An Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson has confirmed to Al Jazeera that it will not co-operate with a United Nations investigation into alleged war crimes during the 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip.
Up to 1,300 Palestinians, mostly women and children, were killed before Israel ended the offensive in January.
Thirteen Israelis, 10 of them soldiers, were killed during the same period.
The UN Human Rights Council has appointed Richard Goldstone, a South African judge and former UN war crimes prosecutor, to examine claims of human rights violations by both Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters during the conflict.
Israel has previously complained that the UN body is biased against it.
“The investigation has no moral ground since it decided even before it started who is guilty and of what,” Yigal Palmor, a foreign ministry spokesman, said earlier this month.
Imprecise artillery
Human rights groups have called for the UN investigation to look into allegations that the Israeli fired imprecise artillery and controversial white phosphorus shells in built-up neighbourhoods.
It is also expected to examine the indiscriminate firing of rocket into southern Israel by Palestinian fighters, Israel’s stated reason for launching the offensive last December.
Sporadic rocket fire into Israel has continued since the war, and on Thursday Israel bombed a house in a Gaza refugee camp. No casualties were reported.
Goldstone’s four-member team is expected to travel to the region in a few weeks’ time and will issue a report to the council in July.
But Israel’s refusal to work with the investigators raises questions about whether an adequate investigation can be completed.
However, Israel said that Goldstone, who is Jewish and has close ties to Israel, is not the problem.
“[It’s] not about Justice Goldstone,” Aharon Leshno Yaar, the Israeli ambassador to UN organisations in Geneva, said on Tuesday.
“It’s clear to everybody who follows this council and the way that it treats Israel that justice cannot be the outcome of this mission.”
‘Imaprtiality’
In New York, a leading human rights group urged both sides to co-operate.
Human Rights Watch, noted that it has criticised the UN rights council in the past “for its exclusive focus on Israeli rights violations”.
However, Goldstone has the “experience and proven commitment to ensure that this inquiry will demonstrate the highest standards of impartiality,” the group wrote in a letter to Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and 27 European foreign ministers.
Hamas has already welcomed the investigation.
The investigators “will find full co-operation of the Palestinian government and Palestinian people because the crimes of the occupation are clear and no one can underestimate them”, Yousef Rizka, an adviser to Ismail Haniya, the de facto prime minister in Gaza, said.
Israel is co-operating with a separate investigation into several attacks on UN facilities during the conflict, including one which destroyed a warehouse belonging to the UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides food aid for the Gazans.
The United States sent a massive new shipment of arms to Israel despite evidence that US weapons were misused against civilians in the Gaza attacks, Amnesty International revealed on 1 April.
The human rights organization said about 14,000 tons worth of arms and munitions sent to Israel on the Wher Elbe, a German cargo ship chartered and controlled by the US Military Sealift Command, docked and unloaded its cargo on 22 March at the Israeli port of Ashdod, about 25 miles north of Gaza.
Amnesty called on US President Obama to suspend future arms shipments to Israel until there is no longer substantial risk of human rights violations.
The Pentagon confirmed the successful unloading of the ship, which left the United States for Israel on 20 December, a week before the start of Israel’s attacks on Gaza.
According to the Amnesty report, the ship carried 989 containers of munitions, each of them 20 feet long with a total estimated net weight of 14,000 tons.
“Legally and morally, this US arms shipment should have been halted by the Obama administration given the evidence of war crimes resulting from military equipment and munitions of this kind used by the Israeli forces,” said Brian Wood, arms control campaign manager for Amnesty International. “Arms supplies in these circumstances are contrary to provisions in US law.”
Amnesty International has issued documented evidence that white phosphorus and other weapons supplied by the United States were used to carry out serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes in Gaza. The human rights organization provided comprehensive details on munitions used in the fighting in a 37-page briefing paper, Fueling Conflict: Foreign Arms Supplies to Israel/Gaza, in February.
Asked about the Wehr Elbe shipment, a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed to Amnesty International that “the unloading of the entire US munitions shipment was successfully completed at Ashdod [Israel] on 22 March.” The spokesperson said that the shipment was destined for a US “pre-positioned ammunition stockpile” in Israel.
Under a US-Israel agreement, munitions from this stockpile may be transferred to the Israeli military if necessary. A State Department official told Amnesty that Israel’s use of US weapons during the Gaza conflict is under review and efforts are being made to ensure that Israel complied with US law. A conclusion has not yet been reached.
“There is a great risk that the new munitions may be used by the Israeli military to commit further violations of international law, like the ones committed during the war in Gaza,” said Wood. “We are urging all governments to impose an immediate and comprehensive suspension of arms to Israel, and to all Palestinian armed groups, until there is no longer a substantial risk of serious human rights violations.”
“The United States government now has ample evidence from the Gaza attacks indicating that the arms it is sending to Israel have been misused to kill and injure men, women and children and to destroy hundreds of millions of dollars of property. It can no longer send weapons to Israel while ignoring these facts,” said Curt Goering, senior deputy executive director, Amnesty International USA, who was in the region during the Gaza crisis.
