I don’t particularly care about international human law, because it was written by states to facilitate state violence and my sense of morality is considerably more expansive.
But if you do care about that sort of thing, it’s worth noting that Human Rights Watch has identified the Israeli state’s blockade of Gaza as a war crime, both on the grounds of impeding relief supplies and of collective punishment of civilians.
(As I’ve noted before, the trucks that the Israeli state has graciously allowed in are importing about half a kilogram of food, water, medicine, shelter, and hygiene per person per day, ie, starvation rations.)
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/23/israel-still-blocking-aid-civilians-gaza
Human Rights Watch has identified the IDF’s targeting of ambulances as a war crime. The IDF has provided a flimsy pretext that the ambulance in this case was transporting Hamas fighters, without evidence, but HRW notes that ambulances and hospitals enjoy special protections under international humanitarian law. They may only be targeted if they are being used to commit “acts harmful to the enemy.” An ambulance driving to a hospital emergency room, like this one was, falls short of that standard.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/07/gaza-israeli-ambulance-strike-apparently-unlawful
Despite these protections, the IDF routinely attacks hospitals and other medical facilities.
“The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that at least 521 people, including 16 medical workers, have been killed in 137 ‘attacks on health care’ in Gaza as of November 12.”
The Israeli state has declined to provide any evidence that these medical facilities meet the threshold set by international humanitarian law, or that these strikes are *proportionate,* in the sense of the cost to civilians balancing against the expected military benefit of the action.
The IDF is also required to provide evacuation notices before striking one of these facilities—which it has not consistently been doing—and account for the inability of some patients to evacuate without dying.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/14/gaza-unlawful-israeli-hospital-strikes-worsen-health-crisis
Separately, the IDF struck a car containing a civilian family in Lebanon, fleeing violence in the south. The IDF killed three girls and their grandmother and wounded their mother.
Human Rights Watch notes the IDF’s reckless failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians.
The murder of this family leaves me with no confidence that the IDF is taking any more care in Gaza than it did with this Lebanese family.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/14/lebanon-israeli-strike-apparent-war-crime
Human Rights Watch notes that the Israeli evacuation order, which demanded that roughly a million people—about half of whom are children—evacuate northern Gaza represented additional war crimes.
The order was not effective, as it did not account for the conditions through which these civilians would have to flee, the lack of fuel to operate vehicles, and the presence of people with mobility challenges.
The order was a threat of violence to spread terror.
The order risked forced displacement.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/16/why-israels-gaza-evacuation-order-so-alarming
Amnesty International further notes that the leaflets the IDF dropped on Gaza included the following warning:
“…anyone who chooses not to leave from the north of the [Gaza] Strip to south of Wadi Gaza may be determined an accomplice in a terrorist organization.”
Amnesty International points out that these leaflets could not be considered effective warning and “may amount to the war crime of collective punishment for holding hundreds of thousands of civilians responsible for acts they did not commit, based solely on the fact that they are staying in their homes when they have nowhere safe to go amid a relentless campaign of Israeli bombardment across the entire Gaza Strip.”
Indeed, especially as those that did move south were also bombed, didn't have access to food, power, medical, water and other essentials.
Those who could not., e.g babies in ICU, incubators etc would not be able to 'just'; leave and Israel were told this.
