A
newspaper article published in the Hebrew-language version of Israeli
newspaper Haaretz has stated that the Israeli military (IDF) is
intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza as a form of collective
punishment aimed at placing Hamas — which Israel continues to
regard as a resistance group, though it has governed Gaza since
winning elections there in 2007 — “in a problematic
situation.”
The
article states that, after a rocket launched by Hamas’ armed wing
landed in Beersheva, “the IDF began to attack civilian targets,
including population centers, with the goal of causing the residents
to understand the price of escalation and placing Hamas in a
problematic situation.” In other words, the article
acknowledges that the IDF is deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza
to collectively punish all those living in Gaza for the primitive
rockets allegedly launched by Hamas into Israeli territory.
The
article goes on to claim that the IDF’s deliberate targeting of
civilian sites is a “change in policy” for the IDF, as
past Israeli airstrikes had “focused on Hamas’ clear military
objectives, mostly in areas where civilian presence is sparse.”
Yet, past airstrikes have targeted civilian infrastructure, which
were then labeled, after the fact, as Hamas military sites and
assets.
The
tactics mentioned in the article seem to refer exclusively to IDF
airstrikes, as the article does not mention the fact that the IDF,
since March 30, has shot over 17,000 unarmed Palestinian civilians,
killing at least 164, for approaching the Gaza-Israel border fence
during recent protests. Furthermore, the IDF’s “change in
policy” also comes after it was recently reported that the IDF
has already killed a record number of Palestinian children in Gaza
this year, with still just under five months to go.
Yet, in
terms of airstrikes, this “new” IDF policy of targeting civilians
is unsurprising given that Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman
infamously asserted earlier this year that “there are no
innocent people” in Gaza, despite the fact that around half of
all Gazans are under the age of 18. Furthermore, the IDF had long
targeted Gaza’s civilians in past military operations even before
Hamas was voted into power in 2007, suggesting that the IDF’s
justification of “punishing Hamas” is merely the pretext
to justify the climbing civilian death toll in Gaza in the absence of
a major military conflict.
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