On May 15 the Israeli Defence Forces attacked the al-Shati refugee camp for displaced Palestinians. The air raid left 10 people dead, 8 of whom were children. This might justifiably raise a set of questions to confront the Israeli authorities with, however, targeting refugee camps is often not at random and it has been used as a terror tactic for decades across different conflicts by competing armed forces.
Refugee camps enjoy a ‘protected status’ under international law as they are supposed to serve the purpose of demilitarized zones for protecting civilians displaced by war and prosecution. Yet, concentrating unarmed populations in enclosed spaces, often at remote borderlands, has yielded disastrous results. From the Sabra & Shatila or Srebrenica massacres in the Lebanese and Bosnian civil wars to modern-day atrocities such as the incident in al-Shati or the attacks in Eritrean refugee camps in Ethiopia, the facilities responsible for providing a place of refuge for victims of conflict have become death traps where one cannot be sure where the next attack is going to come from.
These tactics are enabled by two key problems. On the one hand, the rapid and uncontrollable expansion of camps into shantytowns has meant that militant groups can take advantage to shield themselves among the civilian population. This can be exploited by belligerent armed forces in order to justify attacks on locations where displaced civilians live or the government securitizing the camps and demanding the refugees to be removed. Additionally, concentrating large numbers of civilians in one place, whilst the surrounding areas are being besieged runs the danger of exposing the camp population to a potential attack by militant forces where scores can be killed, injured, or sexually assaulted and uprooted once again.
It is of paramount importance that the responsible authorities address the issue of impunity regarding the attacks on refugee camps and relevant installations. Especially in settings of ongoing conflict and armed violence it will be particularly challenging to provide justice for the victims of such crimes and in many cases, the perpetrators know that they can get away with their actions. Regrettably, it has become ever harder to deny that the practice of ‘warehousing’ displaced people into dense, under-resourced, and potentially dangerous facilities might result in atrocities that with the appropriate management could have been avoided.
*Image Credits: IDF soldiers conducting operations in the Jenin refugee camp / IDF Spokesperson's Unit