Beirut: Israel's political and military leaders violated international law in their 50-day bombing campaign in Gaza last year in which almost entire Palestinian families were killed in attacks on civilian homes, a new report has found.
After investigating 70 incidents in which more than 600 Palestinians were killed inside homes, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem found a majority of them – children, women and men over the age of 60 – were unlikely to have been involved in the fighting.
All in all, around 2200 Palestinians, the majority considered non-combatants by the United Nations, were killed during the conflict. According to UN figures, 124,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, leaving up to 100,000 people homeless, including 12,000 who are continuing to shelter in UN schools.
Fairfax Media interviewed eight Palestinian families who lost multiple loved ones in the military offensive, including the Abu Jame family – 24 people, almost all women and children, along with a single Hamas operative were killed in an Israeli attack that levelled their apartment block on July 20.
One of only three survivors, Basem Abu Jame, 31, told Fairfax Media in August that he did not know how to go on without Yasmin, his 24-year-old wife, and his three daughters, Batul, four, Suelia, three, and Besan, 18 months. "I have no pictures, everything has been destroyed – I do not even have an ID card any more, there is nothing left."
Five Israeli civilians and one Thai agricultural worker were killed in the conflict, along with 66 Israeli soldiers who were mostly killed during the ground invasion of Gaza, in which tanks and troops advanced well into towns and villages.
"These attacks were not carried out on the whim of individual soldiers, pilots or commanders in the field," the B'Tselem report concluded. "They are the result of a policy formulated by government officials and the senior military command.
"Even if the Israeli cabinet thought this policy would bring an end to attacks on Israeli communities, it should not have been implemented because of its foreseeable, horrifying consequences as well as because of the black flag of illegality flying over it."
The report also questioned Israel's policy of using phone calls to warn families to leave homes about to be struck or firing "knock on the roof" missiles. Such warnings, the report found, were often ineffective, issued too late or, in some cases, not given at all.
The Israel Defence Forces denied they attacked residential buildings in Gaza, saying their focus was on military targets often located within residential buildings.
"The IDF categorically rejects the assertion of a policy of deliberately attacking residential homes solely on the basis that they were residences belonging to members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad," it said, stressing it was "fully committed to its international law obligations".
"The IDF makes extensive efforts to minimise harm to civilians, and in addition to abiding by the principles of distinction and proportionality, takes a number of additional precautions, where feasible – including the use of precision munitions, assessments for optimal timing for attack, the use of real-time surveillance and the employment of a complex and multi-tiered system of advance warnings."
B'Tselem's executive director, Hagai El-Ad, said as civilians were dying in their dozens in the early days of the military offensive, the impact of Israel's policies must have been clear to all in the military and civilian leadership.
"If that was not clear on day one or day seven . . . certainly it became clear on day 10 or 11, that these are the inevitable outcomes of such a policy of using such military force, and yet what we see is that the policy remained in effect until the very last days of the military offensive," he said.
B'Tselem placed the responsibility firmly at the feet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who continued to insist throughout the ferocious bombing and artillery campaign that the defence forces were doing everything they could to warn civilians of impending attacks and protect civilian life.
In a letter sent last week to Mr Netanyahu in the leadup to the report's release, Mr El-Ad wrote: "Senior officials, with you at the helm, backed the strikes, reiterating the argument that the attacks conform to international humanitarian law and eschewing any responsibility for harm to civilians.
"This interpretation is designed to block, a priori, any allegation against Israel and means that there are no restrictions whatsoever on Israeli action and that whatever method it chooses to respond to Hamas operations is legitimate, no matter how horrifying the consequences."
Mr Netanyahu has yet to respond to the letter or the report.
"We are six months since one of the most terrible wars – both for Palestinians and also for Israelis – in recent memory and only six or seven weeks from the elections," Mr El-Ad told Fairfax Media. "One would perhaps think that must translate into a heated public discourse in the context of Gaza for the election, but what you actually see is this concerted effort by almost all political parties to try to avoid the issue."
The report emphasises that Hamas also breached international humanitarian law, particularly its duty to distinguish between civilian objects and military targets. "Not only did Hamas fire at Israeli civilians and civilian targets, it did so from within the civilian population. Hamas operatives fired from sites located near civilian dwellings, concealed weapons and munitions inside them and dug tunnels under them."
The office of Israel's Military Advocate-General is investigating several incidents that occurred during the operation. However B'Tselem, along with other human rights groups, has called into question the transparency and independence of an inquiry in which the military investigates itself.
Major-General Dani Efroni, the Military Advocate-General, has already made statements following the Gaza war that Hamas military commanders had in effect turned their apartments into bases or operational headquarters for coordinating the firing of rockets into Israel, thereby making houses legitimate targets.
The B'Tselem report comes on the back of two other investigations, by Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty International, both of which found grave violations of international law, including the deliberate targeting of hospitals and ambulances by the Israel Defence Forces and accusations that soldiers used civilians as human shields.
It was published as prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in The Hague conduct a preliminary inquiry into possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories.
