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| UN: Gaza assault was 'inhumane' | |||||||||
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Richard Falk called the 22-day bombardment a "massive assault on a densely populated urbanised setting", with the civilian population subjected to "an inhumane form of warfare that kills, maims and inflicts mental harm". His findings were written in a report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday. Islamic and African countries backed by China, Cuba and Russia have a majority in the 47-member forum. Neither Israel nor US, its principal ally, are members. Falk said the Geneva Convention required forces at war to be able to distinguish between military targets and civilians. If that is not possible, then "launching the attacks is inherently unlawful". Israel launched its offensive on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in December saying it aimed to stop rocket fire by Hamas into southern Israel. A ceasefire was declared on January 18 after the offensive left about 1,400 Palestinians dead, many of them women and children. Three Israeli civilians and 10 soldiers were killed during the offensive. Blockade 'a crime' Falk said that the Gaza border blockade also was not legally justified and may represent a "crime against peace", a principle established at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.
He also condemned the firing of rockets at civilian targets in southern Israel by Hamas. Falk called for an independent experts group to investigate possible war crimes committed by both the Israeli military and Hamas. He recommended witness testimonies as well as explanations from Israeli and Palestinian military commanders. Falk gave the same death toll from Israel's offensive in December and January - 1,434 Palestinians, 960 of those civilians - as the Palestinian Human Rights Centre. Israel disputes the figures and accuses Hamas fighters in Gaza of using civilians as human shields. Falk said Israel's allegation should be investigated. Israeli rejection Daniel Seaman, a spokesman for the Israeli government, rejected Falk's assertions, saying that his report contained no truth or legitimacy. "The soldiers, questioned by our military authorities, are saying these [in the report] are not first-person eyewitness accounts ... these are stories they heard second hand," Seaman said. He said every military in the world "at times makes mistakes".
Falk said the UN Security Council might set up an ad hoc tribunal to establish accountability for war crimes in Gaza, noting Israel has not signed the Rome statutes establishing the International Criminal Court. He was refused entry into Israel two weeks before the offensive started, preventing him from a planned mission to Gaza. In the report, he said the refusal had set an "unfortunate precedent" for treatment of a special rapporteur. Speaking to Al Jazeera from Santa Barbara, California, Falk said he is not optimistic that his report will lead to concrete action. "There is a lack of political will on the part of several major governments," he said. "There has all along been a pervasive double standard with respect to the implementation of international criminal law. "It has been applied to non-Western countries in the south and has exempted actors associated with Europe, North America and, generally, the north." Rules of engagement Falk's criticism came as reports surfaced in the Israeli media suggesting that Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under what may have been lax rules of engagement during the Gaza offensive. Quoting Israeli soldiers who fought in the offensive, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Thursday that soldiers had ransacked and destroyed civilian property. The soldiers' testimony, made at a course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon, runs counter to the Israeli army's claims that troops observed a high level of moral behaviour during the operation. The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader in which he relates an incident where an Israeli sharpshooter shot a Palestinian mother and her two children, Haaretz reported. If proved, the soldiers' testimonies could contribute to war crimes charges against Israel. Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid, reporting from Gaza, said that there was no doubt in the minds of Gazans that Israel committed war crimes during the assault. "There is a certain level of satisfaction that these stories are coming out and that a body like the UN is saying the same things that they are saying," she said. | |||||||||
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| Gaza deaths dog Israeli military | ||||||||||
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Quoting Israeli soldiers who fought in the offensive, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Thursday that soldiers had also ransacked and destroyed civilian property. The soldiers' testimony, made at a course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon, runs counter to the Israeli army's claims that troops observed a high level of moral behaviour during the operation. The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader in which he relates an incident where an Israeli sharpshooter shot a Palestinian mother and her two children, Haaretz reported. If proved, the soldiers' testimonies could lead to war crimes charges against Israel. The Israeli army issued a statement in response to the Haaretz article saying it would look into the veracity of the allegations and investigate them if necessary. 'Damaging testimonies' Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Jerusalem, said: "Throughout the 22-day war the Israeli military had the position that it was not targeting civilians ... but now, for the first time since the end of the war, Israeli soldiers are coming forward with first-hand accounts of the types of military operations they were engaged in.
