Chilling testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international law. The emergence of a predominantly right-wing, nationalist government in Israel suggests that there may be more violations to come. Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians also constituted war crimes, but do not excuse Israel’s transgressions. While Israel disputes some of the soldiers’ accounts, the evidence suggests that Israel committed the following six offenses:
• Violating its duty to protect the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. Despite Israel’s 2005 “disengagement” from Gaza, the territory remains occupied. Israel unleashed military firepower against a people it is legally bound to protect.
• Imposing collective punishment in the form of a blockade, in violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In June 2007, after Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip, Israel imposed suffocating restrictions on trade and movement. The blockade — an act of war in customary international law — has helped plunge families into poverty, children into malnutrition, and patients denied access to medical treatment into their graves. People in Gaza thus faced Israel’s winter onslaught in particularly weakened conditions.
• Deliberately attacking civilian targets. The laws of war permit attacking a civilian object only when it is making an effective contribution to military action and a definite military advantage is gained by its destruction. Yet an Israeli general, Dan Harel, said, “We are hitting not only terrorists and launchers, but also the whole Hamas government and all its wings.” An Israeli military spokeswoman, Maj. Avital Leibovich, avowed that “anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target.”
Israeli fire destroyed or damaged mosques, hospitals, factories, schools, a key sewage plant, institutions like the parliament, the main ministries, the central prison and police stations, and thousands of houses.
• Willfully killing civilians without military justification. When civilian institutions are struck, civilians — persons who are not members of the armed forces of a warring party, and are not taking direct part in hostilities — are killed.
International law authorizes killings of civilians if the objective of the attack is military, and the means are proportional to the advantage gained. Yet proportionality is irrelevant if the targets of attack were not military to begin with. Gaza government employees — traffic policemen, court clerks, secretaries and others — are not combatants merely because Israel considers Hamas, the governing party, a terrorist organization. Many countries do not regard violence against foreign military occupation as terrorism.
Of 1,434 Palestinians killed in the Gaza invasion, 960 were civilians, including 121 women and 288 children, according to a United Nations special rapporteur, Richard Falk. Israeli military lawyers instructed army commanders that Palestinians who remained in a targeted building after having been warned to leave were “voluntary human shields,” and thus combatants. Israeli gunners “knocked on roofs” — that is, fired first at corners of buildings, before hitting more vulnerable points — to “warn” Palestinian residents to flee.
With nearly all exits from the densely populated Gaza Strip blocked by Israel, and chaos reigning within it, this was a particularly cruel flaunting of international law. Willful killings of civilians that are not required by military necessity are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and are considered war crimes under the Nuremberg principles.
• Deliberately employing disproportionate force. Last year, Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, head of Israel’s northern command, speaking on possible future conflicts with neighbors, stated, “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction.” Such a frank admission of illegal intent can constitute evidence in a criminal prosecution.
• Illegal use of weapons, including white phosphorus. Israel was finally forced to admit, after initial denials, that it employed white phosphorous in the Gaza Strip, though Israel defended its use as legal. White phosphorous may be legally used as an obscurant, not as a weapon, as it burns deeply and is extremely difficult to extinguish.
Israeli political and military personnel who planned, ordered or executed these possible offenses should face criminal prosecution. The appointment of Richard Goldstone, the former war crimes prosecutor from South Africa, to head a fact-finding team into possible war crimes by both parties to the Gaza conflict is an important step in the right direction. The stature of international law is diminished when a nation violates it with impunity.
George Bisharat is a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.
Less than two months have passed since the end of Israel’s grisly war on Gaza. Not a house has been re-built (there is no cement; Israel continues to ban its entry into Gaza), thousands are displaced or sheltering in an overcrowded relative’s house or renting a scarcely-available apartment. The aid has stockpiled on the other side of crossings into Gaza, many trucks being sent back or expired. And the pain of loss, let alone of seeing family members -children, siblings, parents-burned by white phosphorous, being murdered or left to bleed to death is still unbearably fresh.
Yet Palestinians are trying to move on, again, while dealing with a siege which has only tightened post-destruction of Gaza. Last week Palestinian youths held a concert in the burnt-out theatre in one of the al Quds hospital buildings, attacked and seriously damaged by Israel during its war on Gaza [more than 14 hospitals and medical centres were bombed and damaged by Israeli army, 2 clinics were destroyed, 44 other damaged, and 23 emergency workers and medics were killed].
