🤥 Israel is not committing war crimes because they regularly drop leaflets warning Palestinians in Gaza to flee to safety.

Amnesty International contends that the messages in Israel’s warning leaflets do not demonstrate an intent to protect civilians but rather to forcibly displace them, often to locations that are still active war zones. Moreover, the organization maintains that designating entire cities or regions, along with residential areas within them, as military targets violates international humanitarian law. Such actions contravene the requirement for warring parties to distinguish between civilian and military objectives, constituting a war crime.

These leaflets are no more than a PR stunt by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). They give the false impression that Israel is acting morally by providing ‘warnings’ to Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate. However, issuing warnings does not exempt parties from their obligation to safeguard civilians. Israel’s extensive bombing campaigns, the withholding of essential life sustaining supplies, and the deliberate targeting of civilians both on their way to safe zones and within those safe zones themselves, unmistakably reveal Israel’s true intentions behind these so-called ‘warnings.’

Israel’s purported ‘benevolence’ in distributing leaflets to alert Palestinians of impending attacks is deceptive. Given Israel’s full control over Gaza’s maritime, air, and land borders, Israel is well aware that Palestinians cannot heed evacuation orders unless Israel permits them to leave, which it does not.

Israel’s evacuation orders risk displacement, which is in of itself a war crime. The fact that nearly 75% of Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced by the most recent military onslaught nullifies any ‘good will’ intended by the forewarnings sent through leaflets/text messages/other means of communication.

The laws of war strictly prohibit “threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population.” Evacuation calls not genuinely intended for warning but to induce panic or coerce residents to leave their homes for reasons beyond safety are also prohibited. The sweeping nature of the IOF’s orders and the impossibility of safe compliance strongly imply that the warnings aim not to protect civilians but to instill fear and force them to abandon their homes.