"The important point to remember is that the Israeli military does not publish its rule of engagement, so it will be very difficult for the public to juxtapose the soldiers' testimonies with what is actually allowed by the Israeli military, in terms of operations and conduct during the war." Mikhael Manekin, from Breaking the Silence, an organisation of veteran Israeli soldiers gathering evidence on the Gaza war, said the testimonies in Haaretz corroborate the group's findings.
Haaretz quoted one soldier as saying: "There was a house with a family inside ... We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof." Shooting without warning "The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was OK, and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders," it said.
A ceasefire was declared on January 18 after the offensive left 1,300 Palestinians dead, many of them women and children. Three Israeli civilians and 10 soldiers were killed during the offensive. Haaretz reported that after the orders were changed, the squad soldiers complained that "we should kill everyone there [in the centre of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist". Legal protection Danny Zamir, the head of the pre-military course, said on Wednesday that he did not know in advance what the soldiers would say, and what they said "shocked us". He said that after hearing the soldiers, he told Gabi Ashkenazi, Israeli's chief-of-staff, about his fears of a serious moral failure in the army. The chief-of-staff's bureau requested a copy of the transcript of the discussion, and Zamir provided it, Haaretz reported. Israel has said it will give legal protection to soldiers who fought in the offensive, according to Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli prime minister. Olmert said recently that he had appointed Daniel Friedman, the justice minister, to chair an inter-ministerial committee "to co-ordinate Israel's efforts to offer legal defence for anyone who took part in the operation". |
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Gazans cheered and waved Palestinian flags as the convoy finally entered the territory through the Rafah border crossing on Monday, after being stranded on the Egyptian side of the border for two days. "The group was stopped at the border for various reasons, there were various negotiations going on over what would be let through the border; how many people, how much humanitarian aid," Al Jazeera's Todd Baer, reporting from the Rafah crossing, said. "After an 8,000km journey, nearly one month on the road and a day and a half on the Egyptitan side of the Rafah border, the Lifeline for Gaxa convoy finally made it into the Gaza Strip. It was a remarkable scene."
The passage of the convoy through Egypt had been controversial. The convoy was pelted with stones and vandalised in the Egyptian town of El-Arish, 45km south of the Rafah border crossing, before being cleared to enter Gaza. 'Overwhelmed with happiness' As he entered Gaza, Galloway said he was "overwhelmed with happiness". "I have entered Palestine many times but the most emotional of these is after the 22-day genocidal aggression against the Palestinian people," he said. Galloway said that he planned to meet "the heroes of Palestine's resistance, the government of Palestine, the people of Palestine". The convoy comprising 110 vehicles has brought aid supplies valued at $1.4m. Israel's Gaza offensive, which it said was aimed at stopping rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian fighters, devastated the Gaza Strip. More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed and thousands of homes were destroyed in the assault which ended in January. Israel and Egypt have sealed Gaza off from all but limited humanitarian aid since Hamas seized full control of the territory in June 2007 after pushing out forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the West Bank-based Palestinian president. | |||||||
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"The owners of 80 houses in the al-Bustan neighbourhood have received eviction notices saying that the structures will be destroyed because they are illegal," Hatem Abdel Kader, an official responsible for Jerusalem affairs in the Palestinian government, said. Kader said that several of the houses served with demolition orders had been built before the 1967 war, when Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan, but that numerous extensions have been built since. "The [Jerusalem] municipality used this as a pretext to issue the demolition orders despite appeals by the residents," he said. No comment was immediately available from the city authorities. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital and has annexed the Arab east of the city, but under international law east Jerusalem is considered to be occupied and has not been recognised by world powers as the Israeli capital. According to B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, Israeli authorities have demolished about 350 houses in east Jerusalem since 2004, saying that they were built without permits. | |||
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