this is a little dated but here is an organization that blames both the palestinians and israelis for being too indiscriminate about what they shoot at
Indiscriminate Fire | Human Rights Watch
Indiscriminate Fire
June 30, 2007
Previous
Next
I. Summary
In the northern Gaza Strip and adjoining areas of Israel, attacks by Palestinian armed groups launching locally made rockets known as Qassams and attacks by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) firing 155mm artillery shells have together killed dozens of civilians, wounded hundreds, and greatly disrupted civilian life. After Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005, Palestinian rocket attacks continued sporadically, spiking in late September, late October and again in December, with Israeli artillery fire following suit beginning in late October. Initially civilian casualties on both sides were light, but the casualties rose dramatically starting in April 2006, when Israel sharply increased its artillery attacks on alleged Palestinian rocket launch sites and also fired closer to residential areas.
Both sides have shown disregard for civilian loss of life in violation of international humanitarian law (IHL): Palestinian armed groups have directed their rockets at Israeli towns; Israeli artillery shelling near populated areas has caused considerable civilian casualties for uncertain military gain as well as at least one serious incident of indiscriminate shelling.
There is an opportunity today to put an end to this needless loss of civilian life: in November 2006, after an artillery attack that killed 23 civilians, the IDF placed a moratorium on use of artillery to respond to rocket attacks in Gaza, and a five-month ceasefire on the part of Hamas the same month led to a decrease in Palestinian rocket attacks in 2007, meaning that for a time rocket attacks were largely limited to the Islamic Jihad organization. Hamas ended its ceasefire on April 24, 2007, firing rockets once again into Israeli territory.[1]Israel has not resumed its use of artillery, responding instead with more precise air-fired missiles to hit targets, but it is unclear how firm this change of practice is. The conduct of Palestinian armed groups and the IDF that led to the spike in civilian casualties in mid-2006 is likely to resume unless the parties learn the lessons of 2006 and definitively change military policies and practices in accordance with their independent obligations under international humanitarian law.
This report is based on on-the-ground assessments of Palestinian armed group rocket attacks and IDF artillery attacks, focusing on the period from the beginning of September 2005 through May 2007. It sets forth recommendations aimed at ending practices that have led to unnecessary civilian death and injury. This report does not address other important issues affecting civilians in Gaza, including deteriorating humanitarian conditions, internecine fighting between Palestinian factions, Israel's destruction of Gaza's sole electrical power plant, and IDF and armed group clashes that have claimed civilian casualties separate from the rocket/artillery attacks.
Palestinian Rocket Attacks
From September 2005 through May 2007, Palestinian armed groups fired almost 2,700 rockets into Israel, killing 4 Israeli civilians, and injuring 75 civilians and at least 9 soldiers, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) (see Appendices III-V for casualty and weapons numbers). Two of those deaths occurred in the last two weeks of May 2007. An additional six civilians died in rocket attacks from mid-2004 through August 2005. Palestinian rockets have also killed at least two and injured at least 21 Palestinian civilians when they landed short of the Israeli border. The rockets, made in Gaza and generically known as "Qassams" after the name of the armed wing of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, are highly inaccurate and cannot be directed at a specific target.
Communities in the western Negev in Israel, in particular the city of Sderot, have suffered from these attacks. The 10 Israeli civilians killed by Palestinian rocket attacks since mid-2004 range from 2 to 57 in age and include four children. The attacks also have inflicted property damage and created a pervasive climate of fear in affected Israeli communities. Eshel Margalit of Moshav Nativ Ha'asara, for example, told Human Rights Watch how his daughter narrowly escaped becoming a victim of a rocket attack. Margalit said when a siren went off warning of an incoming rocket, his daughter was upstairs in the family study working on the computer: "I yelled to her but she was not eager to leave the computer, she was 18, you know," Margalit said. "She came down and we were running to the secure room when the Qassam hit the house." The rocket penetrated the roof and exploded in the study. "We went up, opened the door, and saw the room was destroyed. When my daughter realized what could have happened she burst into tears The Qassams have changed our lives. There is a lot more stress and anxiety."[2]
Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Aqsa Brigades, and the Popular Resistance Committees have all claimed responsibility for firing rockets into Israel, though Hamas largely complied with self-imposed halts to such attacks between February and June 2006 and between November 2006 and late April 2007. These groups have justified their attacks as actions of self-defense and reprisals for Israel's actions against the Palestinians. A typical statement after a strike declares that it is a response "to the crimes of occupation against our children, women, and elderly."[3]
The Palestinian rocket attacks violate international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war, which governs the conduct of the parties during armed conflict. Where an attack on a military target is intended and that target is in or near a civilian area, the Palestinian rocket attacks are indiscriminate because they cannot distinguish between military targets and civilians. Where there is no intended military target and the rockets are launched into a civilian area, they constitute deliberate attacks against civilians. Given that the rocket attacks have inflicted very little damage on Israeli military assets, their primary purpose seems to be to kill civilians or at least to spread terror among the Israeli civilian population, both of which IHL prohibits.
