Two days of Israeli "humanitarian respite" in Gaza yields grim discoveries
Marian Houk
January 08, 2009
Only rarely -- and only in the worst cases, involving the most grave violations of international humanitarian law -- does the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) ever go public with its concerns.
But, late on Wednesday, the ICRC pulled out its ultimate weapon -- a public statement in which it reported that when it got access to several houses in the Zeitoun neighborhood in the eastern part of Gaza City where there had been fighting four days earlier, what it found was "shocking".
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) began a ground offensive into Gaza on Saturday, and it was known that a number of Palestinians had been killed in the Zeitoun area. But rescue services were not allowed in.
Yesterday afternoon, during the first day of a "humanitarian respite" decided by the IDF, the ICRC discovered "four small children next to their dead mothers in one of the houses. They were too weak to stand up on their own".
Together with a team from the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS), the ICRC representatives also found one man who was still alive, who was also too weak to stand up. They also found "at least 12 corpses, lying on mattresses".
In another house, the ICRC/PRCS rescue team found 15 other survivors of this attack including several wounded.
In yet another house, they found an additional three corpses.
The ICRC called the delay in allowing rescue services "unacceptable".
In its statement on Wednesday, the ICRC also said that "Israeli soldiers posted at a military position some 80 meters away from this house ordered the rescue team to leave the area which they refused to do. There were several other positions of the Israel Defense Forces nearby as well as two tanks".
Pierre Wettach, the ICRC's head of delegation for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said "This was a shocking incident. The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded".
And, the ICRC said, "large earth walls erected by the Israeli army had made it impossible to bring ambulances into the neighbourhood. Therefore, the children and the wounded had to be taken to the ambulances on a donkey cart".
The ICRC stated that: "in this instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded" -- of both sides.
In total, the ICRC/PRCS rescue team reported, it evacuated 18 wounded and 12 others who were extremely exhausted, as well as two corpses. It said the team planned to "recover the remaining corpses on Thursday", but it demanded immediate access to search for any other wounded -- included more wounded persons who were reportedly sheltering in other destroyed houses in that neighborhood.
Israel is a signatory [as of 1951] to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 on the "Protection of Victims of Armed Conflict".
The New York Times correspondent in Paris, Alan Cowell, had the first report on the ICRC statement -- and the initial response of the IDF. Cowell said that the Israeli military did not comment directly, but did say in a statement "that 'any serious allegation' would 'need to be investigated properly, once such a complaint is received formally, within the constraints of the current military operation'."
The IDF spokesperson for the Foreign Press, Major Avital Liebowitz, told Al-Jazeera a few hours later that the IDF still had not received any formal complaint from the ICRC.
Haaretz newspaper's Amira Hass reported earlier this week on a similar situation, also in an area east of Gaza City's Zeitoun neighborhood: "A Gaza family has been waiting 86 hours to be evacuated from their home that was hit by an Israel Defense Forces shell on Saturday night. As of Wednesday morning, all attempts to evacuate the A'aiedy family to hospital for treatment have been for naught. An IDF shell struck the family home situated in an agricultural expanse east of Gaza City. A section of the house was destroyed in the attack. Two women, both of them 80 years of age, and three of their grandchildren were wounded. Thus far they have treated their injuries with water and salt, though their wounds have become infected, according to a relative, Hussein Al A'aiedy ... The family is holed up in a room in the front section of the house. Late Sunday, a Palestinian ambulance arrived at a cluster of homes nearby in order to evacuate other wounded to hospital. A'aiedy said the driver of the ambulance wanted to extricate his family from the home but the army would not permit him to do so. The army coordinator told Physicians for Human Rights that the exchange of gunfire is precluding medical services from evacuating the wounded family members. Al A'aidey confirmed this, adding that tank shells are being lobbed in the direction of his home ... His only means of communication with the outside world is through a mobile phone whose battery he recharges with the aid of a generator he took from a motorcycle ... Twenty-one people live in the isolated house, located in an agricultural area ... Five of them were wounded in the strike ... There was no electricity, no heat, no water. Their relatives were with them, but every time they tried to leave the courtyard to fetch water, the army shot at them..." Amira Hass' report can be read in full here.
On Thursday, the IDF decided there would be another "humanitarian respite" for the second day in a row.
