الكاتب: kafej

Israel has stormed Gaza’s largest hospital and bombed residential areas and refugee camps in attacks the United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk says have unleashed a “nightmarish” situation in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

There are growing calls for a ceasefire as the humanitarian situation worsens with risks of starvation facing thousands due to the Israeli blockade of the territory – home to 2.3 million people.

Israel and its allies, meanwhile, have insisted the bombings are justified because it has the right to self-defence in response to the October 7 Hamas attacks that killed 1,200 people and injured more than 5,600 in southern Israel.

But what is this right to self-defence, and does it justify Israel’s killing of more than 11,500 Palestinians and wounding of 29,800 since then?

What is the right to self-defence?

According to Article 51 of the UN Charter, until the UN Security Council takes measures to maintain international peace and security, “nothing in the charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations.”

Ever since Israel embarked on the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, its officials and its Western allies – from the United States and United Kingdom to the European Union – have defended Israeli actions by pointing to Article 51.

Does it apply to Israel against Gaza?

Many experts aren’t convinced that it does apply.

“The right to self-defence can be invoked when the state is threatened by another state, which is not the case,” Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in an address to the Australian Press Club on Tuesday.

The attack Israel faced on October 7 came from an armed group in a territory, Gaza, that Israel has effectively controlled.

Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005, but it has imposed a land, sea and air blockade on the enclave since Hamas came to power in 2007.

That, according to Albanese, amounts to occupation – although Israel and its allies disagree with that assessment.

“Israel does not claim it has been threatened by another state. It has been threatened by an armed group within an occupied territory. It cannot claim the right of self-defence against a threat that emanates from a territory it occupies, from a territory kept under belligerent occupation,” Albanese said.

Albanese was referring to a 2004 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which said the construction of Israel’s separation wall in the occupied West Bank was illegal. The ICJ rejected the Israeli argument to build the wall, saying it could not invoke the right to self-defence in an occupied territory.

Are there other challenges to Israel’s argument?

Other experts point to the devastating scale of Israeli attacks on Gaza.

“The death of a reported 4,710 children, attacks on healthcare, the withholding of water and electricity – these cannot be merely justified as a ‘right to self-defence’,” said Iain Overton, executive director of the London-based Action on Armed Violence, which conducts research and advocacy on armed violence against civilians.

He added that for Israel to claim this right without being challenged “would be a mockery of the international humanitarian law”.

What rules govern Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip?

Armed conflicts are governed by international humanitarian law (IHL), a set of rules contained in international agreements like the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 as well as other agreements and conventions meant to ensure that all member nations subscribe to a list of fundamental rules during conflicts.

But member states do not always act by the rules, most recently during the Ukraine-Russia war. Israel has been accused of war crimes in its previous military assaults on Gaza, but it has not been held accountable.

In the current conflict, though, experts said Israel’s actions seem to violate all of the four main principles of IHL: distinction between civilians and combatants, proportionality between anticipated loss of civilian life and damage and the strategic military advantage of an attack, legitimate military purposes and the humane treatment of all individuals from civilians to detainees and hostages.

Among the dead Palestinians in the current conflict as of Thursday are 4,710 children and 3,160 women.

“The scale of the bombardment and its impact on civilians raises questions about Israel’s adherence to proportionality,” Overton told Al Jazeera.

Israel’s bombing of Gaza has also killed 102 aid workers with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), making this the deadliest conflict ever for UN staff in the organisation’s history.

Is it justifiable to attack civilians during a conflict?

IHL underlines the fundamental rule of all wars – that parties in a conflict must always make a distinction between civilians and combatants and that civilians and civilian objects must never be attacked.

Hence, there is no justification for civilians being attacked by either side in the current conflict, and it is unlawful.

Neve Gordon, a professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London, said both Hamas’s and Israel’s actions were “clearly war crimes”, adding that it was “obvious to anyone” that Hamas’s actions on October 7 violated IHL.

“It is also obvious that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza since October 7,” he said.

