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https://en.kohelet.org.il/publication/does-israel-have-to-give-free-power-to-gaza

A good reminder of the always simmering Gaza problems since the Israeli withdrawal from a friend in Israel Alex G……rsk

A recent debate has arisen over whether Israel, from which Gaza procures much of its power, is obligated under international law to continue providing Gaza with power during the hostilities between them.

The article was first published in the Washington Post
Prof. Avi Bell of San Diego and Bar Ilan Universities, and my colleague at the Kohelet Policy Forum, wrote a detailed analysis of the question, and concluded there is no requirement to provide electricity.

His memo drew an unusual response from Prof. David Enoch of Hebrew University, who not only disagreed with Bell, but through the good offices of Brian Leiter, called for the legal academy to impose some kind of reputational sanctions against Bell. I may deal with the “academic bullying” aspect in a latter post. Here I will address the substance. I hope my views of the merits are not colored by the prospect of facing the kind of academic ostracism threatened by Prof. Enoch.

Civilian power stations are legitimate military targets in an armed conflict, and have been heavily targeted by Western countries in most recent conflicts. Thus even if Israel deliberately targeted the Gaza power plant, this would be well within international practice. Yet the dispute is not about bombing civilian power facilities – a subject much discussed in law of war manuals and treatises – but rather the more particular claim that Israel cannot switch off the power it provides to Gaza from its own power stations (which happen to be under fire from Gaza). I do not believe such an affirmative duty to provide energy to one’s enemy has ever been suggested in any other context. Still, the answer can easily be deduced from the targetability of enemy power facilities.

Electrical power plants are legitimate military targets in war, and have been attacked by U.S. and NATO forces in both Gulf Wars, and the air campaign over Serbia in 1999. In recent weeks Ukraine has shelled power facilities in separatist held territory. While some human rights groups quibbled about the particulars of these attacks, they did not meet with condemnation by other states, and the attacks on Belgrade were not cited as problematic by a ICTY inquiry.

https://www.thefp.com/p/gaza-hostage-crisis-is-an-american-crisis

This piece was first published on Tablet. 

The hundreds of Hamas fighters who carried out a murderous rampage inside Israel over the weekend returned to the Gaza Strip with an invaluable new strategic asset. On Sunday, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, told journalists that the Islamist group had captured “dozens” of hostages with American citizenship. If this number is even remotely accurate, the assault would be the largest mass abduction of Americans since the Tehran embassy crisis of 1979.

Hamas has likely divided those hostages across unmapped underground sites throughout Gaza, foreclosing the possibility of a single, swift rescue operation. The hostage issue threatens to inject a future source of divergence into Israeli and American objectives during the crisis.

In a speech at the White House Tuesday, Joe Biden said that he had “no higher priority than the safety of Americans being held hostage around the world.” Outgoing House speaker Kevin McCarthy listed “rescue all American hostages” as the U.S.’s top priority in the unfolding war. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters that, as of Tuesday, the exact number of American hostages remains unknown.

Israel must now weigh the survival of American hostages against neutralizing active threats against other groups of civilians, and also against the country’s stated war aim of disarming Hamas, which would likely require a massive ground operation in which most, if not all, of the hostages would be killed. Hamas, meanwhile, can parade American corpses through downtown Gaza and claim that they are victims of the Israeli assault.

“Hamas will use the hostages in two ways: as human shields and as a source of leverage over Washington,” explained Michael Doran, director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute and a former senior director on the National Security Council. “As human shields, they will prevent Israel from destroying critical infrastructure. As a source of leverage, Hamas will convince Washington to compel Israel to make concessions—on the terms of a cease-fire, the release of prisoners, relaxing economic restrictions on Gaza, delivering payments from abroad, etc. Hamas will parade American hostages before the cameras to beg Washington to bring a halt to Israeli military operations so that the hostages can gain their freedom.”

The ways in which American hostages complicate the conflict hardly ends there. The tiny Gulf emirate of Qatar served as the laundering mechanism for $6 billion in unfrozen Iranian oil money that the U.S. used to purchase the freedom of five American citizens or green-card holders that the Islamic Republic had imprisoned, a transaction announced only last month. Doha also happens to be where much of Hamas’s exiled high command lives. Qatar, Washington’s chosen middleman for hostage diplomacy with Iran—which is Hamas’s leading state sponsor—can claim it runs an existing and effective channel for negotiating the hostages’ freedom. Any apparent progress on this diplomatic track could provide the Americans with an incentive to restrain any Israeli operation in Gaza.

https://lawliberty.org/israels-darkest-day/

Israel’s Darkest Day

More than 1,000 Israelis died at the hands of Hamas terrorists on October 7, by far the worst day in Israeli history, roughly triple the death count on the bloodiest day of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The Israeli military and civil society were taken unawares, and responded slowly and ineffectively. The Hamas attack uncovered deep flaws in Israel’s tactical capabilities as well as its strategic outlook. Israel’s existence depends on speedy correction of these flaws.

The term “intelligence failure” became an overnight cliché. Hamas employed drone attacks in emulation of tactics employed successfully by both sides in the Ukraine war for nearly two years, destroying Israeli observation posts and at least one Israeli Merkava IV main battle tank by dropping grenades from cheap drones. Israel introduced drones into warfare in the Syrian theater in 1983 during the so-called Beqaa Valley turkey shoot, and its failure to adopt electronic countermeasures widely deployed in Ukraine implies a failing technical edge. Despite warnings about the vulnerability of the Gaza barrier from some Israeli military intelligence analysts, Hamas fighters drove a bulldozer through the Gaza fence and hundreds of Hamas killers—the number still is unknown—entered Israel on motorized vehicles. We know this from videos released by Hamas itself; we do not know whether the terrorist organization used more sophisticated communications security measures to evade Israeli detection.

The details of the tactical intelligence failure, though, matter less than Israeli self-deception. The Netanyahu government thought that it had all strategic bases covered, and that it could bribe Hamas to remain on the sidelines as it negotiated diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. It lulled itself into a complacent haze that obscured the recalcitrant elements of the ancient world that opposed the modernizing impulse of the Abraham Accords.