A/HRC/12/48 page 98 1. Civilian objects shall not be the object of attack or of reprisals. Civilian objects are all objects which are not military objectives as defined in paragraph 2. 2. Attacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives. In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage. 3. In case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used. 386. The statement by the Israeli Government concerning the attack on the Legislative Council building and the Ministry of Justice does not suggest any “effective contribution to military action” that the buildings might have been making. No reference is made to any “definite military advantage” that their destruction would offer. Instead, the explanation is that government buildings constitute “part of Hamas’s mechanism of control”, that they “serve as a critical component of the terrorist groups’ infrastructure in Gaza” and that “ostensibly civilian elements of [the Hamas] regime are in reality active components of its terrorist and military efforts.” 387. The Mission observes that there is nothing unique in the fact that in Gaza ministries and prisons are part of the government’s “mechanism of control” and that the legislature’s assembly hall and administrative buildings are a critical component of the government infrastructure. That is not, however, the test applied by international humanitarian law and accepted State practice to distinguish between civilian and military objects. The Mission reviewed, for instance, the tentative list of military objectives drawn up by Major General A.P.V. Rogers, a former Director of the British Army Legal Services, and a proposed list of military objectives drawn up by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). There is nothing in this comprehensive list of military objectives that comes close to a legislative assembly’s building or a prison. As far as ministries are concerned, both lists limit the definition of military objective to “war ministries”.250 388. The Mission further notes that international humanitarian law also recognizes a category of civilian objects which may nonetheless be targeted in the course of armed conflict to the extent that they have a “dual use”. Examples often made for such dual-use objects, which serve both civilian and military purposes, are civilian infrastructures such as telecommunications, power-generating stations or bridges, in so far as they are used by the military in addition to their civilian use. There is no indication, nor any allegation of any such dual use of the Legislative Council building or of the Gaza main prison. “Final report to the Prosecutor by the Committee established to review the NATO bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia”, paras. 38–39, available at: http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/ nato061300.htm#IVA64d. 250