Why establishing 'safe zones' in Gaza is highly unlikely

One of the difficulties is that 'safe zone' is a very porous concept. Given most of Israel's ordinance has fallen north of the Gaza River, Israel might feel that the south is comparatively 'safe', even though some areas clearly have been targeted with lethal consequences.

At the other end of the scale, those at the UN and elsewhere pushing for a 'safe zone' or 'humanitarian corridor' want something more rigid that forces Israel to guarantee no areas within it will be hit.

Yet the experience elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond has shown the difficulties and challenges of creating such zones. The regional and international circumstances need to be right and, even then, their success is mixed.

A history of 'safe zones'

Safe zones in conflict are nothing new. During the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Henry Dunant, founder of International Committee of the Red Cross, urged combatants to designate certain towns in the war zone as 'safe places' or 'neutral'.

Though the belligerents in western Europe ignored him, the idea of areas that were recognised by both sides as a refuge for non-combatants or those convalescing increasingly gained currency. The Spanish Civil war had safe zones of sorts during the late 1930s, for example.

After the Second World War, where no provisions for safe zones were made or respected, the new United Nations drew up the Fourth Geneva Convention, designed to protect civilians during war. Article 14 states that combatants may establish, "hospital and safety zones and localities," designed to protect the vulnerable.

It goes on to state that, "upon the outbreak and during the course of hostilities the (warring) parties concerned may conclude agreements on mutual recognition of the zones and localities they have created."

In essence, both sides in the fighting need to agree that each other's safe zones will be respected for them to be effective. There was some success establishing such areas by mutual recognition in conflicts during the Cold War, such as in Vietnam and Cyprus, but in other instances such as in Cambodia, agreed neutral zones soon fell apart.

The 1990s saw the safe zone evolve as increasingly it was outsiders, not the belligerents themselves, that sought to enforce the respect of refugees from conflicts. Among the most famous of these came in northern Iraq in 1991.

After Saddam Hussein was defeated in the Gulf War, Iraqis, whom US President George HW Bush had urged to rise up against the Iraqi dictator, did just that, only to find no Western support forthcoming and instead a vengeful crackdown by the Ba'ath regime.

In the south, Bush left the predominantly Shiite rebels to their fate, but in the north, his administration took action to protect the Kurds. After Saddam had used chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians in 1988, western leaders worried the same fate would await them without protection.

As a result, the US, UK and France initiated a 'no-fly zone' north of the 36th parallel, preventing Iraqi military forces from bombing or, eventually, even entering.

While the north Iraqi safe zone had no UN mandate, the Security Council did approve a similar no-fly zone over Bosnia from 1993-95, enforced by NATO, to prevent the warring parties there from launching air raids.

It also created six so-called 'safe zones' across Bosnia, intended to be refuges, though both Serb and Bosniak militants frequently violated them. Indeed, Srebrenica's status as a demilitarised 'safe' zone did nothing to prevent the genocidal massacre of 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys there in 1995.        

Read more: Whatever happened to the Responsibility to Protect?

Global power dynamics

The mixed record of safe zones in the Bosnian conflict showed that even when the international community was able to come together to enforce combatants to respect neutral spaces this was no guarantee of their success.

Yet even this external consensus was rare.

The northern Iraq and Bosnian safe zones came about at a unique era in recent history when the US was enjoying its 'unipolar moment' of unmatched global power.

With the Soviet Union disappeared from the scene and China and Russia yet to rise to a point to challenge US hegemony, Washington was able to heavily influence the 'international community' to its will.

This meant the US and its key allies Britain and France could impose the no-fly zone in Iraq despite having no UN mandate and face no major push back – despite the then Secretary General Boutros Boutros Gali declaring them, "illegal."

A year later the US and its allies had more success at the UN pushing for safe zones in Bosnia, facing even fewer objections from international rivals.    

The relative decline in US power and the emergence of rivals in Beijing and Moscow has since shifted geopolitics into a multipolar order, impacting the likelihood of safe zones being imposed by outsiders.

NATO's intervention in Libya in 2011 was arguably a high point, but also the tipping point for the practice.

