On January 18, the first day that Israel stopped most of the bombing all over Gaza (navy shelling continues to this moment), after
No choice but to leave with all belongings
learning that my friend’s father was alive in eastern Jabaliya, I went on to Attatra, the northwest region, which had been cut off since Israeli troops invaded. As expected, the destruction was great, the death toll high and still unknown. People streamed in both directions: going to see how their homes had fared or leaving from the wreckage and bringing as many surviving possessions as possible.
“This is our main road,” Yusef said dryly, gesturing at the undulating pavement and sand that served the towns in this region. “There should be houses here. Now there is nothing,” he added, seemingly more to himself than to me.
I’d noticed the road right off: torn through the centre, ripped up by a bulldozer’s claw or a tank’s tools, a theme that re-surfaced on various main streets. There were the horse or donkey carts, piled as high as possible with mattresses, blankets, clothing, and furniture, trying to maneuver on these newly-rutted, overcrowded streets, or around earth plowed into peaks.
I’d met my friend Yusef at the main crossroad. He’d come from Gaza city much earlier, to confirm that his own house was devastated: “There is nothing left. They gutted it. I took two pairs of pants, that’s all,” he said. “I was expecting it. There’s no house the Israeli soldiers didn’t enter, damage or destroy. We couldn’t get here to see it until today,” he had told me, Israeli troops’ fire and shelling preventing all from entering, wounded from leaving, ambulances from arriving. This point must be mentioned again and again.
We came to Anis, another Ramattan media employee, standing in front of his destroyed home. “It was hit in the first days of the land invasion,” he said. “F-16. We had evacuated, thank God. When the shelling started, I was crying. I just wanted to get my kids out of here,” he confessed. “Anyway, thank God none were killed. My mother, father, and children, we’re all okay,” he said.
“But nothing is left,” he added. “Walla ishi,”–nothing at all.
Two more videos shot by the International Solidarity Movement taken by The Guardian as proof of use of banned weapons by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Robert Booth | The Guardian
Ayman al Najar, 13, tells how he lost his sister, grandfather and cousin in a bomb attack
The Guardian has obtained vivid footage of the effect of white phosphorus allegedly used by Israel during a bomb attack on Gaza last week.
The film was made by Fida Qishta, a camerawoman working for the International Solidarity Movement, a non-governmental organization operating in Gaza. It was shot on Wednesday 14 January in Khoza’a, east of Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip.
It shows clumps of the burning chemical on the ground as locals try to put it out by covering it with dust, mud and grass. The chemical, which locals describe as phosphorus, fails to go out and continues to burn through the debris piled upon it. As they kick it about, it subdivides into smaller lumps and continues to burn.
The use of white phosphorus as a weapon – as opposed to its use as an obscurant and infrared blocking smoke screen – is banned by the United Nation’s third convention on conventional weapons, which covers the use of incendiary devices. Though Israel is not a signatory to the convention, its military manuals reflect the restrictions on its use in that convention.
A second film reveals the impact of the white phosphorus on the human body. A 15-year-old boy is shown in a Gaza hospital receiving treatment for burns to his back and right arm which a doctor explains were caused by the chemical, which appears to have eaten into his flesh in several places.
Palestinians try to put out burning chemical banned as a weapon under United Nations convention
Lying on his hospital bed, the boy tells how he was sitting with his family in their four-story house when an Israeli bomb hit, killing his sister with shrapnel.
His testimony follows an earlier film by Qishta which contains graphic descriptions of attacks by Israeli forces in the same area.
Amnesty International said today that Israel has committed a war crime by using phosphorous over Gaza’s densely populated residential neighborhoods. The human rights organization also said they had fresh evidence of its use.
“Yesterday, we saw streets and alleyways littered with evidence of the use of white phosphorus, including still burning wedges and the remnants of the shells and canisters fired by the Israeli army,” said Christopher Cobb-Smith, a weapons expert who is in Gaza as part of a four-person Amnesty International fact-finding team. “White phosphorus is a weapon intended to provide a smokescreen for troop movements on the battlefield. It is highly incendiary, air burst and its spread effect is such that it that should never be used on civilian areas.”
Israel has admitted – after mounting pressure – that its troops may have used white phosphorus shells in contravention of international law, during its three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip.
One of the places most seriously affected by the use of white phosphorus was the main UN compound in Gaza City, which was hit by three shells on 15 January. The same munition was used in a strike on the al-Quds hospital in Gaza City the same day.
