| Gaza, September 3, 2014. Photo: Reuters/Suhaib Salem |
Between July 8 and August 27 this year, Israel and Hamas fought
a war that left Gaza in ruins. Both sides have claimed victory. Israel did not
succeed in its objective of stopping rocket attacks from Gaza, which continued
after Israeli ground troops withdrew. While Israel eventually changed its
objective to the destruction of tunnels, it’s not clear that even a majority of
those were actually destroyed. Hamas has not achieved its own claimed objective
of breaking the Israeli blockade of Gaza. This is a war that no one won.
The current death toll is 2,104 Palestinians, 66 Israeli
soldiers, six Israeli civilians, and one Thai civilian (who was working in
Israel). The U.N. says 1,462 of the Palestinian deaths were civilians (about
69%), but that figure is disputed.
Other consequences are less measureable. The war led
directly to anti-Semitic protests in European capitals, including Berlin, and
chants of “death to the Arabs” in Israel itself. Few expect that this war will
be the last.
Tactics and War Crimes
Both sides accused each other of war crimes. Hamas has never
disguised its attempts to directly attack Israeli civilians, and is widely
identified as a terrorist organization. This does not excuse any war crimes
from the Israeli side – which are difficult to prove, due to Israel’s
prohibition of both the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in Gaza.
As has become expected, Hamas launched rockets into Israel,
accomplishing little, and Israel attacked Hamas with air strikes into Gaza. On
July 17th, when it became clear that the airstrikes failed to deter
Hamas rocket fire, Israel sent in ground troops.
Most of the casualties on both sides occurred during the
ground invasion.
On the ground, Hamas appears to have copied the tactics that
Hezbollah used against Israel in 2006,
primarily attacking Israeli troops with anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) or ambushing
them with shorter-range anti-tank weapons like the RPG-7. The Israeli response
was usually to bombard the firing position – and everything near it – with artillery
fire. In some cases, exposed Israeli troops retreated into their Namer armored personnel
carriers, which are proof against fragments from 155mm shells, allowing
artillery to fire extremely near to them. 155mm artillery is not the most
precise weapon in the Israeli arsenal.
Analysis
The ground invasion accomplished nothing. Once it began,
extreme casualty-aversion on the Israeli side led to high civilian casualties, unnecessary
destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, and the failure to accomplish its original objectives. Hamas’ deliberate efforts to cause civilian casualties contributed
to Palestinian civilian deaths and was the sole cause of Israeli civilian deaths.
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