“There is the collective punishment through the stopping of water and electricity, the compelled movement of populations and then the unleashing of eruptive violence that is killing thousands of civilians while destroying the very infrastructure of existence in the Gaza Strip,” Gordon added.

Israel controls what goes in and out of Gaza. Even the fuel for its sole power plant, which has since shut down, has been supplied with Israel’s permission.

Israel’s claims that Hamas is operating out of civilian facilities, however, are aimed at justifying civilian casualties, Gordon said.

“When Israel claims Hamas targets in refugee camps and hospitals, the idea in both cases is to underscore that the value of the target is extremely high and, therefore, that Israel is abiding by the principle of proportionality even if many civilians die,” Gordon said.

What about Israeli attacks on hospitals, schools and refugee camps? Are such tactics lawful?

International humanitarian law insists that medical units must be protected. Similarly, international law also disallows attacks against places that are indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as drinking water installations and farmland.

Attacking schools and hospitals during the conflict, as Israel has done, is “one of the six grave violations”, according to the UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.

Yet Israel has been unrelenting in these attacks despite facing heavy criticism. Experts have pointed to how it has relied on the claim, backed by the US and EU, that Hamas is using civilians in these places as “human shields”.

US President Joe Biden on Wednesday reiterated the Israeli claim of a Hamas base at al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility. He offered no proof, and Israel has so far not shown any evidence for that claim either.

But what if Hamas is using civilians as ‘human shields’?

One way Hamas uses civilians as “human shields”, Israel insists, is by allegedly operating out of schools, hospitals, refugee camps and shelters.

But many experts believe that painting civilians as human shields is a convenient argument that Israel has used to create legitimacy for its attacks.

“When a person in a battlefield is defined as a human shield, …he or she loses some of the protections assigned to civilians by the laws of war,” Gordon said.

“What many legal commentators say is that once a warring party uses human shields, lethal forms of violence that might otherwise be prohibited in a civilian setting can be used,” he added.

Others, like Overton, said that even if Israel’s claims about Palestinian civilians being used as human shields are accurate, Israeli actions are still not justified.

“The claim that civilians are being used as human shields does not absolve a party from its obligations under IHL. Even if combatants are present, attacks must still adhere to the principles of distinction and proportionality,” Overton said, pointing to how UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Gaza a “graveyard for children” on November 7.

“This underscores the severe impact on civilians, suggesting that the claim of human shields may not justify the scale and nature of the attacks on civilian areas,” he added.

What are some other laws that Israel has potentially violated?

Israel has also been accused of using white phosphorus, which could trigger fires as well as lead to severe, potentially fatal burns. Firing white phosphorus is akin to an indiscriminate attack, according to Amnesty International, which affects civilians and military targets alike and hence is prohibited under international law.

IHL makes it clear that parties to a conflict “may not order the displacement of the civilian population, in whole or part” except if military reasons demand or if their security is involved.

On October 13, Israel ordered more than 1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza to evacuate and move to the besieged enclave’s south despite the UN warning that Gaza faced a “real catastrophe” due to such an order. Israel has justified this order by saying it was aimed at limiting civilian casualties during its military operation in northern Gaza.

IHL also lays out that all parties in a conflict must ensure that humanitarian relief operations are allowed and facilitated “unimpeded”. However, Israel had refused to allow essential aid into Gaza despite widespread warnings of a humanitarian crisis.

Israel’s decision to impose a “complete siege” of Gaza’s power, food and water supplies has also been widely criticised for triggering a humanitarian crisis as thousands of Palestinians face “death by starvation”, according to the ActionAid charity. Humanitarian law prohibits the use of starvation of the civilian population “as a method of warfare”.

“The complete siege now lasting over one month has made it an agony for residents in Gaza to find basic necessities and frankly to survive,” Turk said last week, adding that “all forms of collective punishment must come to an end”.

Are Israel and Hamas likely to be held to account for any legal violations?

While lawyers and experts have pointed to likely violations by Israel and Hamas of international law and international humanitarian law in particular, that might not ensure legal action against them.