Under review by Colonel Shai Alkalai is the use of white phosphorus by a reserve paratroop brigade in northern Israel.
According to army sources the brigade fired up to 20 phosphorus shells in a heavily built-up area around the Gaza township of Beit Lahiya, one of the worst hit areas of Gaza.
The internal inquiry – which the army says does not have the status of the full investigation demanded by human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – follows weeks of fighting in which Israel either denied outright that it was using phosphorus-based weapons, or insisted that what weapons it was using “were in line with international law”.
Dr Ahmed Almi from the al-Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis describes serious injuries and chemical burns, with victims covered in a white powder that continues to burn long after initial exposure.
Phosphorus is a toxic chemical agent that burns on contact with air and creates thick white smokes in order to hide troop movements. However phosphorus shells are largely indiscriminate scattering large numbers of fragments over a large area, which can cause severe damage to both human tissue and property.
As the Guardian reported yesterday, Palestinian doctors have reported treating dozens of cases of suspected phosphorus burns.
According to senior IDF officers, quoted today in the Ha’aretz newspaper, the Israeli military made use of two different types of phosphorus munitions.
The first, they insisted, was contained in 155mm artillery shells, and contained “almost no phosphorus” except for a trace to ignite the smoke screen.
The second munitions, at the centre of the inquiry by Col Alkalai, are standard phosphorus shells – both 88mm and 120mm – fired from mortars.
About 200 of these shells were fired during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and of these – say the IDF – 180 were fired on Hamas fighters and rocket launch crews in northern Gaza.
Alkalai is investigating the circumstances in which the remaining 20 shells were fired, amid compelling evidence on the ground that phosphorus munitions were involved in the attack on a UN warehouse and a UN school.
The mortar system is guided by GPS and according to Israel a failure of the targeting system may have been responsible for civilian deaths. However, critics point out the same explanation was used for mis-targeting deaths in Beit Hanoun in Gaza in 2006.
The brigade’s officers, however, added that the shells were fired only at places that had been positively identified as sources of enemy fire.
The use of phosphorus as an incendiary weapon as it now appears to have been used against Hamas fighters – as opposed to a smoke screen – is covered by the Convention of Certain Conventional Weapons to which Israel in not a signatory.
However, Israel also is obliged under the Geneva Conventions and customary international humanitarian law to give due care to protecting the civilian population when deciding on appropriate military targeting and response to hostile fire, particularly in heavily built up areas with a strict prohibition on the use of indiscriminate force.
“They obviously could not have gone on denying the use of phosphorus,” Donatella Rovera, Amnesty researcher for Israel and the Occupied Territories, told the Guardian yesterday. “There are still phosphorus wedges burning all over Gaza including at the UN compound and at the school.
“It is clear they are not using it as smoke screen as they claimed. They used it in areas where they had no forces, and there are much less problematic smoke screens that they could have used.”
Amnesty on Monday warned that Israel could be guilty of war crimes, saying the use of the shells in a civilian areas was “clear and undeniable”.
Rovera demanded too that Israel produce clear evidence that there were fighters in the areas it says its troops were fired upon when the phosphorus munitions were fired.
The admission that the shells may have been used improperly follows yesterday’s demand by the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon for an investigation into the targeting of UN facilities – including by phosphorus weapons.
It also follows the decision by the IDF to protect the names of battalion and brigade commanders who participated in Operation Cast Lead.
According to Israel Army Radio on Wednesday the decision – ordered by defence minister Ehud Barak – was made in anticipation that war crimes charges may be filed against IDF officers, who could face prosecution when they travel overseas.
The leaders of the western world are wringing their hands in despair at the sight of the horrors inflicted on Gaza (Gaza crisis, 16 January). The UN general secretary, the French president and others are holding intensive discussions with some of the leaders of the Middle East in an attempt to put an end to the carnage in Gaza. Word, words, words.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Palestinian civilians get killed, thousands are bleeding to death, tens of thousands are uprooted and wandering in vain in search of some shelter to protect them. The Israeli army bombs hospitals and UNRWA relief centres, and, defying international convention, it uses white phosphorus bombs against civilians. “What else can we do?” these leaders keep asking. Well, here is what you can do: move from words to deeds. Only immediate, decisive and strict sanctions against the state of Israel and its limitless aggression will make it realise that there’s a limit.
