Questions intensify about Israeli army tactics as civilian death toll soars
Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem – Questions intensified yesterday about Israeli army tactics—including alleged use of white phosphorus shells—amid a soaring Palestinian civilian death toll.
Israeli President Shimon Peres said last night he thought the operation would only last “several more days.” But media reports said army top brass were pushing to escalate the operation by sending thousands of army reservists in to the heart of Gaza cities. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was ambiguous about how long the military push—which has the stated objective of freeing southern Israel from Hamas rocket attacks would continue. He told the cabinet it was nearing completion of its objectives, but added that “patience, determination and effort” are still needed to achieve a change in the security situation of southern Israel, against which rocket firings have lessened but not stopped. A rocket struck the yard of a kindergarten in the port city of Ashdod yesterday.
Backed by helicopter gunships, troops and tanks pushed into the eastern and southern parts of Gaza City, confronting Hamas militants who fired anti-armour missiles and mortar bombs, Reuters reported. It said that ten gunmen were killed. Medical officials said Israeli forces had killed 15 civilians, including four members of one family and that Israeli shelling of two villages south of Gaza City had set fifteen houses on fire.
Eight hundred and eighty four Palestinians have been killed, including 275 children and 93 women since Israel launched the campaign on Dec. 27, according to Gaza health officials. Thirteen Israelis have died from rocket firings against southern Israel and while fighting in Gaza.
The Israeli army says its operation is a “proportional response to the ongoing threat posed by Hamas.”
Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering Gaza, while at the same time complaining that Hamas is “manipulating” the Western media.
Gaza City physician Moussa al-Haddad said by telephone last night that “We are in a cage and bombs are coming from everywhere.”
“I’m speaking to you in the dark. There is no electricity at all and no cooking gas. I have family members who live on the sea and their houses have been set on fire. It’s horrible.”
”I know god will not leave us alone,” he added.
Iyad Sarraj, a Gaza City psychiatrist, said the Israeli campaign “causes so much hatred, not just pain. When ordinary people are killed it produces more radicalism, more extremism and more violence. Is this what Israel wants?”
The New York based Human Rights Watch organization called on Israel halt the use of white phosphorus shells—which cause horrific burns – saying its researchers had observed them being fired over Jebalia and Gaza City. The Israeli army yesterday did not deny they were being used in Gaza, saying when queried only that troops conform to international law regarding the weaponry that is used. The use of white phosphorus to make smokescreens to hide military operations is generally permissible in international law. But HRW says their use in densely populated areas of Gaza violates provisions requiring that all feasible precautions be taken to avoid harm to civilians.
Ahmed al-Ladawi, a doctor at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital told France 24 yesterday that “in the last few days people have come into the Emergency Room with first, second and third degree burns. People have burns on their whole body, arms and legs and also faces. The martyrs are burned from head to foot. We as doctors can’t explain this kind of burns. It’s effecting dozens of patients every day.”
Meanwhile, Israeli army officers admitted yesterday that there had been no Hamas fighters in a school shelled by the military on January 6, causing the deaths of more than thirty Palestinian civilians. Instead, they said a probe had revealed that there were fighters in an adjacent building. The officers said it had been a mistake to use mortars against the fighters and that more precise weaponry should have been used.
Human Rights watch staffer Fred Abrahams said yesterday that “the conduct of Israeli forces without any shadow of a doubt has risen to the elevel requiring independent international investigation. “War crimes may have been committed and an investigation would determine” whether or not that is the case, he said. He added that Hamas rocket attacks are a war crime and that the militant Islaimic group has also stored weapons in mosques and apparently dug tunnels in civilian areas.
Israeli army spokesman Captain Benjamin Rutland said the Israeli army operation is a “proportional response to the ongoing threat presented by Hamas.” He said Israel takes great care to avoid injury to civilians and that pilots have aborted numerous missions because of this. Hamas, he added uses the population as human shields and has booby trapped an “enormous number of civilian houses.”
