Yes. The acts against Israeli citizens on October 7 make Hamas and Islamic Jihad criminally liable for war crimes.
Multiple acts violated the “rule of distinction” in International Humanitarian Law (IHL), which requires combatants to limit attacks to legitimate military targets. According to IHL, what follows are “inexcusable and flagrant violations of humanitarian norms and international law and odious insults to humanity that constitute war crimes”:
- The willful, deliberate, and hysteric massacre of civilians, including young people attending an open-air music event and the indiscriminate entry into, destruction, and pillaging of private civilian homes in Israel’s towns and villages, and indiscriminate murder of civilians living in those homes
- The taking of multiple civilian hostages, including entire families, the elderly, women, and infants, and their cruel and violent kidnapping and transfer to the Gaza Strip
- The horrific exhibition of dead and mutilated bodies in the streets of Gaza
- The deliberate and cynical use by Hamas and Islamic Jihad of their own civilian population in Gaza as human shields, as well as their use of Gaza’s many mosques, hospitals, schools, and private houses as weapons storage facilities and firing platforms
- The creation and use of tactical tunnels beneath urban civilian areas, hospitals, public facilities, and urban roads
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) says that advocating a religious holy war aimed at creating a regional Islamic entity encompassing the whole of the territory of Israel “contravenes the provisions of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of Genocide.”
Above content excerpted from The 2023 War with Hamas: What You Need to Know
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