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Hamas fighting from hospitals and schools
2023-11-09 (#097)
Question: What can Gazans encircled by the IDF do to leave Gaza City? Reply: Israel has opened a humanitarian corridor. Northern Gaza is dangerous because Hamas has embedded itself in people's homes and under hospitals and schools, making those legitiamate targets under international law, which states that medical units cannot be used to shield military targets. Indeed, the fact that Hamas has its headquarters in the basement of a hospital is a war crime! The hospital becomes a legitimate target once the IDF has taken every possible precaution to get civilians out of harm's way. Israel has a quarter million displaced persons because Israel wants to get them out of harm's way, just as it wants for the Palestinian civilians. The IDF does more than any army in the history of modern warfare to safeguard the civilians on the other side from the consequences of Hamas' actions which endanger their lives.
Video Transcription:
What.
What can Gazans do who have not been able to
leave Gaza City and now find themselves encircled by IDF?
Israel has been continuing to operate humanitarian
corridors over the last few days.
And by the way, most residents of
northern Gaza have heeded Israel's warning.
Of the 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza,
latest figures I've seen are that only 100,000
remain in the north, and that is before
the humanitarian corridors of recent days.
The fighting in northern Gaza
is going to get dangerous.
It's going to get dangerous because Hamas
has literally embedded itself under people's homes,
under schools, underneath hospitals, and those are
all legitimate targets under international law.
When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says the UK wants Israel
to win, it wants us to go after these terror
targets so they can never perpetrate the massacre again.
And we hope understanding of international law is
that they are only targets that you can
aim at as long as civilians are not
in the path of those missiles and rockets.
No, it's important that we're on
the same page about international law.
And I know that's very important for
British, very important for British audiences especially.
International law says that medical units may not be
used under any circumstances to shield military targets.
The fact that Hamas has its military headquarters in the
basement of the Shifa Hospital is a war crime. Period.
The next article of international law, I'm quoting
additional protocol, one of the Geneva Conventions, generally
taken as a fatal reflection of customary.
International law says that those medical units may
lose their protected status when they are used
to shield military targets as long as sufficient
warning has been given and every possible precaution
taken to get civilians out of harm's way.
It does not say that the targets
underneath hospitals may only be targeted once
there are no civilians in the vicinity.
It says they become legitimate targets when
our army has made every possible precaution
to get civilians out of harm's way.
And I'll remind you, it's been three weeks now that
Israeli soldiers have been placing 20,000 phone calls to residents
of Gaza, urging them to leave, dropping one and a
half million leaflets, sending 10 million SMS.
Well, from the hospitals, we understand
that it is very difficult.
Israel also has its own
internally displaced person problem.
We have a quarter of a million evacuees, including
elderly people, including sick people, who've been forced to
leave Nerod, who've been forced to leave Kiriad Shmona
up in the north, because we want to get
them out of harm's way and we want Palestinians
to get out of harm's way as well.
And we think that anyone in the international
community genuinely concerned for civilians should be helping
and encouraging that evacuation of civilians to get
them out of harm's way.
That is their responsibility under international law, instead
of criticizing Israel for doing everything it can,
more than any army in the history of
warfare, by the way, to keep the other
side civilians safe from the consequences of their
own leaders'reckless endangerment of them.
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