Amnesty International reports on Israeli use of battlefield weapons on trapped Gazan civilians
Marian Houk
July 02, 2009
Israel´s use of battlefield weapons against a civilian population trapped in Gaza, with no means of escape, is discussed in a major new report issued today by Amnesty International on the Israeli military's recent unprecedented operation in Gaza (27 December - 18 January).
The report, Operation Cast Lead: 22 days of death and destruction, presents evidence gathered by Amnesty International delegates, including a military expert, during field research in Gaza and southern Israel in January and , February.
The report is designed, in part, to funnel information to the UN Human Rights Council's Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, led by South Africa's Justice Richard Goldstone, which has just wrapped up a set of public hearing in Gaza. Another set of public hearings will be held in Geneva on 6-7 July.
The Amnesty International document is one of a series of recent reports, including by Human Rights Watch and by a group of Israel-based human rights organizations, all intended for the same purpose.
"Israel´s failure to properly investigate its forces´ conduct in Gaza, including war crimes, and its continuing refusal to cooperate with the UN international independent fact-finding mission headed by Richard Goldstone, is evidence of its intention to avoid public scrutiny and accountability," said Donatella Rovera, who headed the field research mission, and wrote the report.
"Many questions remain to be answered about these attacks", Rovera said -- including "the fact that the strikes continued unabated despite the rising civilian death toll".
The report said that "the pattern of attacks and the resulting high number of civilian fatalities and casualties showed elements of reckless conduct, disregard for civilian lives and property and a consistent failure to distinguish between military targets and civilians and civilian objects".
Rovera indicated that Amnesty International believes that the Goldstone mission "now offers the best means to establish the truth".
Amnesty said in a statement that "the victims of the attacks it investigated were not caught in the crossfire during battles between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces, nor were they shielding militants or other military objects. Many were killed when their homes were bombed while they slept. Other were sitting in their yard or hanging the laundry on the roof. Children were struck while playing in their bedrooms or on the roof, or near their homes. Paramedics and ambulances were repeatedly attacked while attempting to rescue the wounded or recover the dead ... More than 3,000 homes were destroyed and some 20,000 damaged in Israeli attacks which reduced entire neighbourhoods of Gaza to rubble and left an already dire economic situation in ruins. Much of the destruction was wanton and could not be justified on grounds of 'military necessity'."
Rovera said there is concern that now, "Five months on, neither side has shown any inclination to change its practices and abide by international humanitarian law, raising the prospect that civilians will again bear the brunt if fighting resumes,"
Both Israel and Hamas have breached the laws of war in a way that constitutes war crimes, the report says.
Amnesty International said in statement accompanying the report that "Under international law, states have a responsibility to exercise universal jurisdiction and start criminal investigations in national courts, wherever there is sufficient evidence of war crimes or other crimes under international law, to arrest and bring to justice alleged perpetrators ... Those responsible for war crimes and other serious violations must not be allowed to escape accountability and justice."
The report says that "The scale and intensity of the attacks on Gaza were unprecedented ... [hundreds of unarmed civilians, including children, were killed] ... Most were killed with high-precision weapons, relying on surveillance drones which have exceptionally good optics, allowing those observing to see their targets in detail. Others were killed with imprecise weapons, including artillery shells carrying white phosphorus – not previously used in Gaza - which should never be used in densely populated areas".
It added that "Much of the destruction was wanton and deliberate, and was carried out in a manner and circumstances which indicated that it could not be justified on grounds of military necessity. Rather, it was often the result of reckless and indiscriminate attacks, which were seemingly tolerated or even directly sanctioned up the chain of command, and which at times appeared intended to collectively punish local residents for the actions of armed groups".
Amnesty International noted that "The Israeli army has not responded to ... repeated requests over the past five months for information on specific cases detailed in the report and for meetings to discuss the organization´s findings".
Amnesty also noted that "The Hamas de facto administration in Gaza has not only failed to investigate rocket attacks by its own and other armed groups, but has persisted in justifying such unlawful attacks".
But, according to a report today by the French news agency Agence France Presse (AFP), the Israeli military said that "The slant of their [Amnesty's] report indicates that the organisation succumbed to the manipulations of the Hamas terror organisation", AFP added that "Israel accused the rights group of ignoring 'the blatant violations of international law perpetrated by Hamas'."
