On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” USAID Administrator Samantha Power acknowledged that “Hamas is willing to cause its own civilians to pay the price and willing to set up shop in places where civilians are gathered,” but Israel has “to respect schools and mosques and facilities where civilians are gathered.” And that, even when terrorists take advantage of civilian infrastructure, “to go forward and attack civilian targets sets back the cause fundamentally. It means that the legitimacy of the effort is undermined.”
Power said that we have “seen a response in which Israel is exercising its legitimate right to self-defense, but civilians are caught up in that, in what you had just heard is a very densely-populated area.” And “We see President Biden, who’s becoming almost a humanitarian desk officer in pushing for trucks and water and fuel and respect for international humanitarian law and distinguishing between Hamas and civilians, as hard as that is when Hamas is willing to cause its own civilians to pay the price and willing to set up shop in places where civilians are gathered, including refugee camps, and so forth.”
Later, she added, “U.S. forces faced, not the same situation, but analogous circumstances in fighting terrorist groups in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a tried and true tactic, sadly, tragically. But one of the things I know that Secretary Austin conveys to his military counterparts on the Israeli side is that it is a strategic and moral necessity to find a way, nonetheless, to abide by international humanitarian law, to respect schools and mosques and facilities where civilians are gathered. You have U.N. facilities, schools where hundreds of thousands of people are gathered, four times the capacity of some of these facilities. So, even though it’s a terrible burden that the Israeli Defense Forces have to bear and that U.S. forces had to bear in their conflicts when terrorists were taking advantage, again, of civilian infrastructure, to go forward and attack civilian targets sets back the cause fundamentally. It means that the legitimacy of the effort is undermined.”
Power continued, “And that’s why, in addition to all of the tactical discussions about fuel and water and food and getting people in and out, so many discussions have been had at the highest levels on international humanitarian law, on the importance of respecting even those civilians who — the lives of those civilians who stayed in northern Gaza and didn’t take up the evacuation order for any reason, they’re still civilians and somehow to find a way to distinguish between legitimate military targets, acted upon in legitimate self-defense and civilians who were not part of the attack against Israel and want nothing more than to be able to live and take care of their families.”
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