(Gaza) – Israeli air attacks in Gaza investigated by Human Rights
Watch have been targeting apparent civilian structures and killing
civilians in violation of the laws of war. Israel
should end unlawful attacks that do not target military objectives and
may be intended as collective punishment or broadly to destroy civilian
property. Deliberate or reckless attacks violating the laws of war are
war crimes, Human Rights Watch said.
Israeli attacks in Gaza since July 7, 2014, which Israeli officials said delivered more than 500 tons
of explosives in missiles, aerial bombs, and artillery fire, killed at
least 178 people and wounded 1,361 as of July 14, including 635 women
and children, according to the United Nations. Preliminary UN reports
identified 138 people, about 77 percent of those killed, as civilians,
including 36 children, and found that the attacks had destroyed 1,255
homes, displacing at least 7,500 people.
“Israel’s rhetoric is all about precision attacks but attacks with no
military target and many civilian deaths can hardly be considered
precise,” said Sarah Leah Whitson ,
Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Recent documented cases in
Gaza sadly fit Israel’s long record of unlawful airstrikes with high
civilian casualties.”
Palestinian armed groups also should end indiscriminate rocket attacks
launched toward Israeli population centers. Israeli media reported that
Palestinian armed groups have launched 1,500 rockets at Israel, wounding
five Israeli civilians and destroying property.
Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups conducted fewer attacks and
rocket launches in May and early June. An Israeli airstrike killed an
alleged member of an armed group and his son on a motorcycle in Gaza on
June 11, sparking rocket launches by Palestinian armed groups, and
leading to a massive escalation of Israeli attacks on July 7. Israel
also blamed Hamas for the abduction and murder
of three Israeli teenagers near a West Bank settlement on June 12 and
launched a military operation in the West Bank on June 13, killing at
least six Palestinians. Hamas had praised the kidnappings but denied
responsibility.
Human Rights Watch investigated four Israeli strikes during the July
military offensive in Gaza that resulted in civilian casualties and
either did not attack a legitimate military target or attacked despite
the likelihood of civilian casualties being disproportionate to the
military gain. Such attacks committed deliberately or recklessly
constitute war crimes under the laws of war applicable to all parties.
In these cases, the Israeli military has presented no information to
show that it was attacking lawful military objectives or acted to
minimize civilian casualties.
Israel has wrongly claimed as a matter of policy that civilian members
of Hamas or other political groups who do not have a military role are
“terrorists” and therefore valid military targets, and has previously
carried out hundreds of unlawful attacks on this basis. Israel has also targeted family homes of alleged members of armed groups without showing that the structure was being used for military purposes.
On July 11, an Israeli attack on the Fun Time Beach café near the city
of Khan Yunis killed nine civilians, including two 15-year-old children,
and wounded three, including a 13-year-old boy. An Israeli military
spokesman said the attack was “targeting a terrorist” but presented no
evidence that any of those at the café, who had gathered to watch a
World Cup match, were participating in military operations, or that the
killing of one alleged “terrorist” in a crowded café would justify the
expected civilian casualties.
In another July 11 attack, an Israeli missile struck a vehicle in the
Bureij refugee camp, killing the two municipal workers inside. The men
were driving home in a marked municipal vehicle after clearing rubble
from a road damaged in an airstrike. Their relatives said that neither
man was affiliated with an armed group, and that the driver had followed
the same daily routine in the same vehicle every day since July 7. The
explosion blew the roof off the vehicle and partly disemboweled a
9-year-old girl and wounded her sister, 8, who were sitting in front of
their home nearby. Human Rights Watch found no evidence of a military
objective in the vehicle or in the area at the time.
An Israeli airstrike on July 10 on the family home of Mohammed al-Hajj, a
tailor, in the densely crowded Khan Yunis refugee camp killed seven
civilian family members, including two children, and wounded more than
twenty civilians. An eighth fatality, al-Hajj’s 20-year-old son, was a
low-ranking member of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas,
residents told Human Rights Watch. The Israeli military said the attack
was being investigated. Even if the son was the intended target, the
nature of the attack appears indiscriminate and would in any case be
disproportionate.
