Israel's Self-Defence Prerogative

"[The military took] a number of steps prior to the strike to avoid civilian casualties."

"[Other measures included aerial surveillance and] delaying the attack to further assess the expected civilian presence." 

"[The deaths of the civilians in the strike were a] devastating incident, which we did not expect."

"We are working to verify the cause of the fire. It is still too early to be determined. Even when we do find the cause of the fire that erupted, it won't make the situation any less tragic."

Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari

 

On Sunday night a large explosion and fire occurred at an encampment where Palestinian Gazans sought shelter from the Israeli military's conflict with Gaza's terrorist groups, in its determination to destroy the ability of Hamas to endlessly repeat -- as they declared was their intention -- the devastating atrocities they brought to Israeli citizens on October 7 in a maelstrom of rape, torture and mass murder, culminating with the abduction of 250 Jewish infants, children, men and women along with a number of foreign farm workers and Muslim Israelis. 

The Gaza health ministry, an arm of Hamas, along with the Gaza civil defence agency and Gaza media office reported that the explosion resulted from a deliberately planned strike by the Israeli military on a marked refugee region. One which Hamas characterized as a "Zionist massacre of civilians", justifying its launch of  yet another barrage of rockets targeting Israel. The Palestinian humanitarian Red Crescent reported a "large number of martyrs" hit by "the occupation" had resulted when "Israeli aircraft shelled tents in this area". The world soon learned that 45 Palestinians died and over 200 were injured.

And international condemnation of Israel flowed, fast and furious. Media, relying on these initial, obviously deliberately biased and incorrect reports by arms of a flaming terrorist group held Israel guilty of a micro-bloodbath that resulted from an "Israeli strike on Rafah camp", as The Washington Post put it. "We are horrified by strikes that killed Palestinian civilians in Rafah" stated Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, demanding an "immediate ceasefire".

 

Fire rages at an area designated for displaced Palestinians in the Rafah area on Sunday  Reuters

 

Two days after the explosion, the IDF released a satellite image with the explanation that they struck a target that was "a closed structure" (huge warehouse complex where two Hamas commanders were meeting) away from the tent area. The image that was released showed that the warehouse that was actually the target was about 180 metres from the Al-Mawasi Humanitarian Area, where the fires broke out and Palestinian civilians were killed. The strike had been carried out with precision munitions, explained the IDF.

Munitions of such limited strength they would not have generated the level of damage shown in videos of the camp when the explosion and fires occurred. A CNN analysis published Wednesday identified the remnants of a GBU-39 small diameter bomb at the site made by Boeing, marketed as a "precision-strike weapon" to minimize "collateral damage". And according to Rear-Adm. Daniel Hagari, damage to the camp resulted from "secondary explosions" hazarding that unknown weapons caches were ignited by the strike.

 

 

Attributing the explosions and resulting fire to the probability of huge caches of explosive devices in the warehouses was supported by videos of the fire that Gazan civilians had produced, showing multiple blasts following the initial, small, controlled strike. A narrator in one widely circulated video is heard speculating in Arabic that the fire resulted from a strike on "a vehicle filled with ammo and weapons". 

The IDF declared its overnight airstrike targeted Hamas commanders with the deliberate use of small munitions incapable of causing a fire of those dimensions independently. Leaving the IDF to suspect the fire was ignited by a secondary explosion from hidden munitions or related combustible materials used by Hamas. The target was a Hamas compound distanced from civilian areas.The IDF is committed to investigate fully even while its operations to dismantle Hamas and return the Israeli hostages will proceed without interruption.

As is usual for the IDF, civilians were instructed to move to designated safe zones preceding the strike while Hamas commanders Yassin Rabia and Khaled Najjar were being tracked. Both died in the strike that used two small munitions with a 17-kilogram warhead each, the smallest that can be used with their jets and which were absent the strength to start "a fire of this size". "Israel has a right to go after Hamas, and we understand this strike killed two senior Hamas terrorists who are responsible for attacks against Israeli civilians", a White House spokesman stated earlier in the week.

 

When Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad butchered over 300,000 of his own Sunni Syrian citizens, the level of horrified condemnation was relatively muted in comparison to the international attention and censure that Israel -- in defence of its existence, and always in its actions never deviating from international laws on self-defence and the right to protect its citizens from an unrelenting death threat --invariably is targeted with.