Status: 19.11.2023, 06:13 a.m.
By: Franziska Schwarz
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Are soldiers allowed to storm clinics, as happened now in the Israeli war with Al-Shifa in Gaza? An expert in international law arranges for IPPEN. MEDIA.
Gaza/Frankfurt – Can a hospital be attacked during war? Israel's military is convinced that there is a Hamas command center under Gaza's largest clinic and thus justifies the action – the terrorist organization, on the other hand, speaks of the Israeli military operation in the Al-Shifa hospital as a "war crime". Who's right?
The question is on the minds of the world. For example, the Washington Post writes of unanswered questions in the Al-Shifa case. Many doctors have not responded to the Israeli evacuation call, which has been in place for weeks – it was Israel's duty under international law. International law expert Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg said this in an interview with IPPEN. MEDIA: "All parties to the conflict have an obligation to ensure that clinics can continue to perform their humanitarian function despite the hostilities."
Al-Shifa case: What is "military abuse" under international law?
However, this protection is not absolute. Article 19 of the Geneva Convention, which is at the heart of international humanitarian law, identifies special cases. For example, that hospitals are used to commit "acts harmful to the enemy". "That would be if they were used as weapons depots, military reconnaissance posts or military command centres," explained Heintschel von Heinegg.
"This means that it must first be verified whether and how the civilian hospital is misused for military purposes," the expert stressed. However, the accusation against Hamas was also contradicted by al-Shifa doctors. The idea that there is a Hamas command center there is "a big lie," chief surgeon Marwan Abu Saada told the BBC.
But there is something else important: hospitals only become permissible military targets after a warning has been ignored to stop the abuse within a reasonable period of time. In the event of a subsequent attack, "everything practically possible" must be done at the same time to spare the staff and the patients, Heintschel von Heinegg emphasized. This could be achieved, for example, by not attacking from a distance with bombs or artillery, but by sending ground troops.
Israeli soldiers on military duty at Al-Shifa Hospital (army footage) © -/Israeli Army/AFP
Military operation at Al-Shifa Hospital is sensitive for Israel
The "abuse" of a clinic is also narrowly defined in terms of time. It does not matter whether Hamas has used Al-Shifa Hospital as its headquarters in the past – or whether it intends to do so in the future. The only thing that counts is the timing of the military operation directed against the hospital. According to a military spokesman, the Israeli army has now found weapons in the Shifa hospital. However, the question has not yet been definitively clarified.
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"For the Israeli army, the matter is delicate. If it does not attack the hospital, it will not be able to prove beyond doubt the existence of the Hamas quarter, nor will it be able to neutralize one of the terrorists' presumed most important control centers," the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote in an earlier commentary.
What would one mean by evidence anyway? The question is as explosive in international law as the question of the "proportionality" of a military operation. After all, it is not decisive whether the Israeli armed forces have "court-proof" evidence or evidence provided by an independent body, as Heintschel von Heinegg noted. Rather, whether they could "reasonably" assume abuse at the time of their decision to engage in military action.
German government reacts cautiously to Al-Shifa storming
In the face of international criticism of the storming of the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, however, the German government has expressed itself rather cautiously. Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit stressed on Wednesday (15 November) that "there has been no bombing of the hospital". Internationally, there had been calls for a "less drastic" approach. He now sees that Israel "also seems to be responding to these warnings from the international community." (FRS)