“The presence of a single, low-level fighter would hardly justify the
appalling obliteration of an entire family,” Whitson said. “Israel would
never accept an argument that any Israeli home of an Israel Defense
Force member would be a valid military target.”
A fourth Israeli airstrike, on July 9, killed Amal Abed Ghafour, who was
7-months pregnant, and her 1-year-old daughter, and wounded her husband
and 3-year-old son. The family lived across the street from an
apartment building that was struck with multiple missiles, according to
witnesses. Residents of nearby homes said Israeli forces fired a small
non-explosive “warning” missile at the apartment building minutes before
the main missile strikes. However, the family did not know of the
warning or have time to flee. Israeli officials have not said why they
targeted the apartment building.
A brief initial statement
on July 8 by the Israeli military spokesperson’s office asserted that
military attacks had targeted “four homes of activists in the Hamas
terror organization who are involved in terrorist activity and direct
and carry out high-trajectory fire towards Israel,” without any further
qualification. In subsequent statements, the military said that its
policy is to attack homes used as “command and control” centers or
“terrorist infrastructure” after warning residents to leave, but has
provided no information to support these vague claims.
The Israeli rights group B’Tselem said on July 13 that the Israel
Defense Forces spokesperson had changed the wording of statements
concerning such attacks over the course of the current military
offensive, but that in only one specific case did the military claim
that weapons were hidden in a home it had attacked. An Israeli military
official stated
on July 12 that the military has targeted “more than 100 homes of
commanders of different ranks” in Gaza, the Israeli news website Ynet
reported.
Civilian structures such as residential homes become lawful targets only
when they are being used for military purposes. While the laws of war
encourage the use of effective advance warnings of attacks to minimize
civilian casualties, providing warnings does not make an otherwise
unlawful attack lawful.
For warnings to be effective, civilians need adequate time to leave and
go to a place of safety before an attack. In several cases Human Rights
Watch investigated, Israel gave warnings, but carried out the attack
within five minutes or less. Given that Gaza has no bomb shelters,
civilians realistically often have no place to flee.
Attacks targeting civilians or civilian property are unlawful, as are
attacks that do not or cannot discriminate between civilians and
combatants. Attacks intended to punish the family members of an enemy
commander or fighter would also constitute unlawful collective
punishment. Attacks causing the extensive destruction of property
carried out unlawfully and wantonly are also prohibited.
“Warning families to flee might reduce civilian casualties but they
don’t make illegal attacks any less illegal,” Whitson said. “The Israeli
failure to demonstrate why attacks that are killing civilians are
lawful raises serious questions as to whether these attacks are intended
to target civilians or wantonly destroy civilian property.”
The United Nations Human Rights Council should hold a special session to
address violations of international human rights and humanitarian law
in the context of the conflict, Human Rights Watch said. The Council
should mandate the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
to form a fact-finding mission to impartially investigate, report
promptly and publicly on violations by all sides, and issue
recommendations to the parties and the UN.
The European Union and its member countries should support convening a
special session and formation of a fact-finding mission. They should
also work for a resolution that:
- Stresses the conflicting parties’ obligations under international law to protect civilians;
- Stresses the need for borders to be kept open for humanitarian and
medical assistance to reach those in need and permit them to leave;
- Condemns violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by all parties; and
- Stresses the need for accountability for grave violations.
Neither Israeli nor Palestinian authorities have ever
taken serious action to investigate alleged war crimes by members of
their forces in previous armed conflicts. Human Rights Watch has documented numerous serious violations of the laws of war by Israeli forces in the past decade, particularly indiscriminate attacks on civilians .
