Around 60% of the residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged and 45% have been destroyed altogether, according to a report last month by the World Bank that used satellite images.
“This isn’t just a question of the number of Palestinians killed; this is much bigger than that,” said Diana Buttu, the former legal adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “The world has failed Palestinians.”
Israel says it’s only interested in trying to root out Hamas following its Oct. 7 attack, in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 240 kidnapped, according to the Israeli government. According to the Israeli military, 576 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7 — 237 of them since the ground offensive began Oct. 27.
The Israeli military says it is doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties, including dropping leaflets, attempting to evacuate conflict areas and creating so-called “safe zones’’ inside Gaza. Israeli officials blame the death toll on Hamas using civilians as “human shields,” as well as the group’s failure to release the 134 hostages believed still in Gaza.
“Hamas declared war on Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel had to respond,” said Aviv A. Oreg, a veteran reservist in the IDF’s military intelligence branch where he has held multiple senior roles. “I think we’ve done much, much better within the framework of humanitarian issues than others did,” he added, comparing Israel’s efforts favorable to those by the U.S. in Afghanistan, or the Western Allies in World War II. “I didn’t see them creating safe zones in Dresden,” he said.
Hamas is deemed a terrorist group by the U.S., and most if not all international law experts say its Oct. 7 assault constituted a war crime. But in its response, Israel, too, has been accused by watchdogs, such as Human Rights Watch, and some senior U.N. officials of breaching international law. South Africa has engaged a legal case at the International Court of Justice…
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