Foreigners lived with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, a video documenting Israel’s crimes
February 7, 2010 by gazaunderfireIsraeli commander: ‘We rewrote the rules of war for Gaza’
February 3, 2010 by gazaunderfiresource: The Independent
A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year’s Gaza war, The Independent can reveal.
The officer, who served as a commander during Operation Cast Lead, made it clear that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military conduct known as “means and intentions” – whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon – as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter. A more junior officer who served at a brigade headquarters during the operation described the new policy – devised in part to avoid the heavy military casualties of the 2006 Lebanon war – as one of “literally zero risk to the soldiers”.
The officers’ revelations will pile more pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to set up an independent inquiry into the war, as demanded in the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report, which harshly criticised the conduct of both Israel and Hamas. One of Israel’s most prominent human rights lawyers, Michael Sfard, said last night that the senior commander’s acknowledgement – if accurate – was “a smoking gun”.
Until now, the testimony has been kept out of the public domain. The senior commander told a journalist compiling a lengthy report for Yedhiot Ahronot, Israel’s biggest daily newspaper, about the rules of engagement in the three-week military offensive in Gaza. But although the article was completed and ready for publication five months ago, it has still not appeared. The senior commander told Yedhiot: “Means and intentions is a definition that suits an arrest operation in the Judaea and Samaria [West Bank] area… We need to be very careful because the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] was already burnt in the second Lebanon war from the wrong terminology. The concept of means and intentions is taken from different circumstances. Here [in Cast Lead] we were not talking about another regular counter-terrorist operation. There is a clear difference.”
His remarks reinforce testimonies from soldiers who served in the Gaza operation, made to the veterans’ group Breaking the Silence and reported exclusively by this newspaper last July. They also appear to cut across the military doctrine – enunciated most recently in public by one of the authors of the IDF’s own code of ethics – that it is the duty of soldiers to run risks to themselves in order to preserve civilian lives.
Explaining what he saw as the dilemma for forces operating in areas that were supposedly cleared of civilians, the senior commander said: “Whoever is left in the neighbourhood and wants to action an IED [improvised explosive device] against the soldiers doesn’t have to walk with a Kalashnikov or a weapon. A person like that can walk around like any other civilian; he sees the IDF forces, calls someone who would operate the terrible death explosive and five of our soldiers explode in the air. We could not wait until this IED is activated against us.”
Another soldier who worked in one of the brigade’s war-room headquarters told The Independent that conduct in Gaza – particularly by aerial forces and in areas where civilians had been urged to leave by leaflets – had “taken the targeted killing idea and turned it on its head”. Instead of using intelligence to identify a terrorist, he said, “here you do the opposite: first you take him down, then you look into it.”
The Yedhiot newspaper also spoke to a series of soldiers who had served in Operation Cast Lead in sensitive positions. While the soldiers rejected the main finding of the Goldstone Report – that the Israeli military had deliberately “targeted” the civilian population – most asserted that the rules were flexible enough to allow a policy under which, in the words of one soldier “any movement must entail gunfire. No one’s supposed to be there.” He added that at a meeting with his brigade commander and others it was made clear that “if you see any signs of movement at all you shoot. This is essentially the rules of engagement.”
The other soldier in the war-room explained: “This doesn’t mean that you need to disrespect the lives of Palestinians but our first priority is the lives of our soldiers. That’s not something you’re going to compromise on. In all my years in the military, I never heard that.”
He added that the majority of casualties were caused in his brigade area by aerial firing, including from unmanned drones. “Most of the guys taken down were taken down by order of headquarters. The number of enemy killed by HQ-operated remote … compared to enemy killed by soldiers on the ground had absolutely inverted,” he said.
Rules of engagement issued to soldiers serving in the West Bank as recently as July 2006 make it clear that shooting towards even an armed person will take place only if there is intelligence that he intends to act against Israeli forces or if he poses an immediate threat to soldiers or others.
In a recent article in New Republic, Moshe Halbertal, a philosophy professor at Hebrew and New York Universities, who was involved in drawing up the IDF’s ethical code in 2000 and who is critical of the Goldstone Report, said that efforts to spare civilian life “must include the expectation that soldiers assume some risk to their own lives in order to avoid causing the deaths of civilians”. While the choices for commanders were often extremely difficult and while he did not think the expectation was demanded by international law, “it is demanded in Israel’s military code and this has always been its tradition”.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the latest revelations, and directed all enquiries to already-published material, including a July 2009 foreign ministry document The Operation in Gaza: Factual and Legal Aspects.
That document, which repeats that Israel acted in conformity with international law despite the “acute dilemmas” posed by Hamas’s operations within civilian areas, sets out the principles of Operation Cast Lead as follows: “Only military targets shall be attacked; Any attack against civilian objectives shall be prohibited. A ‘civilian objective’ is any objective which is not a military target.” It adds: “In case of doubt, the forces are obliged to regard an object as civilian.”