From 2005 to the end of 2012, Israeli military operations in Gaza resulted in the deaths of 1,474 civilians and the destruction of thousands of buildings. In the same period, Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza fired
some 8,734 rockets at Israeli population centers, killing 38 civilians,
including 26 Israelis, 2 foreign nationals, and 10 Palestinians when
rockets fell short of their intended targets.
The Palestine Liberation Organization should direct President Mahmoud Abbas to seek the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute serious international crimes committed by all parties on Palestinian territory.
Governments that are providing weapons to Israel, to Hamas, or to armed
groups in the Gaza Strip should suspend transfers of any materiel that
has been documented or credibly alleged to have been used in violation
of international humanitarian law, as well as funding or support for
such material, Human Rights Watch said. The US supplies Israel with
rotary and fixed wing military aircraft, Hellfire missiles, and other
munitions that have been used in illegal airstrikes in Gaza.
“The longstanding failure of either side to prosecute war crimes in Gaza
means that the only meaningful option for justice and accountability is
legal proceedings before the International Criminal Court,” Whitson
said. “How many more civilians will die as a result of unlawful Israeli
attacks before President Abbas submits Palestine to this court?”
For details of the four attacks Human Rights Watch investigated, please see below.
Attack on the Fun Time Beach Café
At 11:30 p.m. on July 11, 2014, an Israeli attack on the Fun Time Beach
coffee shop on the beach near Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, killed nine
civilians, including two 15-year-old boys, and wounded three, including a
critically injured 13-year-old, survivors and family members told Human
Rights Watch.
The New York Times reported that an Israeli military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, said
that the military had fired a “precision strike” with a missile and was
“targeting a terrorist,” but did not provide information about the
target’s identity or the timing of the attack on a crowded café.
Human Rights Watch found no evidence that any of the victims was a
member of an armed group or that there was a military objective in the
area.
About an hour before the attack, patrons and workers saw a small missile
strike a second beach establishment, the Layali Café, about 150 meters
away. They walked over and put out the small fire that was burning
there, and returned to the Fun Time Beach café, where they planned to
watch a broadcast of the World Cup at midnight. The patrons assumed that
the small missile strike was a mistake or random shooting from Israeli
naval forces, said survivors and relatives who had spoken to the victims
shortly before the strike.
Relatives and survivors said the victims frequently went to the beach
café. Khaled Qanan, 30, told Human Rights Watch that the attack killed
two of his brothers, Mohammed, 25, a master’s degree student in Arabic,
and Ibrahim, 28, who sold fish. Ramadan Sabbah, 37, the two victims’
brother-in-law, said:
They went to the beach café all the time, including every day since
this operation started [on July 8]. They said they felt safer there than
they did in Khan Yunis. But there was nothing to shelter them; it was
just chairs and fabric. When we found the bodies, they didn’t have
visible injuries. Ibrahim had only a small cut, but we found his body
almost 200 meters away. Mohammed was found on the asphalt. The road is
cracked from the explosion.
Human Rights Watch visited the site on July 12 and 13 but could not
determine the weapons used in the attack due to extensive digging by
relatives searching for the missing body of one of the victims.
The attack killed three members of the Astal family: Ahmad, 18,
Suleiman, 15, and Mousa, 15, who died while being taken to the hospital,
and severely wounded Mousa’s brother Naim, 13, relatives said. Human
Rights Watch spoke briefly to Naim, who had extensive injuries, “I woke
up in the hospital. I don’t know why they hit us,” he said.
Ramadan al-Astal, 19, Suleiman and Ahmad’s brother, told Human Rights Watch:
I was on the way to the café to watch the game but my motorcycle
stalled. I called them at exactly 11:07 p.m. to tell them. They said
there were four people there playing cards, and the three [relatives
from the Astal family who died]. So I started to walk back home, and
then I heard the explosion. I called my brothers, but they didn’t
answer. I went there with my uncle. Three of the victims were still
alive, but they died on their way to the hospital. There was a huge
crater where the coffee shop was; the sea water was seeping into it.