In its recommendations, the report "calls on states to suspend all transfers of military equipment, assistance and munitions to Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups until there is no longer a substantial risk that such equipment will be used to commit serious violations of international law. It calls on Israel to commit not to carry out direct, indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks on civilians; or use artillery, mortars and white phosphorus weapons in densely populated areas; and to end its blockade on the Gaza Strip, which is collectively punishing the entire population. [And] It urges Hamas to renounce its policy of unlawful rocket attacks against civilian population centres in Israel and to prevent other armed groups from carrying out such attacks".
The AFP report said that Israel called the report "unbalanced" and that it presented "a distorted view of the laws of war that does not comply with the rules implemented by democratic states battling terror."
According to a report in Reuters today, "the Israeli military said it operated in accordance with international law. It said the report ignored 'efforts made by the Israel Defense Forces to minimize, as much as possible, harm to non-combatants ... In many cases, the Israel Defense Forces exercised measures of caution, including warning the civilian population before an attack', the military said. 'The Israel Defense Forces directed its attack only against military targets'."
AFP noted that the Israeli statement "insisted Israeli forces used various fighting methods and advanced technology to minimise harm to the civilian population while engaging terrorists who were operating from densely populated areas and using the local population as 'human shields'."
But the Israeli government has argued that almost all Palestinian males in Gaza in their teens and twenties are in some way affiliated with or supporters of Hamas, and are thus legitimate military targets.
A statement published on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website in late January -- and still posted here, says that " To Israel's great sorrow, innocent civilians in Gaza have been harmed. However, the figures of civilian casualties have been greatly exaggerated. Most of these figures come from Hamas sources, amplifying the number of civilians killed by including as 'children' teenage Hamas fighters and as 'women', female terrorists. According to an Israeli investigation, of the 1,100-1,200 reported casualties, 250 were civilians. The rest are believed to be terrorists or have yet to be identified, but given that most of them are young men in their 20s, it is not unreasonable to assume that they are also members of Hamas or other terrorist organizations".
The IDF went even further, according to Israeli soldiers who participated in the military operation, warning that old women are often working as "lookouts" for Hamas, and are thus also legitimate military targets. Some of these soldiers' testimony was dismissed as "hearsay" after a hasty military investigation, but Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organization of soldiers critical of some military policies, says that it is collecting evidence that corroborates this testimony.
Amnesty International says in this report that it was Israel, and not Hamas, who used Palestinians as human shields during Operation Cast Lead, and it took issue with often-repeated Israeli claims that warnings sent to Palestinians in Gaza were enough to fulfill Israel's obligations to avoid harm to civilians and to discriminate between civilian and military targets under international humanitarian law.
According to the Israeli justifications, Palestinians who did not flee their homes -- to where? The IDF did not ever specify any safe areas -- thus became responsible for the harm they suffered.
In some cases, the report said, the IDF forced Palestinian civilians to stay in or near homes that Israeli soldiers were using as military positions.
The report states that "contrary to repeated allegations by Israeli officials of the use of 'human shields', Amnesty International found no evidence that Hamas or other Palestinian fighters directed the movement of civilians to shield military objectives from attacks. It found no evidence that Hamas or other armed groups forced residents to stay in or around buildings used by fighters, nor that fighters prevented residents from leaving buildings or areas which had been commandeered by militants. Israel and Egypt kept Gaza´s borders sealed throughout Operation 'Cast Lead' and its 1.5 million inhabitants could neither leave nor find a place in Gaza where their safety could be guaranteed. Unlike in southern Israel, where the Israeli authorities have built bomb shelters to protect local residents from rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups, in Gaza there are no bomb shelters and none can be built because Israel has long forbidden the entry of construction material into Gaza. Randomly placed telephone calls with recorded warning messages, radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped by the Israeli army all over Gaza telling people to leave their homes and neighborhoods caused widespread panic but offered little protection. In some areas residents were trapped in their homes, hearing the Israeli army broadcasts warning people to leave but unable to do so because Israeli forces in the area were not allowing any movement and therefore anyone who went out risked coming under fire. Others who fled their homes were killed or injured when UN schools and other places where they had sought shelter came under Israeli attack".