The United States was by far the largest supplier of weapons to Israel between 2004 and 2008. The US government is also due to provide 30 billion US dollars in military aid to Israel, despite the alleged misuse of weaponry and munitions in Gaza and Lebanon by the Israeli military. President Obama, according to published reports, has no plans to cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel under a new 10-year contract agreed in 2007 by the Bush administration. This new contract is a 25 percent increase, compared to the last contract agreed by the previous US administration.
Amnesty International has documented suspected war crimes committed by the Israeli military and by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza. On 15 January, Amnesty International called on all governments to immediately suspend arms transfers to all parties to the Gaza conflict to prevent further violations being committed using munitions and other military equipment.
On Jan 17th, while Israeli bombs were still raining down on the people of Gaza, six people gained entry to EDO MBM/ITT, a factory in Brighton manufacturing military equipment being used by the Israeli air force, and smashed machinery and computers causing at least 300 000 pounds worth of damage and closing the factory for nearly a week.
According to one witness computers and filing cabinets were hurled out of top floor windows the protesters broke in to the factory in the early hours staging a “citizen’s decommissioning” of the EDO-MBM/ITT arms factory in direct response to the killings of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military.
Elijah Smith, one of the protesters that broke into the factory, said before the action, “I’m looking at the world scene and I’m getting more and more horrified. I’ve been looking at the law and I don’t feel I’m going to do anything illegal tonight, but I’m going to go into an arms factory and smash it up to the best of my ability so that it cannot actually work or produce munitions and these very dirty bombs that have been provided to the Israeli army so that they can kill children. The time for talking has gone too far. I’m not a writer, I’m just a person from the community and I’m deeply disgusted.”
The 6 people surrendered to the police when they arrived and have been charged with conspiracy to cause criminal damage along with three others arrested nearby. Two people, Elijah Smith and Robert Alford, have been remanded in custody since January. The 6 will argue in their defence that they had a lawful excuse to cause the damage because they believed that EDO’s equipment was being used in the commission of war crimes by the Israeli military.
Israel’s bombing of Gaza killed 1400 people including at least 400 children. There is incontrovertible evidence that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza. These crimes would not have been possible without weapons supplied by companies like EDO MBM.
The trial of the Gaza 6 may last several months and hinge on whether the jury accepts that crimes were committed by Israel.
If you hear the sound of a child being brutalised in the house next door and you rush in to smash the door down and save the child, should you be charged with breaking and entering? Obviously not. – Eamonn McCann of the Raytheon 9
The Israeli military attacked civilians and medics and delayed – sometimes for hours – the evacuation of the injured during the January war in Gaza, according to an independent fact-finding mission commissioned by Israeli and Palestinian medical human rights groups.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society yesterday said their findings showed Israel’s military committed serious violations of international humanitarian law. In their 92-page report, compiled by five senior health experts from across the world, they documented several specific attacks, with interviews from 44 separate witnesses.
Human rights groups have accused Israel’s military, as well as Palestinian militants in Gaza, of war crimes. “The underlying meaning of the attack on the Gaza Strip, or at least its final consequence, appears to be one of creating terror without mercy to anyone,” the report said.
In one incident, the researchers found a Palestinian, Muhammad Shurrab, 64, and his sons Qassab, 28, and Ibrahim, 18, were shot by Israeli troops at close range without warning on 16 January during a ceasefire. Qassab was hit in the face and died soon after. Ibrahim was hit in the leg. The soldiers refused to give medical aid, and only after 23 hours was an ambulance allowed to approach, by which time Ibrahim was also dead.
Yohanna Lerman, a lawyer with the medical rights groups, said although their report was a preliminary investigation this one case alone was enough to indict Israel’s political and military leaders.
The Israeli military has said it does not target civilians and is conducting its own investigations into some cases arising from the war.
Philip Rizk, 27, a freelance journalist and blogger who has been reporting from Gaza since 2005, was arrested by Egyptian security forces after a pro-Palestinian rally in Cairo on February 6.
He was released a few days later without being charged.
While in Gaza, he filmed The Palestinian Life, a documentary highlighting non-violent means of resistance against the Israeli occupation.
The film is premiering at the London International Documentary Festival on April 4. Here are excerpts from an interview Rizk gave to Al Jazeera shortly before the film’s debut.
Rizk says it takes one visit to Gaza to picture the kind of agony people endure daily [Gallo/ Getty]
Rizk: Gazans function with whatever they have available
Rizk says the line between the meaning of life and death becomes very thin in Gaza
Al Jazeera: Why were you detained and subsequently released by Egyptian authorities at the rally in Cairo?
Rizk: On February 6, I was part of a demonstration of 15 protesters against the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip. We started from the outskirts of Cairo and walked in the direction toward Gaza. Some 12km later, we were stopped by security forces that singled me out from the rest. I was forced into their car; they blindfolded me and I had no idea where I was going. One of the protesters was a lawyer who had a car, so he and others followed the car which took me.