When we dug up the bodies the clothes had been burned off. I can’t
understand why they targeted the café. Maybe they saw the lights go on
when the guys turned on the generator, after they came back from
[putting out the fire at] the Layali Cafe.
Family members said the other two survivors included Tamer al-Astal,
27, a construction worker whose back was broken; and Bilal al-Astal, the
café owner.
Kamel Sawali, 37, said that the attack killed his brothers Ibrahim, 28,
Homdi, 20, and Salim, 24, but that Salim’s body had not been found. The
four men had worked together to run the café, which they had rented from
Bilal al-Astal for the past five years. Sawali said:
I spoke to them 15 minutes before the strike, at 11:15 p.m., and they
told me about how they’d gone to the Layali but that everything was
fine. There was no reason to attack them. The café was just normal; some
people went there to break the [Ramadan] fast, some were fishermen,
some kids. The worst thing is that Salim is missing. We’ve called the
Red Cross to coordinate with the Israeli military to search the beach
again.
The brothers’ father, Bedaya Sawali, 61, said, “I lost my three
youngest sons; I don’t care about the money we have lost on the café but
one of them is still missing.”
Amna Serwana, 45, said that her son Mohammed, 18, was working at the
coffee shop when he was killed. “He went there every summer to work for
the last three years,” she said. “We tried to keep him home with us for
Ramadan, but he said he liked the atmosphere there and that a lot of
people were going to come to watch the game.”
Bureij Refugee Camp Killings
At around 12:30 p.m. on July 11, an Israeli airstrike with what
witnesses and physical evidence indicate was a small missile struck a
municipality vehicle from the Bureij refugee camp. The strike killed
both of the municipal workers inside – Mazen Aslan, 52, and Shaharam abu
al-Qaz, 43 – and badly injured Shaheed Girnawi, 8, and her sister
Salwa, 9, who were in the front entry of their nearby home, witnesses
and relatives told Human Rights Watch. Family members and witnesses said
neither man was affiliated with any armed group. Human Rights Watch
found no military objective in the vicinity of the attack.
Aslan worked for the municipality, his wife, Umm Khaled, 45, told Human
Rights Watch. “In normal times he turned off and on the water valves to
regulate the flow of water to different parts of the camp,” she said.
“And during emergencies, he would go out in the municipality jeep to
oversee the workers who cleared up the rubble from Israeli attacks.”
Aslan had begun work at 10 a.m. every day since July 7, when the Israeli
military offensive began, and used a Jeep Magnum painted white with a
municipal logo and small flag, his wife said.
On July 11, Aslan drove the jeep to escort a bulldozer, operated by Abu
Qaz, to a road that needed to be cleared of rubble from a prior
airstrike. Aslan’s wife said:
But he had forgotten his official municipality employment paper,
which he’s supposed to carry with him, so he called me to say he was
coming to get it. He was driving back home in the Jeep and had brought
[Abu Qaz] with him. I was just going outside to hand him the paper, but
he went down the street a bit and then the missile hit. The Jeep flipped
over. The missile hit my husband directly. There was nothing left to
recognize him by. There was no reason to hit him. He would go out to
work during every war; this is his third war [including the conflicts in
2008-09 and in 2012].
Human Rights Watch observed Aslan’s employment document [photo] and
inspected the scene of the attack. A small crater was visible in the
road where witnesses said the missile struck the Jeep, and there was
what appeared to be dried blood on the outside walls of houses facing
the street.
Abu Qaz’s brother Ismail said that he had spoken to his brother earlier that morning:
He and Mazen went out to clear the rubble. Shaharam drove the digger
behind the jeep, and then they were coming back. My brother parked the
digger in its municipality parking spot, and got into the Jeep. That was
the routine: he would be driven back by whoever was in charge of
overseeing the clearing work. There was nothing unusual that day.