An information note sent by the IDF to journalists in the late morning reported that "Today between 13:00 and 16:00, the IDF will implement for the second successive day a humanitarian recess in offensive activities. This step is in order to enable the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip to replenish stocks and to enable the international organizations to carry out their humanitarian missions".
However, an IDF tank opened fire on a clearly-marked UN truck headed to an Israeli border crossing to pick up an aid shipment -- a mission that the UN said had been cleared inadvance with the IDF. The driver, a Palestinian contractor worker employed by UNWRA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, was killed on the spot. Two others were wounded. The UN then announced that it was suspending aid shipments in Gaza until the safety of UN staff can be guaranteed.
It was subsequently reported that the IDF was investigating this report.
The UN Secretary-General BAN Ki-Moon later said, in a statement issued from UN headquarters in New York, that not just one but two drivers had been killed. He condemned "the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) firing on a United Nations aid conoy in Gaza, the killing of two UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) contract workers and the injuring of another".
The UN chief said that "According to reports from UN agencies, this incident took place during the three-hour humanitarian lull announced by the IDF".
He aadded that "Since the conflict began 13 days ago, four UNRWA local staff have been killed", and said there should be "full investigation of this and other incidents, and about the need for urgent measures to avoid them in the future".
And Ban also called again "for an immediate ceasefire in order to facilitate full and unhindered humanitarian access". He said that "The inability of the UN to provide assistance in this worsening humanitarian crisis is unacceptable".
There have now been at least 763 Palestinians killed in Gaza since the IDF operation began on 27 December, and at least 3150 wounded.
And, by the end of the day Thursday, it was reported that another 35 bodies had been found during the second "humanitarian respite".
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter wrote in The Washington Post today, in an Op Ed entitled "An Unnecessary War", that about a month after his visit to the Middle East last April, "the Egyptians and Hamas informed us that all military action by both sides and all rocket firing would stop on June 19, for a period of six months, and that humanitarian supplies would be restored to the normal level that had existed before Israelīs withdrawal in 2005 (about 700 trucks daily). We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israelīs unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza".
Carter added that "On another visit to Syria in mid-December, I made an effort for the impending six-month deadline to be extended. It was clear that the preeminent issue was opening the crossings into Gaza. Representatives from the Carter Center visited Jerusalem, met with Israeli officials and asked if this was possible in exchange for a cessation of rocket fire. The Israeli government informally proposed that 15 percent of normal supplies might be possible if Hamas first stopped all rocket fire for 48 hours. This was unacceptable to Hamas, and hostilities erupted".
The UN Security Council is due to meet later today in New York to consider a Libyan draft resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, and British Foreign Secretary Douglas Milibrand all stayed for another night in New York. Rice told journalists at a stake-out that they were all staying in New York for a third day because there was still more work to be done.
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reported that "The IDF Spokesman's Unit released a statement on Wednesday saying that the army had permitted the entry of a limited embed press pool into the Gaza Strip and would be distributing footage from this pool." This report can be read here .
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Israel, which has appealed to Israel's Supreme Court for access to the Gaza Strip that foreign journalists have been denied for most of the past two months -- and completely since Operation Cast Lead began on 27 December -- has still not had its "pool" reporters go in.
According to the FPA today, "the IDF has the prerogative to choose embeds, not us. They sent in one BBC cameraman and 3 Israeli journalists. Embeds means you are not free to go where and when you like, you go in and leave with the IDF unit. NONE of our members have gone in".
In a legal update to its members, the FPA reported on Thursday evening that "The FPA lawyers have notified the State Attorney's office and the Defense Ministry's legal council of non-compliance on the part of the State in respect of the Supreme Court decision -- given that the Erez crossing was again open today for humanitarian traffic. This is a procedural step required prior to a return to the Supreme Court".
Earlier in the day, three Katuysha missiles hit the Israeli coastal city of Nahariyya.
Nahariyya is north of Tel Aviv, near the border with Lebanon.
The IDF then fired back. The Associated Press reported that "The Israeli military confirmed it carried out "pinpoint fire" [artillery] in response [to the first volley of Katyushas], without elaborating. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the rocket barrage from Lebanon. Israeli defense commentators said they believed Hezbollah was behind the salvo, but expected the incident to be a one-time show of solidarity with the Palestinians, not a declaration of war".
In the summer of 2006, Israel embarked on what it now calls its "Second Lebanon War", to crush Hizballah forces after an attack on IDF soldiers in a border region that was designed to deflect Israeli reprisal attacks on Gaza following the seizure there of IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit -- who is still being held captive, somewhere in Gaza.
