Reply #27: Actually... [View All]

[Devils Advocate NZ]

Under International law, the death of civilians is not illegal.

This is a common fallacy. People seem to think that as long as you are not intentionally targetting a civillian, that their death is not illegal as per the Geneva Convention.

This is in fact not the whole truth. In reality, civillian deaths must be proportionate the military advantage gained by striking the target.

Here is the operative phrase in the Convention:

5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate:

<SNIP>

b. an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
http://www.deoxy.org/wc/wc-proto.htm

In other words, killing five civillians to take out one terrorist is actually a breach of the convention, especially when there are hundreds or thousands of terrorists, and the death of this one terrorist would not change much in the way of the terrorist campaign.

Even more of a breach is a targetted assasination of a suspected terrorist. There is no "concrete and direct" military advantage gained by such an assasination because in most cases the terrorist involved is not actually engaged in combat at the time.

Now let's also look at the destruction of houses belonging to the families of suicide bombers. In this case the terrorist involved is already dead, and the destruction of the house can in no way be said to prevent the act that has already occured. Thus it is illegal under both the above provision and this one:

6. Attacks against the civilian population or civilians by way of reprisals are prohibited.

Destroying the house of a suicide bomber is a reprisal against his or her family and thus is illegal under the Geneva Convention.

Now many Israelis and their supporters will point out that Palestinian terrorists have breached the convention, and use this as an excuse for their own breaches. This itself is a breach of the convention which states:

8. Any violation of these prohibitions shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians, including the obligation to take the precautionary measures provided for in Article 57.

Another common excuse is that a civilian that is killed was a suspected terrorist. The Convention also covers this case:

1. A civilian is any person who does not belong to one of the categories of persons referred to in Article 4 A 111, lIl, (31 and 161 of the Third Convention and in Article 43 of this Protocol. In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.

So suspicion is not enough to clasify someone as a combatant. If there is doubt (as in the case of "suspected" terrorists) then the person is to be considered a civilian as per the Convention.

Now it may be said that a person was previously involved in combat, and thus they are a terrorist due solely to that past act. The Convention also covers this:

3. Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this Section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.

In other words past actions are not an excuse. Unless they are actively part of hostilities at the time they are targetted, they are to be considered a civillian. Thus a suspected terrorist is obviously an excluded target because he or she is not actively involved in hostilities at the time of their targetting, and there is doubt as to whether they have ever been actively involved in hostilites.

The fact is that Israel breaches the Geneva Convention and International Law on a daily basis in the Occupied Territories.