Witnesses said that the force of the explosion blew the roof off the
vehicle and into the doorway of a home where Shaheed and Salwa were
sitting. Their older brother, Iyad Hilme Girnawi, 22, said in an
interview on July 12:
My sisters were sitting in the corridor when the blast blew the roof
into them. Shaheed was badly injured; everyone assumed she was dead. Her
intestines were outside her body, and her head was open. She’s had
three operations and is in the ICU [intensive care unit] but somehow she
is still alive. They transferred her from Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al
Balah to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Salwa was injured but should be
discharged from the hospital in a day or two.
A third witness, Salem abd-Khalil Girnawi, a 20-year-old university
student, said the explosion wounded him while he was walking nearby: “At
around 12:30 p.m. a Jeep Magnum drove past, and suddenly I found myself
with blood all over. I saw some shrapnel in my body, washed myself, and
someone took me to al-Aqsa hospital. There was nothing going on. I
don’t know why they attacked.” Human Rights Watch observed injuries to
Girnawi’s throat and head.
Al-Hajj Family Killing
At around 1:15 a.m. on July 10, an Israeli airstrike in the Khan Yunis
refugee camp destroyed the home of Mahmud Lotfi al-Hajj, 57, and killed
all those inside: al-Hajj, a tailor, his wife Basma, 48, and their
children Fatmeh, 12, Saad, 17, Tarek, 18, Omar, 20, Asmaa, 22, and
Nijleh, 29, relatives told Human Rights Watch.
The Associated Press quoted
Lt. Col. Lerner, the Israeli spokesman, as saying the incident was
under investigation, but that Israeli forces did not provide warnings
before targeting members of armed groups who “use civilian premises to
perpetrate attacks.” Human Rights Watch found no evidence that any of
the victims used the Hajj family home to perpetrate attacks.
Omar al-Hajj had joined Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, several
months earlier, though he did not yet have a rank in the group, one of
his relatives told Human Rights Watch. Even if Omar al-Hajj was the
intended target, Israeli forces should reasonably have known that the
harm to civilians and property from the attack outweighed any expected,
direct military advantage, making the attack disproportionate if not
indiscriminate.
A neighbor, Abdallah Kulab, told Human Rights Watch that two missiles
struck the Hajj family home. Other residents of the refugee camp said
they believe three missiles hit the house. Another neighbor, Hossein
Nadi, said he was standing at his window “when I saw an explosion and
then the force of it sucked me out of the window” and knocked him
unconscious.
Al-Hajj’s son Yazid, 24, said that he had lived in the home but was out
walking when the attack occurred: “As I was walking back home, the
explosion happened. I was just a few hundred meters away. The house was
still crumbling when I made it back.” Yazid said he had received an
automated phone call from Israeli security forces earlier that same day.
“It was one of the generic, robot messages, that just said, ‘Stay away
from Qassam,’ so I ignored it,” he said.
UN officials told Human Rights Watch that they estimated several hundred
thousand Gaza residents have randomly received similar automated phone
calls since July 7, which warn residents not to store weapons in their
homes, blame Hamas for the conflict, and state that the Israeli military
does not want to harm civilians.
Yazid al-Hajj said he had been employed by the Hamas government – which
recently dissolved with the formation of a Palestinian “unity”
government – as a civilian security guard in Rafah, at the smuggling
tunnels underneath the Egyptian border, but that he is not part of
Hamas’s military wing and has not participated in any military
activities. Armed groups have used tunnels to smuggle weapons into Gaza,
but Yazid’s account is consistent with the fact that the former Hamas
government, which created a “tunnels authority” in control of security
and taxation at the smuggling tunnels, employed civilian guards at other
tunnels used to smuggle consumer goods. Israel has not identified who,
if any of the victims, was a target of the strike.
