Jeremy Bowen
Even wars have rules. They don't stop soldiers killing each other but they're intended to make sure that civilians caught up in the fighting are treated humanely and protected from as much danger as possible. The rules apply equally to all sides.
If one side has suffered a brutal surprise attack that killed hundreds of civilians, as Israel did on 7 October 2023, it does not get an exemption from the law. The protection of civilians is a legal requirement in a battle plan.
That, at least, is the theory behind the Geneva Conventions. The latest version, the fourth, was formulated and adopted after World War Two to stop such slaughter and cruelty to civilians from ever happening again.
At the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva (ICRC) the words "Even Wars Have Rules" are emblazoned in huge letters on a glass rotunda.
The reminder is timely because the rules are being broken.
Getting information from Gaza is difficult. It is a lethal warzone. At least 181 journalists and media workers have been killed since the war started, almost all Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Israel won't let international news teams into Gaza.
Since the best way to check controversial and difficult stories is first hand, that means the fog of war, always hard to penetrate, is as thick as I have ever experienced in a lifetime of war reporting.
It is clear that Israel wants it to be that way. A few days into the war I was part of a convoy of journalists escorted by the army into the border communities that Hamas had attacked, while rescue workers were recovering the bodies of Israelis from smoking ruins of their homes, and Israeli paratroopers were still clearing buildings with bursts of gunfire.
Israel wanted us to see what Hamas had done. The conclusion has to be that it does not want foreign reporters to see what it is doing in Gaza.
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