Reaffirming the Distinction between Combatants and Civilians: The Cases of the Israeli Army’s 'Hannibal Directive' and the United States’ Drone Airstrikes against ISIS

During the 2014 Conflict in Gaza between the IDF and Palestinian armed groups, an Israeli soldier, Lt. Hadar Goldin, was captured by Hamas forces and was later on killed. Aiming to prevent the capture, the Israeli troops were ordered to apply the “Hannibal directive.” According to this directive, considerable leeway is given to Israeli commanders in deciding how to prevent their soldiers from being captured by armed groups. It was suspected as having led to intensified shelling by Israeli defense forces. The directive raises a fundamental question in the application of IHL: what is a legitimate risk to civilian lives and civilian objects for the purpose of saving one soldier’s life under the principle of proportionality in IHL? As the Gaza conflict, like most conflicts in the 21st century, took place in densely populated areas, the Hannibal directive calls for a reevaluation of the core distinction in IHL between combatants and civilians. In this paper, I analyze the Hannibal directive and use the analysis to reaffirm the logic and importance of the distinction between civilians and combatants. I confront philosophical and juridical arguments against the application of the distinction in modern battlefields and suggest that states should continue to apply it even though it is being time and again overlooked by armed groups that use civilians as human shields; Yet, I use the principle of proportionality to modify the distinction and adapt it to situations of misuse. Lastly, I deal with the question of whether the distinction between civilians and combatants determines that civilian lives (both your own and enemy civilians) should always be preferred to combatants’ lives. I contend that in most cases it does, since otherwise it derives the conclusion that states may expose their own civilians to danger in order not to endanger their own combatants.