Israel’s airforce conducted a strike on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees’s (UNRWA) Abu Oraiban School building in Nuseirat refugee camp on Sunday. The strike killed at least 17 people, according to sources from Gaza’s civil defense agency, quoted by Al Jazeera.
The intentional attack of hospitals, and organizations engaged in humanitarian assistance under the Charter of the United Nations, is considered a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It is also illegal under international law to target civilians or to not distinguish between civilians and military targets.
An exception under the Rome Statute does permit attacks against hospitals in limited circumstances, provided that they are legitimate military objectives. A military objective is “any object which by its nature, location, purpose or use makes an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage”. This exception does not apply to attacks against humanitarian personnel and institutions.
Israel stated that the strike was directed against “terrorists who were operating in the area of the building”. Israel claims that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions and additional intelligence”, and justified the strike by accusing Hamas of violating international law by “exploiting civilian structures and population as human shields” for attacks. Using civilians as human shields is prohibited under international law. That being said, one breach of international law is not a legitimate legal justification for another.
The practices of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) during the Israel-Hamas war have been criticized for their lack of proportionality, and military necessity. In June, the UN Commission released a report in which it accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes. Additionally, in the International Court of Justice, there is an ongoing genocide case against Israel.
