Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
It was the Gaza assault's worst atrocity. Now the truth may finally be told - Middle East, World - The IndependentIsraeli military police are investigating whether an air strike which killed 21 members of the same family sheltering in a building during the Army's Gaza offensive in 2008-9 was authorised by a senior brigade commander who had been warned of the danger to civilians.
The new turn in the enquiry has cast a fresh spotlight on what is widely thought to be the worst single incident involving civilian casualties during Operation Cast Lead, the missile attack on a building in the Zeitoun district of Gaza City, where around 100 members of the extended Samouni family were taking refuge on the morning of 5 January, 2009.
The missile attack, which also injured 19 people, came early in the ground offensive. According to many Palestinian witnesses, it came after troops in the Givati brigade ordered dozens of family members, including women and children, to move to the building the previous day. (Snip) The existence of the investigation has already been seen as a potential, if partial, vindication of the UN enquiry under South African judge Richard Goldstone, which severely criticised the military's conduct in the Samouni case, as in many others.
Israel refused to cooperate with the enquiry and has severely criticised it since the judge's report.
It was the Gaza assault's worst atrocity.
7. Deliberate attacks against the civilian population
43. The Mission investigated eleven incidents in which Israeli forces launched direct attacks
against civilians with lethal outcome (Chapter XI). The cases examined in this part of the report
are, with one exception, all cases in which the facts indicate no justifiable military objective
pursued by the attack. The first two incidents are attacks against houses in the Samouni
neighbourhood south of Gaza City, including the shelling of a house in which Palestinian
civilians had been forced to assemble by the Israeli forces. The following group of seven
incidents concern the shooting of civilians while they were trying to leave their homes to walk to
a safer place, waving white flags and, in some of the cases, following an injunction from the
Israeli forces to do so. The facts gathered by the Mission indicate that all the attacks occurred
under circumstances in which the Israeli forces were in control of the area and had previously
entered into contact with or at least observed the persons they subsequently attacked, so that they
must have been aware of their civilian status. In the majority of these incidents, the consequences of the Israeli attacks against civilians were aggravated by their subsequent refusal to allow the evacuation of the wounded or to permit access to ambulances.
44. These incidents indicate that the instructions given to the Israeli forces moving into Gaza
provided for a low threshold for the use of lethal fire against the civilian population. The Mission
found strong corroboration of this trend emerging from its fact-finding in the testimonies of
Israeli soldiers collected in two publications it reviewed.
45. The Mission further examined an incident in which a mosque was targeted with a missile during the early evening prayer, resulting in the death of fifteen, and an attack with flechette munitions on a crowd of family and neighbours at a condolence tent, killing five. The Mission finds that both attacks constitute intentional attacks against the civilian population and civilian objects.
46. From the facts ascertained in all the above cases, the Mission finds that the conduct of the Israeli armed forces constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons and as such give rise to individual criminal responsibility. It also finds that the direct targeting and arbitrary killing of Palestinian civilians is a violation of the right to life.
47. The last incident concerns the launch of a bomb on a house resulting in the killing of 22
family members. Israels position in this case is that there was an operational error and that the
intended target was a neighbouring house storing weapons. On the basis of its investigation, the
Mission expresses significant doubts about the Israeli authorities account of the incident. The
Mission concludes that, if indeed a mistake was made, there could not be said to be a case of
wilful killing. State responsibility of Israel for an internationally wrongful act, however, would
remain.
Full UN report on Gaza war
Now the truth may finally be told [/url]
