It's rather simple. As a general rule, civilians in the Gaza Strip know if they are near a target. You don't live next to a rocket manufacturing, storage or launch site without knowing about it.
The IDF have gone to great pains to warn civilians not to go near these sites, or to mix with combatants.
They send text messages, drop leaflets, even make phone calls with recorded messages to the affected areas. They perform 'roof knocks' (using non-lethal bombs) to warn civilians they are in the vicinity of a target.
The ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in the Gaza Strip is well below that of any comparable conflict as a result.
You are not disputing that they are bombing a densely populated area. You are saying that they have to take precautions because they are bombing a heavily populated area.
Still they are rather humane compared to their enemy who is actively targeting civilians. And have been doing that so for years.
What is your solution to this conflict that doesn't include wiping the only national state for the Israeli people, created by UN, off the map? Hamas has been quite clear there will be no lasting peace until that has happened as far as I know. (Full disclosure: I don't read arabic so I'm have to trust the translations but they seem to agree.)
sorry, but when you look at civilian death rate and compare both sides the story is very different. whatever measures the IDF claims it is taking, it clearly isn't working.
> sorry, but when you look at civilian death rate and compare both sides the story is very different. whatever measures the IDF claims it is taking, it clearly isn't working.
In what sense is it not working? According to the latest figures, more than 500 targets have been hit, with 19 combatants and 10 civilians killed.
In most comparable conflicts, the number of civilian casualties far outnumbers the number of combatant casualties.
Both the parties are to blame here. Killings can't be justified no matter who does it. Its has to stop, terrorizing civilians in large cities is as much a cowardly act as much sending F-16s to bomb a helpless crowd.
Er, what? Go and look up the history of Irgun and Lehi. Israel is just as bad as anyone else in the conflict. Back in the 30s and 40s they were blowing up buses and shooting civilians every day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks
Israel and Egypt continue to blockade medicine and food into Palestine, and restrict how people can move (bear in mind that there's basically no work in Palestine). How is that not deliberately targeting civilians? http://www.ipsnews.net/2010/07/mideast-israel-chokes-gaza-de...
If you want to see what a solution looks like, just look at Northern Ireland. No aid blockades there...
It's a large-scale armed conflict. Civilians are going to get caught in the crossfire.
Alas, it's a strange sort of conflict in which one side deliberately targets civilians, while the other does everything humanly possible to avoid them.
There are more than 1.5 million people living on the 45 km^2 stretch of land. Are you seriously asking them to run? Run to where? Sea? or towards the sky?
No wonder it has been compared to a concentration camp or an open air prison.
Classic victim blaming to say the least.
Drop leaflets and then get a free permit to bomb them. If some should die, tell them you are the good guys and people who died are evil for dying from your actions.
No sorry you don't address the point everybody else is making in this thread, which is that you seem to suggest bombing is OK as long you pre-inform the people you plan bomb couple of hours before.
If your strategy is to deliberately hide behind civilians when firing your rockets, when those civilians get hit I don't think the responsibility for it lies with Isarel.
Civilians in the Gaza Strip do not really have a choice. The Gaza Strip is tiny by most geographical standards, roughly 9 km by 40 km[1]. And a very densely populated area. So even if the IDF tries to protect the civilian population ( and I think they do a comparatively good job), they will necessarily fail.
Doing all you can to avoid hitting them except, say, not launching missiles in the vicinity of their houses.
I get it: Hamas is a morally monstrous organization. I agree with that wholeheartedly. But there's such a thing as proportionate response. For every Israeli civilian that's killed, many more (greater than 10, at the least) Palestinian civilians are killed. The fact that Hamas is barbaric and doesn't have laser guided missiles doesn't change the fact that innocent people are being bombed to death.
What should Israel do? Well, frack if I know. But "we're trapped in a conflict with a barbaric organization, so we must be barbaric, too, to compete with them" means you can't complain when people call you barbaric.
I don't think they are being barbaric, though. They are launching pinpoint strikes, and doing all they can to avoid civilian casualties. Hamas is deliberately hiding amongst their own civilians to generate casualties.
If Canada was no country but a territory where people were denied the right to have a state to live in, and if they were launching rockets at the US, I think the US would colonize Toronto and declare the city part of the US. Wait no, I don't.
"If Canada was no country but a territory where people were denied the right to have a state to live in,"
To make it even more alike the situation, then, we should say if these were people living in Seattle who are illegal aliens from Central America living there because they were kicked out of their refugee camps in Mexico...
"and if they were launching rockets at the US"
Let's say from Seattle at Redmond instead, with restricted access points from Seattle because occasionally they keep trying to destroy Redmond.
"I think the US would colonize Toronto and declare the city part of the US. Wait no, I don't."
And instead of the US as we know it, let's say the US is just the I-5 corridor from Portland, OR, to Everett, WA. And let's transplant all that area into, say, the neighborhood of Nicaragua or Panama. And let's say all the surrounding countries have declared that the people who live around Redmond must be pushed into the sea. They don't want the people in Seattle who used to live in their countries to move back into their countries; no, they want to help them destroy all the Americans.
What would happen? Redmond would launch the Surface.
Can they control what goes through those borders? Can they control what happens in the airspace above their territory? Do they have a seat at the UN?
The answer is no to all 3.
Question: if I want to fly into Gaza, whose permission do I need? Hamas' permission is clearly insufficient: the IDF will shoot down any plane landing there. So they're not at all an independent state.
Being under embargo/blockade is not the same as having no state. When the US did the same to Cuba 50 years ago, Cuba didn't magically disappear or become invalid.
Do you know why the US did that to Cuba? They were smuggling missiles in. See a pattern there?
The killing of Jaabari was done in response to around 120 missiles thrown at Israel prior to the killing. There might have been peace talks but it seems like they had stock of missiles they wanted to ship out before any peace was signed for. The bottom line is that both sides of this conflict are held hostage to a very vocal and armed minorities of both sides who would like to keep the conflict burning on. Its no wonder that these things happen just before elections. Both sides have an interest to keep a right wing government in place and the best way to do this is by firing missiles and retaliating against them. Fear drives people to elect a right wing government and nothing drives fear like a bunch of missiles and a heavy "disproportionate" response.
Until both sides wake up and realize they are controlled by tiny minorities with guns there is no hope to resolve this conflict.
