DISPROPORTIONATE FORCE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

The information here is drawn from a Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs briefing by Dr. Dore Gold, who heads the Center. (Emphasis has been added):

"The charge that Israel uses disproportionate forces keeps resurfacing whenever it has to defend its citizens from non-state terrorist organizations and the rocket attacks they perpetuate. From a purely legal perspective, Israel's current military actions in Gaza are on solid ground. According to international law, Israel is not required to calibrate its use of force precisely according to the size and range of the weaponry used against it. (Israel is not expected to make Kassam rockets and lob them back into Gaza.)

"When international legal experts use the term 'disproportionate use of force,' they have a very precise meaning in mind. As the President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague, Rosalyn Higgens, has noted, proportionality 'cannot be in relation to any specific prior injury - it has to be in relation to the overall legitimate objective of ending the aggression.' In other words, if a state, like Israel, is facing aggression, then proportionality addresses where force was specifically used by Israel to bring an end to the armed attack against it. By implication, force becomes excessive if it is employed for another purpose, like causing unnecessary harm to civilians.

" [As to civilian casualties] ...What was critical from the standpoint of international law was that if the attempt had been made 'to minimize civilian damage, then even a strike that causes large amounts of damage - but is directed at a target with very large military value - would be lawful.' Numbers matter less than the purpose of the use of force. Israel has argued that it is specifically targeting facilities serving the Hamas regime and its determined effort to continue its rocket assault on Israel: headquarters, training bases, weapons depots, command and control networks, and weapons-smuggling tunnels. This way Israel is respecting the international legal concept of proportionality.

"...the attack becomes a war crime when it is directed against civilians (which is precisely what Hamas does) or when the 'incidental civilian injuries would be clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage.' In fact, Israeli legal experts right up the chain of command within the IDF make this calculation before all military operations of this sort."

See the entire report at: http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=1&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=378&PID=0&IID=2808&TTL=Did_Israel_Use_“Disproportionate_Force”_in_Gaza?