The Gaza effect

Following the war in Gaza, killings of journalists and UN staff have become part of Israel's modus operandi. If we allow these actions to continue, we risk them becoming a model for others.

Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza undermined the normative framework, established over the past century, that governs the conduct of warring countries.

Obviously, it would be a huge exaggeration to say that this framework has ever worked perfectly. And Israel is not the first country to undermine it. Nor is this the first time that Israel has breached these types of norms and rules. Nonetheless, the difference between 'before Gaza' and 'after Gaza' is clear. In particular, this difference applies to Israel's contempt for journalists' lives and professional activities; its political, economic and military campaign against a UN agency; and its use of ethnic cleansing as a security strategy.

Israel been continually at war against countries and groups in the region ever since the brutal Hamas terrorist attack on 7 October 2023. According to official statistics, 72,600 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza. Over 800 of these deaths have occurred since the ceasefire came into force.

Research published in several reputable scholarly journals suggests that this number underestimates the true number of deaths by 40 percent. If this research is correct, the total number of people killed in Gaza is 110,000. That is equivalent to 5 percent of Gaza's population. In Gaza, 397 UN employees have been killed, of whom 391 worked for UNRWA. This figure corresponds to approximately 3 percent of the UN agency's Gaza staff.

At the same time, Israel has been conducting an extensive campaign against UNRWA to destroy the agency's legitimacy and with the expressed goal of destroying the organization.

In addition, 260 journalists and other media workers have been killed. As a result, Gaza is certainly the world's most dangerous place to be a journalist. No other conflict comes anywhere near this number of journalist killings in such a short space of time. Israel’s goal is to depopulate and level over half of Gaza, i.e. the zone east of the 'Yellow Line'. Gaza's remaining population of two million people is to be crammed onto less than half the land.

The Yellow Line is constantly being moved, and Palestinians who find themselves on the 'wrong' side are suddenly in the line of fire.

Proliferation

Israel's has replicated its tactic of attacking UNRWA in Gaza in its policies in other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In January 2025, Israel enacted a legislative ban on UNRWA. Following this ban, the UN agency was gradually evicted from its headquarters in East Jerusalem. Meanwhile, UNRWA schools were closed in some Palestinian refugee camps on the West Bank. People living in several Palestinian refugee camps on the West Bank have been forcibly evicted and the camps have been destroyed by the IDF. Following Israel’s aggressive campaign against UNRWA, some of the agency’s key donors have withdrawn funding, leaving the agency in severe financial difficulty. As a result, the provision of educational and basic health services for the region’s 5.9 million Palestinian refugees is at risk.

Israel is not alone in killing UN personnel. In South Lebanon, a French UN soldier was killed in what has been assumed to be an attack by Hezbollah. Both Israel and Hezbollah must be condemned for attacking UN personnel. It should go without saying that the UN must be allowed to do its work in conflict zones without coming under attack.

In Lebanon, nine journalists have been killed during the past year. The most recent victim was Amal Khalil. Rhetoric by heads of state that undermines journalists' credibility or links them to militant groups undermines their important role as witnesses and makes it easier for warring parties to justify their attacks.

Killings of journalists also deter other journalists from covering conflict zones, which in turn enables the warring parties to sell their own narratives. This is a self-perpetuating downward spiral.

Ethnic cleansing as a tactic

The declaration of 'security zones' – a clinical term that in reality describes ethnic cleansing – is being replicated from the Yellow Line in Gaza to the 'buffer zone' south of the Litani River in Lebanon. This area corresponds to 10 percent of Lebanese territory. In the southern part of this zone, Israel plans to demolish all border villages.

The Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz has stated explicitly that the 600,000 Lebanese citizens who live in the zone will not be allowed to return to their homes. 600,000. This is a huge number by any reckoning, but in Lebanon it corresponds to around 10 percent of the population.

Katz doesn't even try to hide it – he describes Israel's actions in Lebanon as following 'the Rafah and Beit Hanoun [both in Gaza] model'.

What happened in Gaza did not stay in Gaza. It became a model. Until now, the model has been implemented on a small scale, but when compared to Gaza, even quite serious crimes can appear minor.

We cannot wait to react until the situation reaches such proportions. Then it will be too late.

Amnesty International's most recent report warns of  a new 'predatory world order'. Among other things, it cites Israel's conduct in Gaza, the actions of the United States in the Caribbean Sea, and Russia's actions in Ukraine as clear examples of egregious breaches of norms. Myanmar and Sudan are also mentioned, for obvious reasons.

We should impose stricter demands on all countries worldwide, but we are under an additional ethical obligation to monitor the actions of countries that are our trading partners and military allies.

How will we respond if Russia claims it has the right to maintain control over the Donbas region because Israel has been allowed to maintain (and extend) its Yellow Line in Gaza?

• Jørgen Jensehaugen is Research Professor at PRIO
• This text was first published in Norwegian by Panorama Nyheter