Curiously, neither Amnesty International nor any of the other groups and organizations who have published new reports recently have mentioned one of the most chilling aspects of Israel's Operation Cast Lead against Gaza -- and that is that on various occasions in various places in Gaza during the conflict, civilians waving white flags were nevertheless fired upon, and a number died.
At a recent conference organized in Jerusalem by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) to evaluate the Gaza war, the world-class Israeli international law expert Professor Yoram Dinstein (author of authoritative books such as War, Aggression, and Self-Defence and The Conduct of Hostilities Under the Law of International Armed Conflict, and The International Law of Belligerent Occupation, and a former President of Tel Aviv University and head of the law school who still lectures there as Professor Emeritus), said that "the law of armed conflict is a very difficult field … and, with international humanitarian law, often issues very harsh criteria. Can you drop a bomb of half a ton on one Hamas activist even tough civilians are in the building? Is it allowed or not? This is debated. But Israel is making a mistake in not going to this forum. We cannot be satisfied with five military investigatîve teams conducting inquiries [into various aspects of Operation Cast Lead], and then concluding that ´Israel has the most moral army in the world´. How is this measured? How do you measure it? We indict soldiers for looting — we should also do this if there is data indicating that maybe a war crime was committed. Maybe they would be acquitted in the end, but we cannot issue five repourts that say at the wnd we are the best military in the world — and then say the world [when it is sceptical] is anti-semitic, though maybe it is, but we are losing the public relations battle", Dinsein added.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said at the end of January that "Israel takes every report of war crimes seriously, provided it comes from a credible source. However, no official body or organization has presented any evidence of war crimes allegedly committed by Israel. All accusations have been based on rumor, half-truths, anonymous reports from unconfirmed sources, and manipulations of the truth. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) routinely and thoroughly scrutinizes its operational activities and when necessary, is subject to oversight by judicial and governmental authorities. Therefore, there is no need of outside intervention. It is important to emphasize that no credible evidence or proof of war crimes allegedly committed by Israel has been presented"
The link to this statement on the MFA website -- a FAQ [Frequently Asked Questions] on the Gaza operation issued in January -- is no longer working directly, but is now redirected to the main MFA newspage. And a search on the MFA website reveals no results. But it is contained in our report at the time here .
Nevertheless, the IDF has said that its own central operational IDF investigation of the entire operation was supposed to have been concluded by June. This statement is also posted here .
The report, Operation Cast Lead: 22 days of death and destruction, presents evidence gathered by Amnesty International delegates, including a military expert, during field research in Gaza and southern Israel in January and , February.
The report is designed, in part, to funnel information to the UN Human Rights Council's Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, led by South Africa's Justice Richard Goldstone, which has just wrapped up a set of public hearing in Gaza. Another set of public hearings will be held in Geneva on 6-7 July.
The Amnesty International document is one of a series of recent reports, including by Human Rights Watch and by a group of Israel-based human rights organizations, all intended for the same purpose.
"Israel´s failure to properly investigate its forces´ conduct in Gaza, including war crimes, and its continuing refusal to cooperate with the UN international independent fact-finding mission headed by Richard Goldstone, is evidence of its intention to avoid public scrutiny and accountability," said Donatella Rovera, who headed the field research mission, and wrote the report.
"Many questions remain to be answered about these attacks", Rovera said -- including "the fact that the strikes continued unabated despite the rising civilian death toll".
The report said that "the pattern of attacks and the resulting high number of civilian fatalities and casualties showed elements of reckless conduct, disregard for civilian lives and property and a consistent failure to distinguish between military targets and civilians and civilian objects".
Rovera indicated that Amnesty International believes that the Goldstone mission "now offers the best means to establish the truth".
Amnesty said in a statement that "the victims of the attacks it investigated were not caught in the crossfire during battles between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces, nor were they shielding militants or other military objects. Many were killed when their homes were bombed while they slept. Other were sitting in their yard or hanging the laundry on the roof. Children were struck while playing in their bedrooms or on the roof, or near their homes. Paramedics and ambulances were repeatedly attacked while attempting to rescue the wounded or recover the dead ... More than 3,000 homes were destroyed and some 20,000 damaged in Israeli attacks which reduced entire neighbourhoods of Gaza to rubble and left an already dire economic situation in ruins. Much of the destruction was wanton and could not be justified on grounds of 'military necessity'."
