But international law does not only shape the rights and duties of the party acting in self-defence: it imposes even more stringent obligations, which Hamas’s apologists unfailingly ignore, on the conduct of hostilities by its adversary.

It is, in effect, clearly accepted under customary international law, and explicitly reaffirmed in the 1977 Geneva Additional Protocols, that the primary responsibility for protecting civilians rests with the party that controls the territory in which they are located; that is, Hamas.

That party has an obligation to encourage and facilitate the evacuation of civilians from combat zones; it is also absolutely prohibited from using those civilians, much less any hostages it has seized, as human shields.

And exploiting what would normally be regarded as civilian facilities for (or to conceal) military activities is strictly prohibited too, since any facility that makes “an effective contribution to military action” immediately becomes a legitimate military target, so long as its “total or partial destruction, capture or neutralisation offers a definite military advantage” (where “definite” simply means “not merely hypothetical or speculative”).

Moreover, the initial aggressor bears the legal responsibility for any civilian casualties its infringement of those provisions causes and acquires no legal rights of complaint or recourse when those casualties eventuate – since allowing it to claim such rights would, as the US guide notes, be “flatly contrary to the principle (that) legal rights should not result from the commission of wrongful acts”.

Nor can that party expect its human shields to protect it, through the proportionality test, from legitimate attack; on the contrary, says Britain’s Manual of the Law of Armed Conflict, if the aggressor has deliberately “put civilians … at risk by placing military objectives in their midst, this is a factor in favour of the legality (under international law) of attacks on those objectives”.

That Hamas has breached each and every one of its obligations, not least to the people of Gaza, is beyond question. That it will do absolutely nothing to punish its appalling violations of international law is equally certain.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/barbaric-hamas-is-no-respecter-of-ru...