: (1) HRW's position explicitly rejects
considering the legitimacy of the target as relevant to the legal
analysis; and (2) HRW's position erroneously places the burden of
protecting civilian lives on the population being attacked instead
of on the belligerents carrying out the attack.
According to HRW, "In the case where the object of attack is
not a legitimate military target, calling civilians to the scene
would still contravene the international humanitarian law imperative
for parties to the conflict to take all feasible precautions to
protect civilians from the effects of attack." IHL clearly makes
target legitimacy central to the determination of lawful vs.
unlawful conduct. Protocol I of the Geneva Convention, Article 51(7)
provides that "Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement
of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to
attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield
military operations." Article 52 of the same Protocol makes clear
that a civilian home is a civilian object and not a military
objective. Even if Mohammed Baroud and Mohammed Nawajeh are military
commanders, their families, their family homes and the homes of
other families in the same buildings are not military objectives.
Therefore, the Geneva Convention's prohibition on the use of
civilians to shield military objectives does not apply to the
voluntary gathering of Palestinian civilians to protect civilian
objects like the homes of Baroud and Nawajeh from a pending Israeli
attack. Rather, Israel's targeting of these homes constitutes a
violation of numerous provisions of IHL that proscribe attacks on
civilian property, and of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva
Convention, strictly prohibiting the destruction of property for the
purpose of collective punishment.
While IHL places obligations on all parties to a conflict to
take "all feasible precautions" to protect civilians from the
effects of attack, HRW does not cite support for its claim that
encouraging civilians to defend their homes from military strikes
constitutes a violation of this imperative. In fact, Protocol I,
Article 57 relating to precautions in attack, specifically places
the obligation to protect civilians on "those who plan or decide
upon an attack." (Protocol I, Art. 57(2)(a)). Furthermore, providing
warning does not absolve Israel of its responsibility not to attack
civilian objects, nor does it make the civilian objects legitimate
military targets.
The error of HRW's interpretation of IHL is even more obvious
when we consider that HRW statements like "Civilians Must Not Be
Used to Shield Homes Against Military Attacks" and "knowingly asking
civilians to stand in harm's way is unlawful" would proscribe many
completely legitimate forms of nonviolent resistance in occupied
peoples' struggles. The Fourth Geneva Convention and its Additional
Protocols were never intended to permit an aggressor to choose his
targets at will, while putting the onus on the civilian victims to
get out of the way. Nor were these laws created to prevent civilians
from exercising their right to defend their property.
The condemnation of nonviolent efforts by civilians to
prevent the destruction of civilian homes also represents a failure
of moral judgment on the part of HRW. To condemn nonviolent actions
in this way is to confuse civil resistance with the forcible use of
"human shields" by military combatants, such as those documented by
the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem in its November, 2002
report "Human Shield". The report describes Israeli military
seizures of Palestinian civilians, forcing them to walk in front of
soldiers and sometimes placing them on the hoods of their vehicles
to deter attacks against their military personnel. These Israeli
military actions are clearly war crimes (though HRW failed to label
them as such in its April, 2002 report, "In a Dark Hour: The Use of
Civilians during IDF Arrest Operations"). It is a mistake to extend
this principle to the courageous voluntary participation of unarmed
individuals in mass nonviolent actions in defense of their human
rights.
By condemning nonviolent civilian resistance in this way, HRW
endangers those practicing it, and undermines the work of other
human rights groups and the credibility of HRW itself. ISM calls
upon HRW to retract its November 22 press release and to recognize
the courage and the legitimacy of the actions of the Palestinian
community in Jabalya.
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