Israel Considers Any Palestinian Infrastructure That Can Be Connected to Hamas to Be ‘Terrorist’

While it is unlikely that the escalating violence in Gaza will be placed into proper context by United States media, who report on it in the context of Israel’s blockade and occupation of Palestinian land, it is also just as unlikely that there will be any meaningful coverage on how Israel justifies bombing civilian infrastructure in Gaza.

Israel decimated the Gaza City office of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who was elected in the legislative elections in 2006 but later dismissed by President Mahmoud Abbas. He has continued to exercise authority and is a head of state yet, if one saw the headline at the New York Times they would not see a headline explaining how a Gaza Prime Minister’s office was bombed. They would see one that read, "Israel Destroys Hamas Prime Minister’s Office."The Times reported spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mark Regev, stated, "Government buildings had been targeted because Hamas 'makes no distinction between its terrorist military machine and the government structure…

We have seen Hamas consistently using so-called civilian facilities for the purposes of hiding their terrorist military machine, including weapons."Under this concept, it is hard to see how Israel would not be able to justify hitting any part of Gaza and killing any person inside or nearby that infrastructure. Saturday morning, according to Haaretz, Israel’s air force targeted Gaza’s police headquarters, other government buildings and a mosque in Rafah. It also is impossible to see how a cease-fire can be brokered if Israel is going to destroy the offices of political leaders elected in disputed or undisputed Palestinian elections. The United Nations’ fact-finding mission in 2009, after the Gaza conflict that year that left over 1400 Palestinians dead, did not accept Israel’s concept of Hamas "supporting infrastructure." The mission found it "particularly worrying" as it "appeared to transform civilians and civilian objects into legitimate targets." This made it possible for Israeli political and military leaders to make it seem like in order to respond to Hamas it had to carry out "disproportionate destruction" and create "maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve not only military but also political goals.

"The mission determined Israeli armed forces had launched "numerous attacks against buildings and persons of the Gaza authorities."

This indicated Israel had committed a "grave breach of extensive destruction of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."It believed four years ago that it was acceptable to strike the office of Ismail Haniyeh. This was a statement the government made claiming it did not need to distinguish between military and civilian targets:Because Israel considers the democratically elected Hamas to be a "terrorist organization," Gaza technically has little in the way of structures for administrative or traditional government functions that could not be characterized in some way as part of Hamas’ "terrorist organization." And so, that is why it is not a war crime to Israel to hit an office where he met Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil the day before.

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Israel Considers Any Palestinian Infrastructure That Can Be Connected to Hamas to Be ‘Terrorist’

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