Yedhiot has not commented on why its article has not been published.
Israel in Gaza: The soldier’s tale
This experienced soldier, who cannot be named, served in the war room of a brigade during Operation Cast Lead. Here, he recalls an incident he witnessed during last winter’s three-week offensive:
“Two [Palestinian] guys are walking down the street. They pass a mosque and you see a gathering of women and children.
“You saw them exiting the house and [they] are not walking together but one behind the other. So you begin to fantasise they are actually ducking close to the wall.
“One [man] began to run at some point, must have heard the chopper. The GSS [secret service] argued that the mere fact that he heard it implicated him, because a normal civilian would not have realised that he was now being hunted.
“Finally he was shot. He was not shot next to the mosque. It’s obvious that shots are not taken at a gathering.”
صاحب قانون
February 2, 2010 by gazaunderfireصاحب قانون حظر المآذن في سويسرا يشهر إسلامه
UN find challenges Israeli version of attack on civilian building in Gaza war
February 2, 2010 by gazaunderfire
A Palestinian woman covers her face as smoke rises following an explosion caused by Israeli military operations in Gaza City. Photograph: Khalil Hamra/AP
Source: The Guardian
A new Israeli report defending the military’s conduct in the Gaza war was challenged tonight after evidence emerged apparently contradicting one of its key findings.
Israel submitted a 46-page report to the UN on Friday saying its forces abided by international law throughout the three-week war last year. It was meant to avert the threat of international prosecutions and to challenge a highly critical UN inquiry by South African judge Richard Goldstone, which accused both Israel and Hamas of “grave breaches” of the fourth Geneva convention, war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.
The Israeli report looked in detail at a handful of incidents, including the attack on the al-Badr flour mill in northern Gaza, which was severely damaged.
The UN mine action team, which handles ordnance disposal in Gaza, has told the Guardian that the remains of a 500-pound Mk82 aircraft-dropped bomb were found in the ruins of the mill last January. Photographs of the front half of the bomb have been obtained by the Guardian.
This evidence directly contradicts the finding of the Israeli report, which challenged allegations that the building was deliberately targeted and specifically stated there was no evidence of an air strike. Goldstone, however, used the account of the air strike as a sign that Israel’s attack on the mill was not mere collateral damage, but precisely targeted and a possible war crime.
The flour mill attack was not the most serious incident of the war: although nearly 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in just three weeks, no one died at the mill. However, because it was a civilian building producing food – the only operational mill in Gaza – the incident received particular criticism from Goldstone, who concluded that the building was hit by an air strike, the attacks were “intentional and precise”, and they were “carried out for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population”. He added that the attacks violated the fourth Geneva convention and customary international law and may constitute a war crime.
In its defence, the Israeli report admitted the building had been hit by tank shells but said it was a “legitimate military target” because there were Hamas fighters “in the vicinity of the flour mill”. It said the mill was “not a pre-planned target” and specifically denied it was hit by an air strike.
“The military advocate general did not find any evidence to support the assertion that the mill was attacked from the air using precise munitions, as alleged in the human rights council fact-finding report,” it said. The military advocate general “found no reason” to order a criminal investigation.
But the Guardian visited the mill days after the war last year and on the first floor of the building saw what appeared to be the remains of an aircraft-dropped bomb in the burnt-out milling machinery.
The UN mine action team said it identified an aircraft-dropped bomb at the mill on 25 January last year and removed it on 11 February. “Item located was the front half of a Mk82 aircraft bomb with 273M fuse,” according to the team. “The remains of the bomb were found on an upper floor in a narrow walkway between burnt-out machinery and an outside wall.” The bomb was made safe by a technical field manager and removed.
The team also provided two photographs of what it said were the bomb remains, marked with the date and time it was identified: “25 Jan, 14:38″. The team did not do a damage assessment of the building to see what other ordnance hit because that was not its task.
Asked to explain the new evidence today, the Israeli military referred the Guardian to an Israeli foreign ministry statement that summarises last week’s report and states that the military is “committed to full compliance” with the law of armed conflict and to investigating any alleged violations.
As well as the heavy death toll, the Gaza war damaged a large amount of civilian infrastructure: more than 21,000 buildings and apartments were wholly or partly destroyed, including more than 200 major factories.
The al-Badr flour mill was the largest mill in the strip, with production lines spread over five floors – each of which were hit. Gaza’s largest concrete factory, at a different site a few miles away, was also destroyed, as were several large food processing plants.
Goldstone said the nature of the attack on the flour mill “suggests that the intention was to disable its productive capacity” and said there was no plausible justification for the extensive damage. “It thus appears that the only purpose was to put an end to the production of flour in the Gaza Strip,” his report said. It is not clear why Goldstone did not use evidence from the UN team in his report.
Rashad Hamada, one of two brothers who owns the mill, gave evidence at a public hearing in Gaza last June and said the mill was hit by an air strike. He said the factory twice received phone calls from the Israeli military telling them to evacuate the building in the days before the strike, but the factory was not used by Hamas or other Palestinian fighters.
