by the way, what does international law say? – The Express

The hospital, a protected place…

“The Geneva Conventions particularly protect civilian hospitals. It is prohibited to use civilian hospitals marked and recognized as such as a conflict zone. It is also prohibited to use civilian populations, the sick, the injured as human shields, it is a war crime”, as is the fact of “fighting from a hospital”, explains to AFP Mathilde Philip-Gay, professor of law at the French University Lyon-3.

The Geneva Conventions, which define international humanitarian law, were adopted following the Second World War in 1949.

Among a long list of war crimes, Article 8 of the Rome Statute of 1998which governs the International Criminal Court (ICC), stipulates in particular that it is prohibited “to intentionally direct attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or action charity, historical monuments, hospitals and places where the sick or injured are gathered.

But this article 8 specifies: “provided (that these buildings) are not military objectives”. “If a harmful act – these are the terms of the law – is launched from a civilian hospital, at that moment the hospital can lose its protection,” explains Mathilde Philip-Gay.

“But the other belligerent must take all precautions to avoid intentionally targeting civilians”, a permanent requirement of international humanitarian law, underlines the expert in international law, author of “Can we judge Putin?”.

“If a harmful act took place from a hospital, we cannot bomb it for two days and completely destroy it,” she said by way of example. “The reaction must be proportionate”: “what is complicated in international humanitarian law is that it is case by case”.

Furthermore, “a summons, with a deadline, must be given: be careful we are going to intervene in such and such a service, please evacuate, please surrender. There must be means of evacuating (ambulances, etc.) the staff and patients, or that they are asked to isolate themselves in a part of the hospital. “And at the same time as the intervention, there must be doctors and care for the sick.”

In the context of the al-Chifa hospital, where hundreds of Palestinian civilians in addition to patients and nursing staff have taken refuge, the Israeli army accuses Hamas of having installed a strategic and military center there, which the Islamist movement.

She says she found weapons, grenades, ammunition and bulletproof vests bearing the insignia of the armed wing of Hamas during her raid there, information again disputed by the Hamas Ministry of Health which assures “not not authorize the presence of weapons in its establishments.

The AFP was unable to independently verify these claims. Hamas, for its part, accuses the Israeli authorities of having, with the help of bulldozers, “partially destroyed the southern entrance”, “near the maternity hospital”, already damaged by tank shell fire in recent days. .

The ICC only intervenes if the national justice system cannot or will not do so. Universal jurisdiction applies to war crimes, which are imprescriptible under a 1968 UN convention, which entered into force in 1970.

Israel is not a member of the ICC, but the ICC ruled in 2021 that its territorial jurisdiction extends to Gaza and the West Bank. The ICC can in any case be seized by any State party to the Rome Statute. In several recent conflicts, hospitals and clinics have been hit by bombings in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Ukraine. In March 2022, three people, including a child, were killed in a Russian bombing in Mariupol targeting a building housing a maternity and pediatric hospital, a strike described as a war crime by Kiev and Western powers.