But, late on Wednesday, the ICRC pulled out its ultimate weapon -- a public statement in which it reported that when it got access to several houses in the Zeitoun neighborhood in the eastern part of Gaza City where there had been fighting four days earlier, what it found was "shocking".
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) began a ground offensive into Gaza on Saturday, and it was known that a number of Palestinians had been killed in the Zeitoun area. But rescue services were not allowed in.
Yesterday afternoon, during the first day of a "humanitarian respite" decided by the IDF, the ICRC discovered "four small children next to their dead mothers in one of the houses. They were too weak to stand up on their own".
Together with a team from the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS), the ICRC representatives also found one man who was still alive, who was also too weak to stand up. They also found "at least 12 corpses, lying on mattresses".
In another house, the ICRC/PRCS rescue team found 15 other survivors of this attack including several wounded.
In yet another house, they found an additional three corpses.
The ICRC called the delay in allowing rescue services "unacceptable".
In its statement on Wednesday, the ICRC also said that "Israeli soldiers posted at a military position some 80 meters away from this house ordered the rescue team to leave the area which they refused to do. There were several other positions of the Israel Defense Forces nearby as well as two tanks".
Pierre Wettach, the ICRC's head of delegation for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said "This was a shocking incident. The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded".
And, the ICRC said, "large earth walls erected by the Israeli army had made it impossible to bring ambulances into the neighbourhood. Therefore, the children and the wounded had to be taken to the ambulances on a donkey cart".
The ICRC stated that: "in this instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded" -- of both sides.
In total, the ICRC/PRCS rescue team reported, it evacuated 18 wounded and 12 others who were extremely exhausted, as well as two corpses. It said the team planned to "recover the remaining corpses on Thursday", but it demanded immediate access to search for any other wounded -- included more wounded persons who were reportedly sheltering in other destroyed houses in that neighborhood.
Israel is a signatory [as of 1951] to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 on the "Protection of Victims of Armed Conflict".
The New York Times correspondent in Paris, Alan Cowell, had the first report on the ICRC statement -- and the initial response of the IDF. Cowell said that the Israeli military did not comment directly, but did say in a statement "that 'any serious allegation' would 'need to be investigated properly, once such a complaint is received formally, within the constraints of the current military operation'."
The IDF spokesperson for the Foreign Press, Major Avital Liebowitz, told Al-Jazeera a few hours later that the IDF still had not received any formal complaint from the ICRC.
Haaretz newspaper's Amira Hass reported earlier this week on a similar situation, also in an area east of Gaza City's Zeitoun neighborhood: "A Gaza family has been waiting 86 hours to be evacuated from their home that was hit by an Israel Defense Forces shell on Saturday night. As of Wednesday morning, all attempts to evacuate the A'aiedy family to hospital for treatment have been for naught. An IDF shell struck the family home situated in an agricultural expanse east of Gaza City. A section of the house was destroyed in the attack. Two women, both of them 80 years of age, and three of their grandchildren were wounded. Thus far they have treated their injuries with water and salt, though their wounds have become infected, according to a relative, Hussein Al A'aiedy ... The family is holed up in a room in the front section of the house. Late Sunday, a Palestinian ambulance arrived at a cluster of homes nearby in order to evacuate other wounded to hospital. A'aiedy said the driver of the ambulance wanted to extricate his family from the home but the army would not permit him to do so. The army coordinator told Physicians for Human Rights that the exchange of gunfire is precluding medical services from evacuating the wounded family members. Al A'aidey confirmed this, adding that tank shells are being lobbed in the direction of his home ... His only means of communication with the outside world is through a mobile phone whose battery he recharges with the aid of a generator he took from a motorcycle ... Twenty-one people live in the isolated house, located in an agricultural area ... Five of them were wounded in the strike ... There was no electricity, no heat, no water. Their relatives were with them, but every time they tried to leave the courtyard to fetch water, the army shot at them..." Amira Hass' report can be read in full here.
On Thursday, the IDF decided there would be another "humanitarian respite" for the second day in a row.
An information note sent by the IDF to journalists in the late morning reported that "Today between 13:00 and 16:00, the IDF will implement for the second successive day a humanitarian recess in offensive activities. This step is in order to enable the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip to replenish stocks and to enable the international organizations to carry out their humanitarian missions".
