A Day, a Life: When a Medic Was Killed in Gaza, Was It an Accident?Rouzan al-Najaar, a 20 year old self-educated "medic" as described by the New York Times, was killed during June 2018 by an Israeli soldier's bullet. That is about all anyone can agree on. Hamas had commenced so-called "protests" which I consider to have been an attempt to wash away the Gaza-Israel border by force. Israel, predictably, responded with force as it considers its border to be a legitimate demarcation of national sovereignty. The above-linked NY Times article
(link) states that "technically, it (the border marked by a fence) was not even a recognized border, only the armistice line drawn in 1949, after the Israeli-Arab war." The Israeli army had "warned that anyone coming close to the (border) fence would be shot." The implication of the article, of course, is that Israel should not be there.
The article states that:
Her death was a poignant illustration of the cost of Israel’s use of battlefield weapons to control the protests, a policy that has taken the lives of nearly 200 Palestinians.It also shows how each side is locked into a seemingly unending and insolvable cycle of violence. The Palestinians trying to tear down the fence are risking their lives to make a point, knowing that the protests amount to little more than a public relations stunt for Hamas, the militant movement that rules Gaza. And Israel, the far stronger party, continues to focus on containment rather than finding a solution.
The New York Times writes, as fact rather than as editorial:
A senior Israeli commander told The Times in August that 60 to 70 other Gaza protesters had been killed unintentionally, around half the total killed at that point.
Yet the Israeli army’s rules of engagement remain unchanged, the military says.
That alone may constitute a separate violation of international humanitarian law, experts say: After enough civilians have died, commanders have a duty to make changes to ensure that they aren’t needlessly targeted.
“You lose the right to say, ‘Oops,’” said Noam Lubell, a professor of the law of armed conflict at the University of Essex.
The large number of accidental killings, and Israel’s failure to adjust the rules of engagement in response, raise the question of whether they were a bug or a feature of its policy.
Hamas is using civilians as an essential part of the "war effort." And the Times wishes Israel to focus on "finding a solution."
Unless someone else has any other ideas, the only such "solution" is to evacuate Jews from Israel. One dovish Israeli musician said as much to me when I asked what Israel's recourse was if the Arabs would not agree to any borders at all for a State of Israel. He said "wouldn't raising children there be child abuse"?
I believe that Israel has every right to exist as a Jewish state, and fight aggressively in that pursuit.