GENEVA: Flagrant violations of the laws of war in the escalating conflict in the Middle East are setting a dangerous precedent, aid workers in the region warn.

Humanitarians say the warring parties are flouting international humanitarian law (IHL). “The rules of war are being broken in such a flagrant way... (it) is setting a precedent that we have not seen in any other conflict,” Marwan Jilani, the vice president of the Palestine Red Crescent (PCRS), said.

Speaking last week during a meeting in Geneva of the 191 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, he lamented a “total disregard for human life (and) for international humanitarian law”.

Amid Israel’s devastating operation in the Gaza Strip, local aid workers are striving to deliver assistance while facing the same risks as the rest of the population, he said.

36 Red Crescent staff and volunteers have been killed in Gaza and West Bank

The PCRS has more than 900 staff and several thousand volunteers inside Gaza, where more than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry, and where the UN says virtually the entire population has been repeatedly displaced.

‘Deliberate targeting’

“They’re part of the community,” said Jilani. “I think every single member of our staff has lost family members.” He decried especially what he said was a “deliberate targeting of the health sector”.

Israel rejects such accusations and maintains that it is carrying out its military operations in both Gaza and Lebanon in accordance with international law. But Jilani said that “many of our staff, including doctors and nurses...were detained, were taken for weeks (and) were tortured”.

Since the conflict began, 34 PRCS staff and volunteers have been killed in Gaza, and another two in the West Bank, “most of them while serving”, he said. Four other staff members are still being held, their whereabouts and condition unknown.

Jilani warned that the disregard for basic international law in the expanding conflict was eroding the belief that such laws even exist. A “huge casualty of this war”, he said, “is the belief within the Middle East that there is no international law”.

‘Unbelievable’

Uri Shacham, chief of staff at the Israeli’s emergency aid organisation Magen David Adom (MDA), also decried the total disregard for laws requiring the protection of humanitarians.

During Hamas’s Oct 7 raid, MDA staff and volunteers rushing to the scene to help were also killed, he said. It lost seven people that day.

Shacham said they were killed “while they were treating others, while they were identified as humanitarians. “This was so unbelievable for us,” he said, warning of potentially dangerous ripple effects. “Our biggest concern is that once the barrier was broken, then this might be something that others would do,” he cautioned.

Gaza scenario looming

The Red Cross in Lebanon, where for the past month Israel has been launching ground operations and dramatically escalating its air strikes against Hezbollah, also condemned the slide. Thirteen of its volunteers have been recently injured on ambulance missions.

One of its top officials, Samar Abou Jaoudeh, said that they did not appear to have been targeted directly. “But nevertheless, not being able to reach the injured people, and (missiles) hitting right in front of an ambulance is also not respecting IHL,” she said, stressing the urgent need to ensure more respect for international law on the ground.

Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2024