However, an IDF tank opened fire on a clearly-marked UN truck headed to an Israeli border crossing to pick up an aid shipment -- a mission that the UN said had been cleared inadvance with the IDF. The driver, a Palestinian contractor worker employed by UNWRA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, was killed on the spot. Two others were wounded. The UN then announced that it was suspending aid shipments in Gaza until the safety of UN staff can be guaranteed.
It was subsequently reported that the IDF was investigating this report.
The UN Secretary-General BAN Ki-Moon later said, in a statement issued from UN headquarters in New York, that not just one but two drivers had been killed. He condemned "the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) firing on a United Nations aid conoy in Gaza, the killing of two UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) contract workers and the injuring of another".
The UN chief said that "According to reports from UN agencies, this incident took place during the three-hour humanitarian lull announced by the IDF".
He aadded that "Since the conflict began 13 days ago, four UNRWA local staff have been killed", and said there should be "full investigation of this and other incidents, and about the need for urgent measures to avoid them in the future".
And Ban also called again "for an immediate ceasefire in order to facilitate full and unhindered humanitarian access". He said that "The inability of the UN to provide assistance in this worsening humanitarian crisis is unacceptable".
There have now been at least 763 Palestinians killed in Gaza since the IDF operation began on 27 December, and at least 3150 wounded.
And, by the end of the day Thursday, it was reported that another 35 bodies had been found during the second "humanitarian respite".
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter wrote in The Washington Post today, in an Op Ed entitled "An Unnecessary War", that about a month after his visit to the Middle East last April, "the Egyptians and Hamas informed us that all military action by both sides and all rocket firing would stop on June 19, for a period of six months, and that humanitarian supplies would be restored to the normal level that had existed before Israelīs withdrawal in 2005 (about 700 trucks daily). We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israelīs unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza".
Carter added that "On another visit to Syria in mid-December, I made an effort for the impending six-month deadline to be extended. It was clear that the preeminent issue was opening the crossings into Gaza. Representatives from the Carter Center visited Jerusalem, met with Israeli officials and asked if this was possible in exchange for a cessation of rocket fire. The Israeli government informally proposed that 15 percent of normal supplies might be possible if Hamas first stopped all rocket fire for 48 hours. This was unacceptable to Hamas, and hostilities erupted".
The UN Security Council is due to meet later today in New York to consider a Libyan draft resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, and British Foreign Secretary Douglas Milibrand all stayed for another night in New York. Rice told journalists at a stake-out that they were all staying in New York for a third day because there was still more work to be done.
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reported that "The IDF Spokesman's Unit released a statement on Wednesday saying that the army had permitted the entry of a limited embed press pool into the Gaza Strip and would be distributing footage from this pool." This report can be read here .
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Israel, which has appealed to Israel's Supreme Court for access to the Gaza Strip that foreign journalists have been denied for most of the past two months -- and completely since Operation Cast Lead began on 27 December -- has still not had its "pool" reporters go in.
According to the FPA today, "the IDF has the prerogative to choose embeds, not us. They sent in one BBC cameraman and 3 Israeli journalists. Embeds means you are not free to go where and when you like, you go in and leave with the IDF unit. NONE of our members have gone in".
In a legal update to its members, the FPA reported on Thursday evening that "The FPA lawyers have notified the State Attorney's office and the Defense Ministry's legal council of non-compliance on the part of the State in respect of the Supreme Court decision -- given that the Erez crossing was again open today for humanitarian traffic. This is a procedural step required prior to a return to the Supreme Court".
Earlier in the day, three Katuysha missiles hit the Israeli coastal city of Nahariyya.
Nahariyya is north of Tel Aviv, near the border with Lebanon.
The IDF then fired back. The Associated Press reported that "The Israeli military confirmed it carried out "pinpoint fire" [artillery] in response [to the first volley of Katyushas], without elaborating. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the rocket barrage from Lebanon. Israeli defense commentators said they believed Hezbollah was behind the salvo, but expected the incident to be a one-time show of solidarity with the Palestinians, not a declaration of war".
In the summer of 2006, Israel embarked on what it now calls its "Second Lebanon War", to crush Hizballah forces after an attack on IDF soldiers in a border region that was designed to deflect Israeli reprisal attacks on Gaza following the seizure there of IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit -- who is still being held captive, somewhere in Gaza.
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