Experts point to the lack of action against Israel for its 2008 assault on Gaza, named Operation Cast Lead, during which Israel was accused of war crimes. The 22-day Israeli offensive killed 1,400 Palestinians. At least 13 Israelis were killed in retaliatory rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups.

“Historical precedents, such as the inquiries following Operation Cast Lead and others, show that while investigations into Israeli actions in Gaza have occurred, they often have not led to significant preventative measures or accountability,” Overton said.

In the current conflict, the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory had announced on October 10 that there was “clear evidence of war crimes” from both sides and added that it had been “collecting and preserving evidence of war crimes” because it is “intent on ensuring legal accountability, including individual criminal and command responsibility”.

“The killing of so many civilians cannot be dismissed as collateral damage. Not in a kibbutz. Not in a refugee camp. And not in a hospital,” the UN human rights chief said.

At least three Palestinian rights groups have filed a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israel during the ongoing war. And this week, French lawyer Gilles Devers submitted a complaint to the prosecutor at the ICC on behalf of Gaza victims.

A US-based civil rights group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, has also sued Biden and senior members of his cabinet for “complicity” in the “unfolding genocide”.

It has been six days since Dina Alalami heard from her family in Gaza City after she received a text message from a relative informing her that they were alive.

The 33-year-old mother of two, who has been living in Qatar’s capital Doha for the past five years, has no idea whether her sister, two brothers-in-law, two nephews and three other relatives are still alive or have fallen victim to Israeli bombardment that has killed more than 11,500 people in Gaza.

“On Friday [November 10], they decided to leave their house and head south because the Israeli tanks had gotten closer and were surrounding the area,” Dina told Al Jazeera on Thursday.

“They took the decision because they said they wouldn’t survive the night if they stayed. We called the Red Cross and asked them to help secure a safe passage for them.”

But the Red Cross and Red Crescent said they were unable to help.

The family left their homes on November 10 during the four-hour pause – a day after Israel announced a daily four-hour window to allow Palestinians to flee from the north to the south.

At about noon, the family left the house waving white flags. Dina’s two sisters, who are married to two brothers, had left their homes on the first day of the war to stay at their in-laws’ villa, also in Gaza City.

Dina was talking to her youngest sister Rulla on the phone as the group cautiously moved forward when suddenly screams pierced the air. Their other sister Lina had crumpled to the floor, blood soaking through her shirt after an Israeli tank fired at them.

Rulla dragged Lina, getting her as far as the entrance of the Bakri building on Shuhada street, and tried to administer first aid. She saw a gunshot wound to her sister’s chest.

But as the Israeli tank fire continued, Rulla had no choice but to leave her and run inside. Rulla’s husband Bashar Khayal was shot in his hand, and his sister Dalia was also wounded.

Behind them, Bashar and Dalia’s grandmother Feryal was lying motionless on the street, killed.

Rulla told Dina exactly where they were and begged her to get in touch with the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) to save them. The building was behind al-Zaytoun pharmacy, Rulla said, by the Abbas intersection.

Dina called the ICRC. They told her they couldn’t go to the area.

‘Worst feeling in the world’

The next day, on Saturday, Dina got the news she had been dreading. Lina had died, her body still at the entrance of the building.

Dalia had also been killed, succumbing to her wounds.

Lina’s two young boys, four-year-old Mohammad and nine-month-old Majed, were among those trapped inside the building with their father Tareq Khayal, their grandmother Dalia, their aunt Suha, Rulla, and Bashar. They had no food, water or electricity.

Their phone batteries dying, Suha was able to send Dina one last message: “We are alive”.

Dina flew to Cairo, Egypt, over the weekend, where her father lives alone, and was joined by her brother who lives in Dubai.

“Just the thought of those two young boys not having water to drink or food to eat, the thought that they could die of dehydration or starvation…” her voice trails off, her breath catching.

“It’s the worst feeling in the world, this helplessness,” she said. “My sister got killed, and her body is still lying on the street. There’s no respect for the dead, and that alone burns our hearts.”

