It goes without saying that the war between Israel and Hamas is continuing with seven Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers being killed in Gaza and one civilian being killed in Israel in the past 12 hours alone. This is entirely a war of necessity for Israel and one that has completely been forced upon it by the roughly 100 rockets per day (1 every 10 minutes) being fired into Israel by Hamas and the attempts by Hamas to tunnel into Israel in order to kill or kidnap Israel civilians.
As a result the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) operation has the very narrow aim of going into Gaza to destroy the tunnels into Israel and destroy Hamas weapons stores. This type of operation involves sending teams of combat engineers to the mouths of the tunnels. Those engineers then have to clear the tunnels of any fighters, sweep for booby-traps and make safe any ordinance (rockets, explosives etc) stored in the tunnels. Finally the engineers have to rig explosives of their own to destroy the tunnels. Even if it was being carried out on a quiet construction site in the middle of nowhere this is very dangerous work that requires patience, precision and a calm head. As such the IDF simply cannot have people shooting at their engineers while they are carrying out this work.
This means that the IDF - or any other military - has to protect the engineers as they work. Although I'm not an expert this normally involves setting up a perimeter of roughly 1km (0.62miles) around the work site. Any threat (sniper-fire, RPG's, suicide bombers) within that perimeter are dealt with ideally marksmen in the first instance but failing that infantry soldiers armed with assault rifles and sometimes even bayonets. Any threat outside of that perimeter (anti-tank missiles, mortars, rockets) is dealt with by heavier weapons. Ideally this means guided missiles fired from drones and manned attack aircraft including helicopter gunships such as the AH-64 Apache. The problem is that Israel only has around 500 of this type of aircraft in total and some of them will need to be tasked to deal with rocket launching sites and other duties while the others need to be temporarily grounded to be re-fuelled, re-armed and maintained.
In the event that air-support is not available artillery fire (including from tanks) is used instead. The problem is that - as I've explained - artillery is a dumb weapon meaning that it is not very accurate and the warheads used are designed to have wide blast area to compensate for this inaccuracy. As a result artillery fire carries with it much higher risks to people - including civilians - in and around the target area. This is a particular problem when you move into densely populated built up areas as we saw in the Shejayia district of Gaza City on Sunday (20/7/14). As there seems to have been no follow up on the ground I would say that on that particular occasion the Israeli artillery fire bordered on the excessive.
Shejayia though is home to a number of Hamas weapons factories, weapon stores and tunnel entrances. As a result the IDF are going to have to move in to take control of that area. The only alternative is that the IDF attempt to destroy the targets from the air but this also carries a huge risk to civilians because in order to destroy underground targets you need to use very big bombs and they are likely to set off uncontrolled secondary explosions of the stored ordinance.
The only suggestion I can make to minimise the risk to civilians is that the IDF consider deploying a smaller number of engineering teams in order to make sure that they have ample air-support because an Apache can engage a target with highly accurate cannon fire. However I am aware that there are a number of valid military reasons why this might not be possible. For example only sending troops into a smaller number of areas allows Hamas to concentrate their forces on attacking those troops.
In the meantime the IDF - along with any other military - are most certainly allowed to use artillery against populated areas and kill civilians in the process provided they take precautions - such as issuing evacuation orders - to minimise the risk to civilians which Israel is not only doing but exceeding its obligation. However the fact that Israel is allowed to do something is not the same as saying that Israel should do it.
The obligation though remains on Hamas to agree a cease-fire and improve its relationship with Egypt in the process. That is because this current confrontation is not going to bring about the end of the blockade on Gaza and there are plenty within Israel who will happily see Hamas totally destroyed because they know that something worse will rise from the ashes. That will make it a lot easier for them to justify completely re-occupying Gaza effectively ending hope of a viable Palestinian state.
16:20 on 23/7/14 (UK date).
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