New Report: Black Flag ( B'Tselem )
On 8 July 2014, another round of hostilities broke out in Gaza. It was dubbed Operation Protective Edge. About 50 days later, the fighting ended in a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. During the fighting, which included an incursion by ground forces, the Israeli military launched strikes from the air, sea and land against thousands of targets. More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed, including hundreds of children. About 18,000 homes were destroyed or badly damaged and more than 100,000 Palestinians were rendered homeless. Over the course of the fighting, Palestinians fired over 4,000 rockets and mortar shells from the Gaza Strip, mostly at civilian communities inside Israel. As a result, five civilians were killed in Israel, including a four-year-old boy. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting.
On the first day of the fighting, the military attacked the Kaware’ family home. The house collapsed. Nine people, including five children aged 7 to 14, were killed. This was just the first of dozens of air, sea and ground strikes, which would become one of the appalling hallmarks of the fighting in Gaza this summer: bombings in which hundreds of people were killed – constituting more than a quarter of all of the Palestinians killed in the fighting. Time and again Palestinian families suffered much grievous loss of life. In a single instant, so many families were ruined, with the wreckage of their lives mirroring the devastation of their homes.
These attacks were not carried out on the whim of individual soldiers, pilots or commanders in the field. They are the result of a policy formulated by government officials and the senior military command. These officials backed the policy of attacking homes, reiterating the argument that the attacks conform to international humanitarian law (IHL) and eschewing any responsibility for harm to civilians.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/113493933
No Safe Place Physicians for Human Rights Israel
Findings
The overwhelming majority of injuries causing death or requiring hospitalisation seen by the FFM were the result of explosion or crush injuries, often multiple complex injuries;
A majority of hospitalised patients interviewed reported people being injured or killed while in, or very close to, their homes or those of relatives and neighbours;
Numerous cases in which
significant numbers of casualties including members of the same family and rescuers were killed or injured in a single incident;
‘double tap’ or multiple consecutive strikes on a single location led to multiple civilian casualties and to injuries and deaths among rescuers;
heavy explosives were used in residential neighbourhoods, resulting in multiple civilian casualties;
emergency medical evacuation was not enabled and/or in which medical teams were killed or injured in the course of evacuation of the injured (notably in Shuja’iya, Gaza City);
At least one case in which a mine-breaching explosive device (tsefa shirion) was used in a residential street in Khuza’a, Khan Younis, causing massive destruction.
At least one case, of Shuhada’ Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al Balah, where several people were killed and injured in what was apparently a deliberate attack on the hospital on 21 July 2014.
An in-depth study of the town of Khuza’a suggests that:
A convoy of hundreds of civilians came under fire while attempting to flee the town on 23 July 2014;
A medical clinic in which civilians and injured people were sheltering after this attack was hit by missiles, causing deaths and injuries;
A seriously injured 6-year-old child was not assisted and his evacuation was obstructed despite eye contact with troops on the ground on 24 July. He later died;
Civilians in a house occupied by Israeli soldiers suffered abuse and ill-treatment including beatings, denial of food and water, and use as human shields. One was shot dead at close range.
In addition, the FFM examined:
The strains placed on hospitals in Gaza during the attacks;
Problems with referral and evacuation of patients from Gaza hospitals to hospitals outside;
Long-term internal displacement in Gaza as a result of the partial or total destruction of about 18,000 homes;
Long-term psychosocial and mental health damage caused by this and previous wars;
An increased need for rehabilitation services and insufficient current resources in Gaza to meet them.
Conclusions
The attacks were characterised by heavy and unpredictable bombardments of civilian neighbourhoods in a manner that failed to discriminate between legitimate targets and protected populations and caused widespread destruction of homes and civilian property. Such indiscriminate attacks, by aircraft, drones, artillery, tanks and gunships, were unlikely to have been the result of decisions made by individual soldiers or commanders; they must have entailed approval from top-level decision-makers in the Israeli military and/or government.
The initiators of the attacks, despite giving some prior warnings of these attacks, failed to take the requisite precautions that would effectively enable the safe evacuation of the civilian population, including provision of safe spaces and routes. As a result, there was no guaranteed safe space in the Gaza Strip, nor were there any safe escape routes from it.
In numerous cases double or multiple consecutive strikes on a single location led to multiple civilian casualties and to injuries and deaths among rescuers.
Coordination of medical evacuation was often denied and many attacks on medical teams and facilities were reported. It is not clear whether such contravention of medical neutrality was the result of a policy established by senior decision-makers, a general permissive atmosphere leading to the flouting of norms, or the result of individual choices made on the ground during armed clashes.
In Khuza’a, the reported conduct of specific troops in the area is indicative of additional serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.
http://gazahealthattack.com/2015/01/20/no-safe-place-gaza-health-attack-full-report/
Support via denial of Israeli policy and the scurrilous attempts at condemning Mondoweiss
are typical of the desperate
= new reply since forum marked as read