More than 11,300 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since October 7, the majority of them women and children. The healthcare system has collapsed due to the total siege imposed on the territory by Israel, and on Wednesday, Israeli forces raided the largest hospital in the strip, al-Shifa, following through on their previous threats despite patients and thousands of displaced people sheltering there.

Dina last visited Gaza back in the summer for Rulla’s wedding to Bashar. The two had been engaged for seven years and tied the knot in August after Rulla finished her medical studies in Egypt.

“My sisters are six and seven years younger than me, so we were like best friends,” Dina said.

“I wish I was with them right now. I wish we would either die or live together.”

Belfast, Northern Ireland – Juan Manuel Santos, who served as Colombia’s president between 2010 and 2018, was and remains a key figure in the country’s ongoing conflict resolution process.

He was awarded the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for, the committee said, his “resolute efforts to bring the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war to an end, a war that has cost the lives of at least 220,000 Colombians and displaced close to six million people”.

Santos oversaw the 2016 peace agreement between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government, concluding the armed conflict.

Al Jazeera interviewed Santos at the One Young World 2023 summit last month in Belfast, to speak about the lessons learned in Colombia from Northern Ireland’s peace process and where transitional justice efforts stand respectively in the two territories.

Al Jazeera: What significance does the Northern Ireland peace process have for the conflict resolution efforts you have spearheaded in Colombia?

Juan Manuel Santos: The peace process here was in a way an inspiration for us. It was a conflict that had lasted for so many years and finally ended.

I copied other aspects of the Northern Ireland peace agreement – for example, the back-channelling and the confidentiality at the beginning. With the help of international advisers who were not engaged in the day-to-day of Colombian politics, I said, “This is what we must do.” And that blueprint was extremely, extremely useful.

But we also learned what not to do. For example, the Northern Ireland peace agreement did not give importance to implementation. And I think we learned that we should – that’s why we included implementation as a specific point in the Colombian peace process.

Another thing that was not done here, which we did do in Colombia, was putting victims at the centre of negotiations. If you do this – their rights to justice, their rights to the truth, their rights to justice and non-repetition – that helps tremendously the process of healing the wounds of war that has been going on for so long.

Today, you see generals of the Colombian military facing victims and admitting that they committed war crimes and crimes against humanity – that they killed their sons, without any reason. And to see that! People thought that would never happen, but it is happening right now.

Part of the tensions that are still present here in Northern Ireland, 25 years after, is because you did not do what we did in Colombia. We’re going through this very difficult process at the moment of trying to heal the wounds created by so many years of war. It’s not an easy task, but it’s a necessary one if you want a sustainable peace in the long run.

Al Jazeera: This has been brought into sharp focus here by the British government’s new Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill. How have you viewed developments around it?

Santos: That’s one of the consequences of not having a transitional justice system like the one we have in Colombia. We built that in order precisely to avoid the problems you are having here, 25 years later, with the British government.

It has been trying to pass a law that will give [an effective] amnesty to the people responsible for war crimes – for many people this is, of course, unacceptable. If you had had a transitional justice [structure or framework ], these types of problems would not appear 25 years later.

The Colombian peace process is the only peace process in the world where the two [warring] parties agreed to create a special tribunal and to submit to it. Usually, it is a tribunal that is imposed from the outside – by the United Nations, or whatever [body] – but never had two parties created their own process [transitional justice mechanism] and submitted to it in this way.

The international community is less and less prone to accepting amnesties for war criminals and crimes against humanity – this can appear to make peace deals harder to apply, but it makes sense when you come to try and heal the wounds, a fundamental part of any peace process.

Al Jazeera: Where is the Colombian peace process poised now? 

Santos: Unfortunately, my successor [Ivan Duque Marquez] – who was against the peace process – dragged his feet in the implementation of the peace process. This was very damaging and had there been an earlier implementation with the FARC, the much-needed process of healing our society’s wounds would have got under way much faster.

