This Would Itself Be Seen as Terrorism

Photo by Atia Mohammed/Flash90.

I've been suggesting without a lot of actual evidence that I know the Israeli bombing of Gaza, especially in the northern part of the strip, has been indiscriminate and in violation of the IDF's own targeting rules, let alone international law, ever since October 19, 9 days into the campaign, when The Economist published an assessment of the damage up to that point based on satellite images from the first five days: 11,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. In the rigorous standard procedure, an airstrike cannot go ahead until it is individually approved by an advisor outside the military deciding that the possible civilian casualties are outweighed by the value of the target; I couldn't believe it was possible to do that for 6,000 bombs in 120 hours (50 strikes per hour or about one every 72 seconds).

Now some reporting has emerged, by Yuval Abraham in the great Israeli online newsmagazine +972, based on interviews with seven current and former members of the intelligence community including some directly involved in the operations, and it's pretty disturbing: IDF has indeed loosened the rules relating the number of potential civilian casualties, they've expanded authorization for hitting nonmilitary targets, and they're using an AI system to generate targets—I was right about the number of targets being a clue, there were literally too many of them for humans to decide on unassisted.

The nonmilitary targets include private residences and high-rise apartment blocks (all those shattered buildings we see in the videos where whole floors have slipped off their supports) along with public buildings and infrastructure, and called "power targets" (matarot otzem), and what it means to say they are nonmilitary is that striking them isn't aimed at a military objective—killing combatants or destroying their facilities—but at frightening the civilian population:

The bombing of power targets, according to intelligence sources who had first-hand experience with its application in Gaza in the past, is mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society: to “create a shock” that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas,” as one source put it.

IDF has data for each target indicating the number of people who are likely to be killed in a strike, and they seem to have given up at least some of the usual methods of warning them in advance when they believe there is a Hamas fighter in the building:

[Omer] Tishler, the air force chief of staff, confirmed a shift in policy, telling reporters that the army’s “roof knocking” policy — whereby it would fire a small initial strike on the roof of a building to warn residents that it is about to be struck — is no longer in use “where there is an enemy.” Roof knocking, Tishler said, is “a term that is relevant to rounds [of fighting] and not to war.”

The sources who have previously worked on power targets said that the brazen strategy of the current war could be a dangerous development, explaining that attacking power targets was originally intended to “shock” Gaza but not necessarily to kill large numbers of civilians. “The targets were designed with the assumption that high-rises would be evacuated of people, so when we were working on [compiling the targets], there was no concern whatsoever regarding how many civilians would be harmed; the assumption was that the number would always be zero,” said one source with deep knowledge of the tactic.

Then they really do use the AI system to pick targets, and the system inevitably makes mistakes, working as AI systems do, with inhuman efficiency but subhuman carelessness:

According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”

According to the sources, the increasing use of AI-based systems like Habsora allows the army to carry out strikes on residential homes where a single Hamas member lives on a massive scale, even those who are junior Hamas operatives. Yet testimonies of Palestinians in Gaza suggest that since October 7, the army has also attacked many private residences where there was no known or apparent member of Hamas or any other militant group residing. Such strikes, sources confirmed to +972 and Local Call, can knowingly kill entire families in the process....

“If they would tell the whole world [," explained one source, "] that the [Islamic Jihad] offices on the 10th floor are not important as a target, but that its existence is a justification to bring down the entire high-rise with the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it in order to put pressure on terrorist organizations, this would itself be seen as terrorism. So they do not say it...”

So I'm saying it. But you need to read the whole thing.

***

Meanwhile the thing I said should have happened first (the first of many times Prime Minister Netanyahu turned the proposal down), the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian police detainees, has started to happen, thanks to President Biden and the Qatari intermediaries, and is being received very well by the Israeli and Palestinian populations, which would plainly like to see it extended well beyond its current extension. 

There's an obvious paradox in this, that I think is not getting enough attention: every day Hamas delivers another batch of its prisoners to the Rafah crossing, they are coming closer, commanders and soldiers alike, I think, to the extermination Netanyahu has promised them, renewing the promise just about every day, and their motivation should be diminishing accordingly. Are they so pleased with the prospect of martyrdom? Are they doing this out of pure chivalry, like the noble Kurd Sultan Salahaddin in the Third Crusade? I really don't think so. Where do they expect to be after the last hostage is delivered up? What's the plan?

Josh Marshall (no paywall, because I'm giving it to you) shared something last night that he'd found in Ha'aretz, in a column by Zvi Bar'el: there's all kinds of negotiation going on between Israel and Hamas, in fact, as you'd expect, with various intermediaries, not just Qatar, and on various subjects.

Bar'el is remembering the situation in 1982, when Israel had invaded Lebanon in the middle of that country's civil war, in the hope of driving out Yasir Arafat's then-terrorist Palestine Liberation Front, bringing on all kinds of horror including the notorious Sabra and Shatila massacres, when fascist Christian troops murdered up to 3,500 Shia civilians, Palestinian and Lebanese, in a three-day period, after IDF under Ariel Sharon's command accompanied them to the site and then stood aside. But well before that, the PLO had negotiated with the Israelis for a safe exit, and departed for Tunisia, where they spent the next ten years.

Is something like that going on with Hamas? Is that the meaning of the hostage exchange and of Biden's increasing public insistence on moving toward peace and the two-state arrangement? Are they plotting an exit for Hamas to someplace they can live in for ten or so years, until things change? Marshall doesn't think so—he doesn't think Hamas would be willing to accept that—but he wonders, thinking Har'el has a reason for bringing the thing up. I wonder even more. 

I've got my own feeling, that the October 7 incursion didn't go at all the way Qassam Brigades leadership had planned (Hamas itself, the political party, hadn't been involved in the planning at all), and went much farther than they had intended, with the rape and torture, when the IDF failed to show up and stop them. I think they're in a bad diplomatic position. I think Qataris, with Biden behind them, is pressing them very very hard. I think Netanyahu is also in a bad diplomatic position in his own government, and has to recognize that the massive destruction in Gaza and unleashing of settler violence in the West Bank isn't going to keep him out of prison for his longstanding corruption (even if the majority of Israelis approve of the violence, which is getting less certain, they aren't giving him credit for it). Maybe rebranding himself as a peace candidate will?

Narratologically speaking, it's kind of irresistible for me, so I don't advise you to trust me on it, but it would certainly help a lot of people out, and there is that 1982 precedent.