The police set up security checkpoints to slow them down and eventually they lost my trail.
The security men took me to three holding stations. By the time I arrived at the third destination, they gave me a number, 29, told me to forget my name and that’s where I stayed for four days. They interrogated me about everything I had ever done in my life: where I was born, who I knew … everything.
They didn’t charge me with anything, but while I was being interrogated, they accused me of being an Israeli spy. They also said I was dealing weapons to Hamas. So it seemed like they were trying to figure out what I was all about to put a file together on me.
You’ve been reporting from Gaza over the past couple of years and one of the first journalists allowed access through the tunnels. Are Palestinians still using them?
Rizk: Gazans function with whatever they have available
I lived in Gaza from 2005 to 2007 and worked there for an NGO called the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation.
Gaza wears a face of misery and the living conditions are unimaginable. Unless you visit, you wouldn’t be able to picture the kind of agony Gazans have to live through on a daily basis. They function with whatever is available.
I was completely shocked when I returned in the summer of 2008. I discovered these tunnels myself and I couldn’t believe how out in the open they were. In the past, I had heard the entrances were from inside people’s living rooms, under their beds, or underneath a table, making it hard to find if ever an Israeli soldier would search their homes.
Last summer, I came across hundreds of tents, and underneath each of these tents were entrance points to hundreds of these tunnels. Egyptians and Israelis were well aware of them as these tunnels were all the people had as a means of transporting food and goods.
At least 85 per cent of the people are dependent on food aid. If the amount of aid was reduced, they would starve.
Refugee camps receive flour, oil and rice as aid and without these donations; they would not be able to survive.
They may be living but they’re not alive. There isn’t work to do; they’ve lost their dignity because of lack of work caused largely by the siege. Fathers have nothing to provide for their kids and in front of their wives they feel ashamed because there’s nothing for them to do; they can’t even provide their families with the most basic of needs.
The ironic thing is that the main providers for employment are the NGOs being funded by international organisations, which then serve to help keep the rest of the population alive. In the meanwhile, politicians don’t look for actual solutions to the conflict.
What doesn’t the media report on?
More than 1400 people died in Israel’s latest war on Gaza. But on a regular basis, Gazans die because of all sorts of causes that we don’t hear sufficiently about in the media. The sewage system is horrible, water is polluted and diseases are becoming an increasing phenomenon in Gaza.
Hospitals can’t cope because they face electricity shortages; a lot of Palestinians are in desperate need of kidney dialysis, the kinds of diseases that are out there are getting worse, it’s simply not a livable space.
The line between the meaning of life and death becomes very thin. As a student, you can spend your whole life trying to do well in school, get good grades – but all that effort goes to waste because there is no future for the class valedictorian.
Everyone alike is left completely powerless without hope and potential future. I’m even shocked at how well kids can even perform in these schools, considering how they live in a constant state of war.
There have been reports of tensions between Palestinians and Israeli settlers in Hebron. Is this a potentially explosive situation?
Rizk says the line between the meaning of life and death becomes very thin in Gaza
What happens in Gaza really stays in Gaza because some things aren’t reported. Israel has done so well at controlling the flow of information; they control everyone who goes in and out of the strip. It is easier for foreigners that are able to come in with NGOs working in Gaza. As far as the media goes, Israel hands out the permits and from mid November till the end of January or beginning of February, Israelis weren’t allowing anyone in, there was a blackout of information.
Another thing is how there isn’t so much of an interest from media organisations around the world to keep reporting on Gaza.
To them, there’s nothing new about the situation when in fact, the story there is constantly unfolding, breaking news is Gaza’s middle name. But because this breaking news always holds the same kind of information, no one cares to report on it.
So your documentary is to shed light on the situation in Gaza?
My documentary is a response to what I witnessed in Gaza and the West Bank and they are stories that don’t make it out in the media. Palestinians are so easily identified as terrorists, wearing balaclavas, holding a gun or firing a Qassam rocket.
But they’re really everyday people just trying to make the best of their lives, putting their kids through school, finding a job, doing well in their final exams.
One thing I’ve noticed in the media is that the theme of violence is always associated with stories coming out of Gaza.
Why not focus on stories of non-violent resistance? While some Palestinians return Israeli violence with further violence, the vast majority does not, and the Arabic word for such everyday acts of non-violent protest is sumoud, which means steadfastness, perseverance.
No matter what Israelis do to the people I met, they continued fighting for their right to remain on their land, their right to stay alive. Many of the people I filmed aren’t affiliated with political parties, they are normal people like you and I.
I needed to go to Palestine to understand what was going on there. Studying and reading about it didn’t make sense until I saw the wall, the settlements and physical occupation. After doing so, and going through the kinds of experiences I went through, I wanted to translate what I saw into the medium of film.
I’m also planning a film in West Africa, and then I’d like to focus on Egypt, which is a real police state. There’s red tape everywhere so it’s going to be a challenge.