The threat that Muammar Gaddafi, like Saddam Hussein before him, might wreak havoc on his own rebelling population prompted Western and Arab states to join together to vote through UN resolution 1973 to impose a no-fly zone over Libya.

Though China and Russia endorsed the effort, they subsequently felt that the NATO coalition far exceeded its mandate, intervening in the civil war to topple Gaddafi rather than just protecting civilians.

Thereafter, Russia and China, who were becoming more assertive in international affairs, increasingly objected to proposed 'safe zones', especially when they seemed to be furthering a Western agenda.

This was seen most notably in the Syria conflict, when both Beijing and, especially, Moscow vetoed UN resolutions critical of their ally, President Bashar al-Assad, for fear of initiating another Libya-style 'safe zone'.

Ironically, Russia would end up appropriating the 'safe zone' concept for its own ends. In 2017, as part of Moscow's Astana 'Peace Process' with Turkey and Iran in Syria, Russia proposed 'de-escalation zones' in four rebel-held parts of Syria.

These, agreed on by Ankara and Tehran, saw heavy fighting end and casualties initially decrease. However, Russia, Iran and al-Assad simply used the pause in fighting to regroup and then launch military assaults to conquer two of the four zones, while buying off rebels in a third with promises of reconciliation.

Only one, Idlib, remained in rebel hands, and even then, al-Assad violently captured over a third of the land initially designated as 'de-escalated.'

Despite words of condemnation, no further action was taken by the international community to sanction Moscow or Damascus for breaking their word.

Russia and al-Assad were showing the reality of safe zones in the multi-polar world: without an external guarantor willing to defend them, their safety was dependent on the trustworthiness and goodwill of belligerents in the conflict. 

Gaza under fire

This is important context for understanding any talk of 'safe zones' in Gaza today. The chances of their being imposed by outsiders are very slim. 

We no longer live in an era where the US or, indeed, any global power can either corral the international community towards its agenda or, alternatively, unilaterally impose itself onto a conflict without significant pushback.

Moreover, as we have seen by its recent UN veto, the US doesn't seem to want a safe zone or, at least, not enough to force one upon its ally Israel against its will.

Despite its private lobbying of Israel to consider humanitarian access and safe zones, the Biden administration ultimately opted to defend its ally against attempts by other nations to pressure Israel over safe zones at the UN.

Past conflicts have shown that this is standard practice for the US, making it even more unlikely that the UN will be able to push Israel against its will.

So, a successful safe zone in Gaza seems to primarily rest on Israel being willing to create and respect one itself, as it had suggested at first.

Israel might argue that, because Hamas is, in its view, a terrorist organisation that did not respect Israeli civilians or 'neutral areas' when it attacked on 7 October, there are no reciprocal arrangements to be had as per the Fourth Geneva Convention.

At least 1,400 Israelis have been killed.

It might also argue that the Geneva Convention was designed to regulate conflicts between states and, given it is fighting what it calls terrorists, it is not beholden to the same laws.

Some US politicians argued similarly about some of Washington's activities during the War on Terror. Moreover, with the US offering Israel seemingly unquestioning loyalty and protection, it seems unlikely that Israel would let certain interpretations of international law dictate its approach to Gaza.

So, with no one seemingly willing to force Israel's hand, and international law either too ambiguous or weak to prompt Prime Minister Netanyahu to rethink, it currently looks unlikely that rigid and reliable safe zones will emerge.

This could, of course, change if Israel's calculus does. As Palestinian casualties increase, global public opinion, initially widely sympathetic to Israel, might shift. 

On its part, Israel has killed well over 8,000 civilians in Gaza, with 40% being children. Israel additionally killed more than 100 Palestinians in the West Bank, where it is not fighting Hamas.

While Israeli governments have shown themselves impervious to global public opinion in past conflicts, uproar abroad has at times shifted public opinion in Israel to, in turn, pressure the authorities to change their stance.

With emotions still high after the Hamas attacks, such a shift on the home front might seem unlikely at present, though some dissident voices are increasingly emerging.

Genuinely robust and secure safe zones could yet develop, but for now, the prospects do not look promising.