Rovera said there is concern that now, "Five months on, neither side has shown any inclination to change its practices and abide by international humanitarian law, raising the prospect that civilians will again bear the brunt if fighting resumes,"
Both Israel and Hamas have breached the laws of war in a way that constitutes war crimes, the report says.
Amnesty International said in statement accompanying the report that "Under international law, states have a responsibility to exercise universal jurisdiction and start criminal investigations in national courts, wherever there is sufficient evidence of war crimes or other crimes under international law, to arrest and bring to justice alleged perpetrators ... Those responsible for war crimes and other serious violations must not be allowed to escape accountability and justice."
The report says that "The scale and intensity of the attacks on Gaza were unprecedented ... [hundreds of unarmed civilians, including children, were killed] ... Most were killed with high-precision weapons, relying on surveillance drones which have exceptionally good optics, allowing those observing to see their targets in detail. Others were killed with imprecise weapons, including artillery shells carrying white phosphorus – not previously used in Gaza - which should never be used in densely populated areas".
It added that "Much of the destruction was wanton and deliberate, and was carried out in a manner and circumstances which indicated that it could not be justified on grounds of military necessity. Rather, it was often the result of reckless and indiscriminate attacks, which were seemingly tolerated or even directly sanctioned up the chain of command, and which at times appeared intended to collectively punish local residents for the actions of armed groups".
Amnesty International noted that "The Israeli army has not responded to ... repeated requests over the past five months for information on specific cases detailed in the report and for meetings to discuss the organization´s findings".
Amnesty also noted that "The Hamas de facto administration in Gaza has not only failed to investigate rocket attacks by its own and other armed groups, but has persisted in justifying such unlawful attacks".
But, according to a report today by the French news agency Agence France Presse (AFP), the Israeli military said that "The slant of their [Amnesty's] report indicates that the organisation succumbed to the manipulations of the Hamas terror organisation", AFP added that "Israel accused the rights group of ignoring 'the blatant violations of international law perpetrated by Hamas'."
In its recommendations, the report "calls on states to suspend all transfers of military equipment, assistance and munitions to Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups until there is no longer a substantial risk that such equipment will be used to commit serious violations of international law. It calls on Israel to commit not to carry out direct, indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks on civilians; or use artillery, mortars and white phosphorus weapons in densely populated areas; and to end its blockade on the Gaza Strip, which is collectively punishing the entire population. [And] It urges Hamas to renounce its policy of unlawful rocket attacks against civilian population centres in Israel and to prevent other armed groups from carrying out such attacks".
The AFP report said that Israel called the report "unbalanced" and that it presented "a distorted view of the laws of war that does not comply with the rules implemented by democratic states battling terror."
According to a report in Reuters today, "the Israeli military said it operated in accordance with international law. It said the report ignored 'efforts made by the Israel Defense Forces to minimize, as much as possible, harm to non-combatants ... In many cases, the Israel Defense Forces exercised measures of caution, including warning the civilian population before an attack', the military said. 'The Israel Defense Forces directed its attack only against military targets'."
AFP noted that the Israeli statement "insisted Israeli forces used various fighting methods and advanced technology to minimise harm to the civilian population while engaging terrorists who were operating from densely populated areas and using the local population as 'human shields'."
But the Israeli government has argued that almost all Palestinian males in Gaza in their teens and twenties are in some way affiliated with or supporters of Hamas, and are thus legitimate military targets.
A statement published on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website in late January -- and still posted here, says that " To Israel's great sorrow, innocent civilians in Gaza have been harmed. However, the figures of civilian casualties have been greatly exaggerated. Most of these figures come from Hamas sources, amplifying the number of civilians killed by including as 'children' teenage Hamas fighters and as 'women', female terrorists. According to an Israeli investigation, of the 1,100-1,200 reported casualties, 250 were civilians. The rest are believed to be terrorists or have yet to be identified, but given that most of them are young men in their 20s, it is not unreasonable to assume that they are also members of Hamas or other terrorist organizations".
The IDF went even further, according to Israeli soldiers who participated in the military operation, warning that old women are often working as "lookouts" for Hamas, and are thus also legitimate military targets. Some of these soldiers' testimony was dismissed as "hearsay" after a hasty military investigation, but Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organization of soldiers critical of some military policies, says that it is collecting evidence that corroborates this testimony.