Even assuming the rocket attacks were intended as reprisal for Israeli attacks that kill and injure civilians, as Palestinian groups often claimed, they still are unlawful under international humanitarian law. The law governing reprisals-defined as otherwise unlawful actions that are considered lawful when used as an enforcement measure in reaction to an adversary's unlawful acts[4]-does not permit direct or indiscriminate attacks on civilians, in part for reasons that these rocket-artillery exchanges demonstrate: even attacks ostensibly launched as reprisals often spur counterattacks by the other side, yielding an endless cycle of civilian injury and death. As the leading treaty in this area provides, one side's targeting of civilians or civilian objects can never justify like targeting by the other side.[5]
Palestinian armed groups also at times endanger civilians by placing their rocket launchers near residential areas in Gaza. The IDF claims that over the course of 2006 Palestinian armed groups moved their launchers increasingly close to residential areas, presumably because return IDF artillery fire had made open fields a less attractive military option. Human Rights Watch's interviews provide evidence that in at least one locale Palestinian groups fired or tried to launch rockets from within 100 meters of populated apartment buildings. While Gaza is densely populated, and open areas are relatively scarce, combatants still have an obligation to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians and this includes avoiding placing launchers within or firing from close proximity to populated areas.
Israeli Artillery Shelling
From September 2005 through May 2007, the same period covered by the rocket attack statistics cited above, the IDF fired 14,617 artillery shells into Gaza. This fire killed at least 59 people, wounded another 270 people, and did significant damage to many civilian structures.[6] Of the 38 Palestinians killed through September 2006, 17 were children under the age of 16, 12 were women, and one was a 60-year-old man; Human Rights Watch, in its field investigations, identified 5 of the remaining 8 men as civilians.[7] A subsequent artillery attack on November 8 killed or mortally wounded 23 and injured at least 40 Palestinians, all civilians. As discussed below, this last incident led to an Israeli moratorium on further use of artillery in Gaza, which continued as this report went to press in mid-June 2007.
Most of the artillery shells that the IDF fired into Gaza in this period landed in open areas, and the great majority did not result in civilian casualties. Many, however, were fired close to civilian areas, and some landed directly on homes and other civilian structures, causing serious harm and loss of life. Human Rights Watch has been unable to find any report or claim that those killed or injured by artillery fire included persons believed to be combatants, and the IDF has not responded to a Human Rights Watch request about whether any Palestinians killed or injured by artillery fire into the Gaza Strip were combatants or believed to be combatants.[8] Israeli artillery strikes in 2006 also left many unexploded shells strewn on the ground that constitute a continuing hazard to lives and livelihoods.
Israeli artillery strikes hitting Beit Hanoun and nearby Beit Lahiya caused considerable civilian casualties and damage to civilian structures. On April 10, 2006, for example, Sofia Gabin told her children to hide in a cement cupboard when she heard explosions nearby. "I was afraid for them. It was the safest place," she said.[9] A shell landed directly on the house, killing her 8-year-old daughter, Hadi, and injuring 10 others. A series of strikes earlier that week leveled several homes belonging to the Abu Shamas family and injured or killed at least three civilians. The frequent shelling has also had a devastating impact on the civilian life of the northern Gaza towns.
-
2006
Marc Garlasco/Human Rights Watch
