Sinwar’s Gamble: Testing the Boundaries of Humanitarian Law in Gaza

November 4, 2024

by: Farhad Rezaei ~ JNS

Monday, 4 October 2024 | Recent documents reveal that the now-deceased Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar adamantly opposed exchanging the remaining Israeli hostages for a ceasefire, believing the international community would pressure Israel to stop fighting in order to protect the Palestinian population. This highlights the limitations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) when it comes to combating jihadi [jihad: “struggle,” war with unbelievers (in Islam)] terrorist groups.

Humanitarian standards, if applied inadequately and used to pressure only one side to uphold them, can be counterproductive. Such an imbalance allows the terror groups to survive and continue fighting, or at the very least, to prolong asymmetrical conflicts. The IHL protocols must be revised in ways that prevent terrorists and their sponsors from gaining military and public-relations advantages.

The doctrine of “radical embedding” practiced by Hamas and Hezbollah—hiding in public spaces like mosques, hospitals, schools and libraries and weaponizing women and children to achieve military gains—was developed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), with assistance from international law experts and analysts such as Hassan Abbasi, (known to some as the “Dr. Kissinger of Islam”) head of the IRGC’s Center for Borderless Security Doctrinal Analysis. Abbasi calculated that it would be difficult for enemy forces to respond without causing disproportionate civilian casualties, effectively turning noncombatants into human shields.

Abbasi was inspired by the theory of Brig. Gen. S.K. Malik, an Islamist who served on the Pakistani High Command, who in his book, The Quranic Concept of War, urged jihadists [ Muslim who advocates or participates in a jihad] to wage a relentless and ruthless war against the enemy—militants and noncombatants. Malik also asserted that Muslim civilians caught in the middle of battles had a duty to sacrifice their lives for the jihadi cause. Building on Malik’s idea, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa [Muslim edict] that sanctioned suicide bombings and allowed the use of children, often as young as 9, to participate in the war with Iraq, promising them paradise in exchange for their sacrifice. The concept of “keys to paradise” was introduced to motivate these young fighters, who were given plastic keys symbolizing their entry into heaven if they died in battle. Kids from impoverished backgrounds were often recruited for these missions, with thousands perishing in human wave attacks and while clearing minefields.

The IRGC used Malik’s ideas and Khomeini’s fatwah to create a doctrine that gave their proxies significant advantages over a regular army following what law in war (jus in bellum) dictates. To further complicate the enemy’s assault, the IRGC encouraged proxies to construct tunnels in civilian areas. In the early 1980s, the IRGC hired North Korean engineers to build an extensive network of tunnels and command bunkers for its proxies—namely, Hezbollah. Rooms with retractable roofs were added to houses to store rockets and missile launchers. Proxies were ordered to use civilian vehicles, notably ambulances, to transport fighters and military equipment. Abbasi explained that a regular army would be reluctant to kill large numbers of civilians and suffer the consequences of violating International Humanitarian Law. In other words, human shielding was a significant force multiplier since it compromised the adversary’s ability to use force effectively.

After Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, the Quds Force— the foreign operation unit of the Guards—instructed and trained them to create a “little Lebanon” there. Using the Hezbollah blueprint, Hamas created a gigantic terrorist superstructure that boasts a 310-mile [498.8 km.] tunnel system and myriads of embedding platforms in both public spaces and private homes. Aware of the IHL injunction against bombing hospitals, the Al-Qassam Brigade, the military wing of Hamas, prioritized using hospitals and clinics, including the chief medical complex in the Strip: Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The scope, dimension and sophistication of the terrorist operation discovered in the wake of the Israeli ground offensive demonstrated the group’s extensive use of human shields.

During operations in various Gaza sectors, Israeli soldiers encountered numerous instances of extreme human shielding: terrorists firing from behind women and children, mingling with hospital patients, storing equipment in hospital wards and operating theaters. Militants also fired rockets from civilian protection areas.

Encouraged by Iran, which refused to end the war, Sinwar fled to Rafah, in the southernmost part of Gaza, hoping that American and global pressure would force Israel to halt its advances into the last area of the coastal enclave. The regime and Sinwar were particularly encouraged by pressure from the Biden administration—specifically, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s warning to Israel in March against invading Rafah. The Biden team drew a clear “red line” in which a major ground operation there would lead the White House to suspend sending certain US-made offensive weapons to Israel.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignored these threats and, after an operation that destroyed most of the tunnels, forced Sinwar out into the open, where he was ultimately killed. In a supreme irony, US President Joe Biden and other leaders who had previously criticized Netanyahu congratulated him for “making the world a better place.”

The Gaza war has highlighted the limits of IHL in combating jihadi terrorist groups. Hamas exploits the suffering of Palestinian human shields to garner international sympathy. Pressuring only Israel to uphold humanitarian standards is counterproductive, as it allows these terror groups to regroup and continue their attacks. Hopefully, the circumstances surrounding the death of the Hamas arch-terrorist will lead to a revision of the Geneva Conventions on humanitarian law protocols in ways that would deprive terrorists and their sponsors of military and public-relations advantages. As they stand now, these conventions enable the deaths of countless noncombatants

Posted on November 4, 2024

Source: (This article was originally published by the Jewish News Syndicate on November 3, 2024. Time-related language has been modified to reflect our republication today. See original article at this link.)

Photo Credit: IDF/jns.org