The British and USA governments targetted civilians with their bombing in WW2. I regard those as war crimes. In addition it did very little to shorten the war. Bombing of military and industrial/transport targets is, of course, different. However, the Nazis, British and Americans intentionally targetted civilians.
Which it wasn't at the time. It's very difficult to backdate any legislation, especially International law. Of course the allies, which included the French, Polish, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and many other Countries did the same thing, those Countries now being a major part of the free world. Germany was hardly blameless either, it was something they did on a regular basis. 2 wrongs doesn't make it right, but that was war at that time.
At the time, the justification was it was 'total' war, and everyone on both sides contributed so was fair game. Thats an arguable point, but not, at the moment directly relatable to the Middle East.
The History of Israel goes back far further than the end of WW2, and is far more complex than has been portrayed here. Both in a nutshell, it now exists, and short of wiping it from the face of the earth, which oddly is what Hamas and a lot of other Arab groups want, it will continue to exist.
And that is the difficulty. Hamas and Co think they have a right to remove the state of Israel from the map, Israel thinks it has the right to self defence. Trouble is, the latter is enshrined in international law, the former is not.
Israel, whatever the rights and wrongs of now have put up with a great deal of provocation. They've been shelled and bombed for months this time round, and taken it on the chin. At some point, something was going to give, and it has.
Given Hamas wont negotiate until they are on the receiving end at which point they scream foul, I don't see what else the Israelis can do. They give, Hamas starts again and wants more. They act, and the world recoils in horror. It's no win for them.
Yep granted innocent Palestinians are getting caught up, but they could do something about it, withdraw support for Hamas. They wont though.
The US, UK and France aren't that keen on getting in the way too much, especially the US who have too many people in influence who share a religious belief with Israel, hence the US arms Israel to the extent it does. Although it should be noted they are very capable of their own arms manufacture, the Iron Dome being a good example of probably the most advanced anti missile system in operational use. Besides Israel is a stumbling block to the World wide Islamic fundamentalist state, which if Israel falls is something that will start to come to pass a great deal sooner. I don't think the groups involved in that are going to give a stuff about 'war criminals' when they get round to that seriously.
I suppose the point is that it isn't going to get solved, probably ever, simply because it is unsolvable.
but trying to just take a simple issue of bad Israel, good Hamas doesn't even touch the surface.