We, as Israeli citizens, raise our voices to call on EU leaders: use sanctions against Israel’s brutal policies and join the active protests of Bolivia and Venezuela. We appeal to the citizens of Europe: please attend to the Palestinian Human Rights Organisation’s call, supported by more than 540 Israeli citizens : boycott Israeli goods and Israeli institutions; follow resolutions such as those made by the cities of Athens, Birmingham and Cambridge (US). This is the only road left. Help us all, please!
Signatories (only partial list appeared in the Guardian)
Gish Amit, Adv. Abeer Baker,Iris Bar, Yoram Bar Haim, Prof. Daphna Carmeli (Haifa University), Prof. Yoram Carmeli (Haifa University), Keren Dotan, Ronit Dovrat, Dr. Judith Druks (City University, London), Rona Even, Dr. Ovadia Ezra (Tel Aviv University), Prof. Rachel Giora (Tel Aviv University), Neta Golan, Tamar GoldschmidtAdar Grayevsky, Dalia Hager, Haim Hanegbi, Rosamine Hayeem, Ala Hlehel, Aya Kaniuk, Lana Khaskia, Prof. Vered Kraus (Haifa University), Yael Lerer, Dr. Aim Deuel Luski (Tel Aviv University), Eilat Maoz, Moshe Machover, Prof. Charles Manekin (University of Maryland), Dr. Ruchama Marton, Dr. Anat Matar (Tel Aviv University), Rela Mazali, Prof. Yitzhak Y. Melamed (John Hopkins University), Dorothy Naor, Dr. David Nir, Annie Ohayon, Noam Paiola, Michal Peer, Sigal Perelman, Amit Perelson, Jonathan Pollak, Prof. Yehuda Shenhav (Tel Aviv University), Dr. Kobi Snitz (Technion – Israel Institute of Technology), Ruth Tenne, Adv. Lea Tsemel, Michael Varshavsky, Oded Wolkstein, Sergio Yahni
Occupied Palestine – PACBI learned today from its Steering Committee member, Dr. Haidar Eid, that the headquarters of the University Teachers Association-Palestine, in Gaza, was bombed by the Israeli occupation forces during their indiscriminate, willful destruction campaign in the Tal el-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City on Friday.
This latest wanton attack on an academic organization is far from being an exception. It is only the latest episode in what Oxford University academic Karma Nabulsi has termed “scholasticide,”[1] or Israel’s systematic and intentional destruction of Palestinian education centers. In its current war on Gaza alone, Israel has bombed the ministry of education, the Islamic University of Gaza, and tens of schools, including at least 4 UNRWA schools, after having largely destroyed the infrastructure of teaching throughout the year and a half of its illegal and criminal siege of the densely populated Gaza Strip.
The UTA headquarters is a detached two-story building that is clearly marked with the Association’s name. The bombed structure, which now stands without a roof, has sustained heavy structural damage and may be in danger of collapsing any time.
It is worth noting that the UTA, together with other Gaza-based civil society organizations, called on January 15 [2] for a wide campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel in response to its well documented, premeditated war crimes in Gaza. The Israeli bombing of UTA’s headquarters occurred on the exact following day, January 16.
In line with the statements issued by the Palestinian BDS National Committee, BNC, [3] and the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, PFUUPE, [4] PACBI condemns in the strongest possible terms Israel’s long record of war crimes and acts of genocide in Gaza, during the siege as well as in this war of aggression. Israel’s wanton assaults have caused thousands of fatalities and injuries and threatened tens of thousands more, particularly children, with chronic diseases, stunted growth, severe malnutrition and heightened risk of mortality.
PACBI strongly believes that Israel’s targeting of civilian homes, schools, hospitals, ambulances, mosques, social and economic institutions, government buildings, law and order organs, UN humanitarian facilities and shelters, as well as higher education institutions should not go unpunished. Israel’s sense of unassailable impunity is a guaranteed recipe for repetition of its crimes and nourishing its genocidal tendencies, as noted by UN Rapporteur for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Prof. Richard Falk.
Specifically, and as a minimal response to these Israeli atrocities and grave violations of international law and the most basic human rights, PACBI calls on academics, academic unions, intellectuals, cultural workers and institutions the world over to intensify the boycott of all Israeli academic and cultural institutions due to their complicity in the Israeli occupation and other forms of oppression against the Palestinian people. Putting an end to Israel’s impunity and holding it accountable is the moral responsibility of every conscientious human being today.