Amnesty International says in this report that it was Israel, and not Hamas, who used Palestinians as human shields during Operation Cast Lead, and it took issue with often-repeated Israeli claims that warnings sent to Palestinians in Gaza were enough to fulfill Israel's obligations to avoid harm to civilians and to discriminate between civilian and military targets under international humanitarian law.
According to the Israeli justifications, Palestinians who did not flee their homes -- to where? The IDF did not ever specify any safe areas -- thus became responsible for the harm they suffered.
In some cases, the report said, the IDF forced Palestinian civilians to stay in or near homes that Israeli soldiers were using as military positions.
The report states that "contrary to repeated allegations by Israeli officials of the use of 'human shields', Amnesty International found no evidence that Hamas or other Palestinian fighters directed the movement of civilians to shield military objectives from attacks. It found no evidence that Hamas or other armed groups forced residents to stay in or around buildings used by fighters, nor that fighters prevented residents from leaving buildings or areas which had been commandeered by militants. Israel and Egypt kept Gaza´s borders sealed throughout Operation 'Cast Lead' and its 1.5 million inhabitants could neither leave nor find a place in Gaza where their safety could be guaranteed. Unlike in southern Israel, where the Israeli authorities have built bomb shelters to protect local residents from rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups, in Gaza there are no bomb shelters and none can be built because Israel has long forbidden the entry of construction material into Gaza. Randomly placed telephone calls with recorded warning messages, radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped by the Israeli army all over Gaza telling people to leave their homes and neighborhoods caused widespread panic but offered little protection. In some areas residents were trapped in their homes, hearing the Israeli army broadcasts warning people to leave but unable to do so because Israeli forces in the area were not allowing any movement and therefore anyone who went out risked coming under fire. Others who fled their homes were killed or injured when UN schools and other places where they had sought shelter came under Israeli attack".
Curiously, neither Amnesty International nor any of the other groups and organizations who have published new reports recently have mentioned one of the most chilling aspects of Israel's Operation Cast Lead against Gaza -- and that is that on various occasions in various places in Gaza during the conflict, civilians waving white flags were nevertheless fired upon, and a number died.
At a recent conference organized in Jerusalem by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) to evaluate the Gaza war, the world-class Israeli international law expert Professor Yoram Dinstein (author of authoritative books such as War, Aggression, and Self-Defence and The Conduct of Hostilities Under the Law of International Armed Conflict, and The International Law of Belligerent Occupation, and a former President of Tel Aviv University and head of the law school who still lectures there as Professor Emeritus), said that "the law of armed conflict is a very difficult field … and, with international humanitarian law, often issues very harsh criteria. Can you drop a bomb of half a ton on one Hamas activist even tough civilians are in the building? Is it allowed or not? This is debated. But Israel is making a mistake in not going to this forum. We cannot be satisfied with five military investigatîve teams conducting inquiries [into various aspects of Operation Cast Lead], and then concluding that ´Israel has the most moral army in the world´. How is this measured? How do you measure it? We indict soldiers for looting — we should also do this if there is data indicating that maybe a war crime was committed. Maybe they would be acquitted in the end, but we cannot issue five repourts that say at the wnd we are the best military in the world — and then say the world [when it is sceptical] is anti-semitic, though maybe it is, but we are losing the public relations battle", Dinsein added.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said at the end of January that "Israel takes every report of war crimes seriously, provided it comes from a credible source. However, no official body or organization has presented any evidence of war crimes allegedly committed by Israel. All accusations have been based on rumor, half-truths, anonymous reports from unconfirmed sources, and manipulations of the truth. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) routinely and thoroughly scrutinizes its operational activities and when necessary, is subject to oversight by judicial and governmental authorities. Therefore, there is no need of outside intervention. It is important to emphasize that no credible evidence or proof of war crimes allegedly committed by Israel has been presented"
The link to this statement on the MFA website -- a FAQ [Frequently Asked Questions] on the Gaza operation issued in January -- is no longer working directly, but is now redirected to the main MFA newspage. And a search on the MFA website reveals no results. But it is contained in our report at the time here .
Nevertheless, the IDF has said that its own central operational IDF investigation of the entire operation was supposed to have been concluded by June. This statement is also posted here .
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