Ok, I’m not going to pull any punches on this one. This is another example of the successful use of the human shield by the other side. You can check the link above, or see Al-Jazeera’s take on it. The material facts of the case are the same, and AJ’s coverage (other than the headline) seems at least as balanced as the CTV’s. These two excerpts from the Canadian story will show why we’re never going to effectively deal with similar situations in Afghanistan or elsewhere:
"The Israeli army said troops were reluctant to fire into the crowd but noticed two militants hiding among the women. And as the crowd dispersed, at least two men were seen disguised as women.
The large crowd that had gathered by mid-morning Friday helped the militants to escape, because there weren't enough ground troops to keep the protesters away from the building, the military said.
Israeli troops had bombarded the mosque with stun and smoke grenades, and bulldozed an outer wall of the structure in an attempt to force the gunmen to surrender.
Around the town, Israeli forces lowered their profile. Soldiers stopped patrolling the streets, though snipers were still perched on rooftops and tanks were still in position on the streets.
Despite the crackdown on Beit Hanoun, rockets have continued to land in Israel."
This mob of “innocent” women was gathered according to a Hamas radio appeal, and was there to trump the Israeli military option. You may notice the lack of brutal military determination to deal with these armed guys hiding in a mosque (stun and smoke grenades aren’t exactly decisive), and then the effective retreat of the IDF from the area after this embarrassing debacle.
You will notice that the cause of the IDF incursion (the rocket attacks) continued unabated, so they got a bit of bad press for nothing.
This keeps working, so it’ll keep being done. Now, just for the sake of argument, say you had flattened the mosque as soon as the bad guys (your perspective, of course) decided to use it for a fort, this human shield thing wouldn’t have had time to materialize, and no women would have been shot and the bad guys would have been effectively neutralized if not killed outright.
Failing that, send a message. The Laws of Armed Conflict (see earlier post) do not deny forces the right to fire on civilian targets if hostile forces are there. This clause is there because if it were not, all that were required to stop operations would be the opposing force hiding in a house. Obviously this won’t fly, so we MAKE IT CLEAR to our potential enemies to “Just send in your Chief and surrender, it’s worse if you fights or you runs, you can go where you please, you can skid up the trees, but you don’t get away from the guns!”. (quote from guess who)
In short, gun the whole lot of them down. This doesn’t mean indiscriminately target non-combatants (which is very much against the LOAC), but these were merely unarmed combatants. In my books if you engage in a ruse de guerre like pulling out a white flag to help your armed compatriots escape, this doesn’t safeguard you from armed retaliation. It's not just my twisted opinion either; I'm pretty sure it's international law, for whatever that's worth these days.
Our squeamishness about killing “civilians” is meaningless when the enemy doesn’t play by our rules, or even wear uniforms. There will be an international outrage no matter what you do in this case, but I argue that making it clear that you have accepted the gauntlet that has been thrown down will do a lot more good in the long run.
There were cases in Lebanon this past summer of certain villages defending their territory against Hezbollah, because they knew what would happen if the bastards were allowed to set up shop there. You’ll notice how little press that got. If being a bullet-catcher is made to look like a bad idea (i.e. you’ll be taken up on it!) a lot less people will be willing to do it.
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