Hamas fighters take part in Red Cross international law workshop

The International Committee of the Red Cross recently held a three-day workshop in the besieged Gaza Strip with members of Hamas’s armed wing, the Izzedine al Qassam Brigades.

The workshop, held in late July, aimed to train the fighters about international law related to armed conflicts that involve civilians. It was the sixth workshop that the ICRC has conducted this year with a seventh scheduled for this week.

This isn’t the first time the ICRC have held sessions with fighters that belong to the armed wings of various political groups in Gaza. The former ICRC spokesperson, Iyad Nasir, explained in 2007 about the goal from holding such gatherings.

“We are teaching and training the Palestinian resistance factions the laws, texts and the spirit of [humanitarian law] as well as the applicability of these laws to the conflict they are involved in,” Nasir said. “At the same time, we are doing the same with the Israeli army.”

Following the 51-day war on the Gaza Strip last summer, several human rights organisations released reports accusing both the Israeli army and Hamas of committing war crimes. Qassam fighters, however, rejected the idea that they should be equated with the more sophisticated and better armed Israeli army.

“We did not commit war crimes as much as the Israelis did,” a Qassam coordinator told the New York Times this month. “Civilian casualties happen because we are not an organised army.”

The coordinator was not worried about the results of an International Criminal Court prosecutor inquiry looking into potential war crimes on both sides, saying that the armed groups in Gaza will not be affected.

“We are, eventually, victims and they [Israel] are the occupiers, so there is no comparison,” he said.

The New York Times also reported that Hamas reacted favourably when the head of Red Cross operations in Gaza, Mamadou Sow, presented to the group with a critique of their conduct in the summer war. Sow said that Hamas “welcomed” the evaluation and “indicated that they are a learning organisation".

“Hamas is actually in a private, protected space, expressing a readiness to look critically at a number of things that have an impact on their level of respect for international humanitarian law,” Jacques de Maio, the director of the Red Cross delegation in Israel and Palestine, told the New York Times.

“Whether this will translate into something concrete, time will tell," he said.