Israel seeks to rewrite the laws of war
Palestinians survey the debris of tents following an Israeli bombardment of al-Mawasi camp that killed more than 90 people, in the Gaza Strip on 13 July 2024
Neve Gordon writes in Al Jazeera on 15 July 2024:
Most people probably don’t know this, but Wikipedia has a page called “List of Israeli assassinations”. It begins in July 1956 and stretches over 68 years until today. The majority on the list are Palestinians; among them are famous Palestinian leaders including Ghassan Kanafani of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Fatah’s Khalil Ibrahim al-Wazir – also known as Abu Jihad; Hamas’s Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Fathi Shaqaqi.
When looking at the long list, it is impossible not to notice that the number of assassinations and assassination attempts Israel has carried out over the years has increased exponentially: from 14 in the 1970s to well over 150 in the first decade of the new millennium and 24 since January 2020.
I was reminded of this list when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a news conference on July 13 to celebrate Israel’s attempt to kill Hamas’s military commander Mohammed Deif in Gaza. Israeli fighter jets and drones had just hammered al-Mawasi camp, which now houses an estimated 80,000 displaced Palestinians living in densely populated tents.
Within just a few minutes of the fusillade, the pilots had massacred at least 90 Palestinians, including scores of women and children, while injuring an additional 300 people. All of this occurred in an area Israel had previously designated a “safe zone”. As gruesome images of dead bodies charred and shredded to pieces filled social media, reports surfaced that Israel had used several United States-made guided half-tonne bombs.
In his news conference at the Ministry of Defence headquarters in Tel Aviv just a few hours after this bloodbath, Netanyahu admitted that he was “not absolutely certain” that Deif had been killed but maintained that “just the attempt to assassinate Hamas commanders delivers a message to the world, a message that Hamas’s days are numbered”.