The president of this new government [Gustavo Petro] has promised that he will implement the peace process, and I hope he does. Because his idea of building what he calls “total peace” has to be done using the peace process that was signed with the FARC as a necessary condition. Without doing that, his efforts will fail.

So what I hope – and what I’m asking for – is to accelerate the implementation of the peace process that was signed several years ago. Because that would give him the legitimacy and the credibility to build on that process.

If he thinks he can build a new peace process without implementing what has already been [agreed and] signed, then he will fail.

The Colombian peace process was probably the most ambitious peace process ever signed, and it’s been described [externally] in those terms. We did not only address the DDR – demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration – but we also addressed the causes of the conflict. We went much further to negotiate, for example, agrarian reform that this government is trying to put in place and that the last government put on hold. We went much further to try to find a solution to the drug-trafficking problem – which the last government also put on hold and we’re still suffering the consequences of that. We even had an ethnic chapter, a gender chapter – which has not been implemented fully yet.

If you do all of that, it is a marvellous programme for any government. So, if the Petro administration simply does [all of] that, he will be considered a good president when they finish. But if he, in a way, concentrates on his [idea of] “total peace” at the expense of what has been [agreed and] signed [already], then he will be in trouble.

This interview was lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

At least three killed in a drone strike on the Jenin refugee camp, while dozens of Israeli tanks pushed into the city.

A number of hospitals were surrounded and at least five people were killed as Israeli forces launched a major raid on Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

The attacks, launched overnight and lasting into Friday, also left at least 14 others injured, according to Palestinian sources. The raid on the Ibn Sina Hospital has ended after several hours.

The five that died were killed by a drone strike on the Jenin refugee camp. Air strikes have become more regular in the West Bank as the war in Gaza rages.

Emergency services were prevented by Israeli forces from reaching the injured, potentially placing lives at risk, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

From about 10.30pm on Thursday, the Israeli army pushed at least 80 military vehicles into the city of Jenin, raiding Palestinian homes and detaining several people. There were reports of violent clashes.

“Dozens of armoured vehicles turned up, with bulldozers as well, damaging cars, damaging the roads,” reported Al Jazeera’s Sara Khairat from occupied East Jerusalem. The raid lasted for about eight hours.

At least four hospitals were surrounded by Israeli soldiers.

“Israeli forces turned up at Ibn Sina Hospital, one of the biggest in the occupied West Bank. They turned up in a raid where they asked medical staff to put their hands up and evacuate the hospital,” Khairat said.

A number of doctors from the hospital refused to comply and evacuate; two paramedics were arrested, she added.

“It is important to note that this happened in Jenin refugee camp where clashes have been intense almost daily … But the nature of this particular raid is quite incredible, really. Not just it being a hospital but the way the Israeli forces are coming in,” Khairat continued.

The Israeli military said that it had exchanged fire with Palestinian fighters, who then used ambulances to flee towards Ibn Sina Hospital “in order to hide there”. One Palestinian fighter was arrested at the entrance of the medical facility, the army said.

Tensions have been high across the West Bank since Israel launched its war on Hamas on October 7, which has killed at least 11,500 people in the Gaza Strip.

Wafa also reported that Israeli forces raided several homes in the town of Ni’lin, west of Ramallah, and arrested at least 28 people on Friday.

On Thursday, three Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli soldiers after opening fire at a checkpoint in the West Bank. One Israeli soldier was killed in the attack, according to Israeli officials.

Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Ramallah in the West Bank, said such attacks using small arms and explosives have increased in recent weeks amid mounting anger over civilian deaths in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank.

“As Israel continues to turn up the heat, turn up the pressure on Palestinian communities, people are beginning to push back,” he said.

Since October 7, 203 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli raids in the West Bank.

An earthquake of 6.9 magnitude has struck the Philippines.

The tremor occurred at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles) in the Mindanao region, according to scientists.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said no tsunami was expected from the offshore quake, but there was the threat of damage and aftershocks.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

You can receive Breaking News alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News App. You can also follow @SkyNews on X or subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.