Both Hamada brothers possess hard-to-obtain businessmen’s permits to enter Israel and were therefore regarded as credible witnesses by the Goldstone team.
“What happened at the mill is total destruction of the whole production line of the factory,” Hamada said. He estimated his losses due to the destruction were $2.5m (£1.7m) and said he believed that the mill had been targeted because it was working.
Four other flour mills in Gaza that were not operational were not targeted, he said. “As for the targeting, it is because [it was] a flour mill that is working,” he said.
Andrew Phillips: No relief for the Palestinians while Israel enjoys impunity
February 1, 2010 by gazaunderfireSource: The Independent Newspaper
To visit Gaza for a third time in five years still induces a gut reaction of pity, depression and anger – pity at the hopeless, helpless plight of the Palestinians; depression about their future and, ironically, that of Israel too; and anger at the latter’s cynical policies – and impunity.
I was part of a pan-European Parliamentary delegation which also enjoyed complete political access in Egypt, including meetings with its Foreign Minister and Speaker, plus the head of the Arab League. In Gaza we met the Prime Minister and cabinet colleagues, NGOs and the head of the indispensable UN mission (UNRWA).
Relations between Israel, Palestine and Egypt are grotesquely complicated and intractable. There are rights and wrongs on all sides and, indeed, mutual fears. The Mubarak establishment harbours deep anxieties about infection of the Egyptian street by the populist, faith-based Hamas. The legacy of Jewish history fosters an almost genetic insecurity, and the Gazan Palestinians live in traumatised dread of another pulverisation.
The last one, a year ago, left around 1,400 Palestinian dead (against 13 Israeli fatalities) and many thousands wounded. As we saw, their already poor infrastructure, most factories, many schools and public buildings and thousands of houses were obliterated or severely damaged. One meal was hosted for us by Palestinian MPs in their wrecked debating chamber.
Following the Gaza blitz the UN raised a $4.5bn restoration fund. Not one dollar has been spent, so vindictive is Israel’s siege by land, sea and air. Bare survival is thanks to the tunnels under the Egyptian border, but they are now being blocked off. If and when that is complete further radicalisation of the Palestinians and working class Muslims elsewhere is inevitable, and with it more terrorism in the West, of which the abuse of Palestine is the greatest engine.
Gaza, then, is a ghetto of 1.5 million abandoned people – half under 18 and 80 per cent unemployed – with plenty of time to feed on their resentments. Unsurprisingly, 30 per cent want to leave their prison.
But what for me and many explodes the Israeli apologia for their conduct in Palestine, and particularly its security claims, is its relentless colonisation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, settlers now totalling around half a million. Nothing could be as provocative, except perhaps the assault on, and siege of, Gaza conducted with the same controlled violence as characterises the occupation of the West Bank with its hundreds of humiliating and disruptive checkpoints and a pass system which outdoes that of old South Africa.
And what about the law? Israel – cradle of lawyers – is in cavalier breach of International Law, the United Nations Charter, its Conventions and Resolutions, and yet is protected from the consequences which should follow (harken to Tony Blair on defiance of UN resolutions last Friday!). Israel is now more “rogue state” than the “strategic partner” David Miliband recently labelled it.
All this is replete with tragedy and paradox. The psychic wounds of the unspeakable Holocaust are still raw and unmanageable and also sustain the collective guilt of the West, warping political judgments and norms in the process. Israel does what it wants, the latest example being their humiliating rebuff of President Obama’s insistence that they stop their colonisation. The Palestinian voice is puny by comparison.
This history, which constrains so many liberal Jews in the West from speaking out on Palestine, as they otherwise surely would, is matched by the public silence of many non-Jewish critics for fear of being branded anti-Semitic – as unpleasant a tag as exists. All this has profoundly dangerous potential.
So Israel, effectively unhindered by the US or ourselves, is deluded by the “triumph” of its machiavellian diplomacy into believing that the tactics of divide and rule, obfuscation and procrastination, will forever enable it to frustrate justice for the Palestinians. Yet for Israel to defy the UN steadily undermines its own legitimacy, given the UN was its only begetter and may yet be needed as its main guarantor.
As for token Palestinian resistance, I sense they at least agree with the Jews in the lesson hard learnt by the latter, never to acquiesce in one’s own oppression, whatever the odds. So Israel least of all should be surprised at the defiant trickle of Hamas rockets, against which their criminally disproportionate retribution in Gaza looked like nothing so much as the abused becoming the abuser. I returned, as usual, miserable and ever more convinced that tough love is overdue to help save the remarkable nation that is Israel from itself. The West should now look to the imposition of escalating cultural and economic sanctions. Nothing else has worked and time may be short. There will be a hullabaloo, but carrying on as heretofore would be the sin.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury is a Liberal Democrat peer
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