Al-Hajj’s daughter Fida, who lives in Rafah and was not at her parents’
home on the night of the attack, told Human Rights Watch: “That night,
they all went over to my uncle’s house after iftar [the meal
during which a Ramadan fast is broken], had tea and coffee, and went
home at around 12:15 or 12:30 in the morning, and half an hour later
they were all killed. We didn’t have any photographs to show at the
funeral. They were all burned up.”
The blast damaged buildings up to 30 meters away, and sent concrete,
metal doors, and part of a wall flying, wounding people in the street.
Muna al-Halabe, 42, who lives next door, said she and her four children
were at home when the Hajj home was attacked:
Some of the kids were watching TV, some were on the computer,
everything seemed normal. But then, I felt a large blast, and something
fell on me. I was screaming and afraid because I couldn’t find my
daughter. My 18-year-old, we found her trapped under rubble and got her
out. We were lucky that we were in the back part of the house. We only
lived because of that. One of the kids had just called my 17-year-old
daughter to come to look at something on the computer. That’s exactly
when airstrike happened, and a wall collapsed right where she had been.
We couldn’t open the door because of the blast. The men from the
neighborhood came in and kicked down the door so we could get out.
The explosion blew out the front walls of al-Halabe’s home, which is now uninhabitable. The National
newspaper quoted another neighbor, Tawfiq al-Halabe, stating that he
found body parts from victims on his property, and that the explosion
caused his wife, Nidaa, 28, to miscarry in her fifth month of pregnancy.
Hospital officials at the European Hospital and the Nasser Clinical
Center in Khan Yunis told Human Rights Watch that they had treated
around 23 people wounded in the attack.
Abed Ghafour Family Killings and Home Destruction
At around 12:35 p.m. on July 9, Israeli forces struck the home of Said
Ghafour, in Khan Yunis, and killed his relatives Amal Abed Ghafour, 30,
who was 7-months pregnant, and Nirmeen, her 1-year-old daughter, who
lived in a home across the street. Relatives found their bodies in the
back of the house, beneath two walls that the force of the blast had
knocked over, they told Human Rights Watch. The explosion wounded Amal’s
husband, Joudah Abed Ghafour, 47, and their 3-year-old son, Mohammed.
Shortly before the airstrike, an Israeli military aircraft fired a small
non-explosive missile at Said Ghafour’s home, in a procedure the
Israeli military refers to a “knock on the roof” warning, witnesses
said.
Human Rights Watch visited the area on July 13. The airstrike had
completely destroyed Said Ghafour’s home, and severely damaged two homes
on its left- and right-hand sides as well as the home opposite.
Residents said that another Israeli airstrike hit the open field behind
Ghafour’s home on July 11.
Ghafour’s brother Mazen, 40, a former employee of the Palestinian
Authority, said that a warning missile struck his brother’s home at
around 12:30 p.m. “We had less than five minutes before four missiles
hit the house. It’s not enough time for a whole block to clear out. I
ran to my parents’ home, which is next door, because it’s stronger and
deeper than my home.”
Human Rights Watch could not confirm whether Said Ghafour is a combatant
with an armed group. Because there were civilian casualties, Israel
should provide information as to why the attack on the home was a
military objective.
Mohammed Ghafour, 19, said that he was at home, about 30 meters from
Said Ghafour’s building, at the time of the attack: “The missiles blew
out our windows. This is a very crowded block, everything is apartment
buildings with five or six apartments per building, and every family has
five or six children. They hit Said’s house four times [on July 9]. We
were surprised by the amount of damage. We thought that when they target
a house, they only destroy it, not the ones around it.”
Several videos posted online appear to show small missiles striking the
roofs of buildings shortly before large explosions, destroying
buildings. One such video, which appears to have been filmed in Block 12
of al-Bureij Refugee Camp, a densely crowded are in Gaza, shows a small
explosion followed less than one minute by a massive explosion. Human
Rights Watch could not verify the date of the video.
