12/14/2023–|Last updated: 12/14/202302:32 PM (Mecca time)
The American magazine Newsweek said that civilian casualties have become the central issue in the war launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip, which has exposed it to condemnation throughout the world.
The magazine indicated – in its investigation – that the most prominent condemnations came from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who agreed that the number of casualties in Gaza was “astonishing and very large.”
For his part, US President Joe Biden said that although the Israelis received support from European countries and the United States, they “began to lose support due to the indiscriminate bombing that is taking place.”
The large number of Palestinian deaths has sparked accusations that Israel is committing war crimes and even genocide, “on the assumption that civilians are being deliberately targeted,” the investigation said.
Interviews
Newsweek spoke with more than 10 Israeli officers, retired military personnel, and US military and intelligence officers, in an attempt to answer the question of whether the dead and wounded among Palestinian civilians who fell in the war were really that many.
The magazine assured all those it spoke with that it would not reveal their identities so that they could speak frankly. I also spoke with prominent human rights experts.
Although it acknowledges that the number of casualties in Gaza is “alarming,” Newsweek believes that it does not appear to be disproportionate to the type of measures used under international law, noting that it based its conclusions on new and exclusive data about the scale of Israeli attacks.
However, a US Air Force officer who participated in deliberations within the administration of President Joe Biden and discussions with his Israeli counterparts, said that “part of the problem in the end has to do with Israel’s arrogance,” adding that the simple truth is that Israel lost the information war because it destroyed a lot, even if “They could have justified every individual attack.”
The Israeli attack on Gaza – according to a Newsweek investigation – is one of the most intense attacks in recent times, as it takes place in an area of 365 square kilometers, almost twice the size of the American capital, Washington, and is inhabited by about 2.3 million people.
Intensity of attacks
According to previously unpublished information – as the magazine says – Israel struck about 25,000 “targets” in Gaza from the air, land and sea, and fired about 140,000 missiles, 60% of which were artillery shells and 40% were launched by aircraft.
Government authorities in Gaza say that at least 24,500 civilians were martyred – including those missing under the rubble, which the international humanitarian community acknowledges as true.
According to the Palestinian authorities, about 10,000 buildings were destroyed, including high-rise buildings, with nearly 10 times that number damaged.
Israel says it has identified more than 800 tunnel openings in a 300-mile underground system, and destroyed more than half of them. It also claims to have killed more than 6,000 Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) fighters, and captured another 2,000.
A senior US military intelligence officer claims that the Israeli bombing was “accurate” and caused “serious” harm to civilians.
In contrast to this claim, Ken Roth, former director of Human Rights Watch and visiting professor at Princeton University, says that “it is difficult to believe that such widespread destruction was necessary to confront the threat posed by Hamas,” reflecting a view shared by many. In the American government.
Under international law, the principle of proportionality requires armed forces to refrain from launching attacks that would cause “excessive harm to civilians in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected to be achieved.”
Attacking forces must take “feasible” precautions to reduce risks to civilians.
The American magazine reported that Israel declined to comment on the issues raised in this investigation.
An Israeli Air Force officer who agreed to speak informally said the number of civilian deaths was “small” given the nature of the conflict.
Newsweek continues its investigation and says that there may not be a definitive answer to the military and strategic question of what number of civilian casualties is considered acceptable.
She continued to say that external organizations – such as the Iraq Death Count Organization, the Armed Conflict Locations and Events Data Project, and the London-based “Airwars” company that tracks and archives international air wars – all sought to assess civilian deaths in Gaza by comparing the number with other modern conflicts. From Syria to Ukraine.
Although all of these assessments concluded that the war on Gaza was “unprecedented,” they did not answer how to determine the magnitude of the number of civilian casualties that occurred.
According to the journalistic investigation, Israel has questioned the validity of the Palestinian numbers on the grounds that they include Hamas fighters, claiming that civilian deaths are the result of the movement’s mistakes “because it hides behind them, or under schools and hospitals, or that it itself has caused many deaths with its own weapons.”
According to US intelligence estimates, the Israeli Air Force once dropped nearly 2,000 bombs weighing a total of more than a thousand tons of explosives within 72 hours.
Attack on civilians
Newsweek says that according to estimates by the Israeli army and American intelligence, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, has a little more than 25,000 fighters distributed among 24 battalions consisting of 140 combat companies, including infantry, rocket artillery, anti-tank and aircraft, and defense units. And engineering.
If 17,000 other fighters affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement are added to this number, the total number reaches about 42,000 fighters, according to the Israeli army.
Newsweek concludes its investigation with a statement by a senior American intelligence officer in which he stated, “Israel is waging its campaign under the pretext that it is destroying Hamas, while it says that it has killed – after two months – only about 20% of the pre-war estimates of the number of fighters,” expressing his fear that what it is doing “In fact, it is an attack on civilians.”