Land Day in Gaza
Palestinian child holds sign
Dabka in the ruins of Quds hospital
Gazan youth
Women in Gaza mark Land Day
Dabka in the fields
Quds Concert
Charred walls as a backdrop, piles of twisted metal, burnt rafters, and the ash of destroyed walls framing the stage, the next generation of Palestinian parents and leaders stood proud last Thursday, saying with their presence, as well as singing, “we will not go down”. The Michael Heart song written during Israel’s 3 weeks of attacks on Gaza caught the spirit of what Palestinians have been saying and living for decades, since the Zionists first began -even before Israel was created on the smoking ruins of Palestinian villages -their assassinations and acts of terrorism designed to frighten and drive out the existing Palestinian population.
On stage, a youth troupe of Dabke dancers held their own, did justice to the art that is Dabke. What was evident more than the skill of the musicians and dancers was Palestinians’ drive to live, to laugh, to show off and share their love of life. Just as with a concert organized by several youths last November to lift the spirits of Palestinians in Gaza living under a suffocating siege, the crowd clearly reveled in the opportunity for joy …after so much tragedy.
Land Day
In Gaza’s northern Beit Hanoun region, Palestinians, led by women, marched to land in the Israel-imposed “buffer zone” to tend the remaining trees and proclaim their right to the land. The area once flourished with olive, lemon, orange, guava and almond trees, in the years before Israeli invasions razed them to the ground, simultaneously razing history and life. Following Isreal’s latest bout of destruction upon Gaza, most sources cite 60,000-75,000 dunams (1 dunam is 1,000 square metres) of fertile, cultivable land as having been destroyed by Israeli tanks and bulldozers. In Gaza’s perimeter areas, the “buffer zone” annexes land to Israel, gobbling up rich soil which had served Gaza’s agricultural needs. As of the last attacks on Gaza, as much as 60 % of the agriculture industry has been destroyed by Israel, further rendering Gazans aid-dependent.
Yet, again despite the gravity of the bleak situation Palestinians are facing, all over Palestine, on Land Day their voices were loud in protest, in defiance, and in joy. Organized by Beit Hanoun’s Local Initiative, a group leading agricultural and social projects in the northern region, Land Day celebrants sang, danced Dabke, tended their trees, and celebrated being on their land. On any given normal day, most of the residents would hesitate to go to this border region area due to the Israeli soldiers’ shooting which routinely erupts dangerously close to anyone on the land.
On the 2nd of April, dozens of fishermen from the Salateen area in Beit Lahiya in the far north of Gaza, staged a march towards the coast to protest against recent Israeli naval attacks. The demonstrators were joined by the Director of the General Syndicate of Marine Fishers, Nizar Ayash, as well as Palestinian activists from the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative. The demonstration was supported by volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), amongst them two international activists abducted by Israeli naval forces last November.
Demonstrators hold signs against the seige
Palestinian flags planted on the beach
Protestors draw attention to Israeli naval attacks
The Israeli navy has intensely escalated its attacks against Gazan fishermen since the recent onslaught on the Gaza Strip. In just the past three weeks, at least two fishermen have been injured by gunfire, 16 have been abducted (some of them tortured and later released) and seven fishing boats have been stolen without being returned. Several other boats have also reportedly been damaged by Israeli gunfire. Most of the fishermen are from the Salateen area, some of whom now face bleak situations – in the wake of losing their homes during Israeli bombing raids, they have now lost their sole means of income in an area already greatly impoverished by the continued Israeli siege on Gaza
On the morning of the 1st of April, ISM Gaza Strip activists returned to accompany Palestinian farmers in the area of Khouza’a, east of Khan Younis. This is the same area where farmers working their fields were almost shot on the 24th of February. The fields are far away from the Israeli watchtowers and about 400 meters from the Green Line. Despite this, the farmers had problems when they tried to reach their fields on the two previous days because of the shooting from Israeli troops.
Gazan farmers continue work despite shooting
The work began at 7:40am and about 25 minutes later, two army jeeps moved along the fence and approached the group of farmers and activists. The soldiers got out and started watching. It was obvious that the group was posing no threat to the soldiers. Most of the Palestinian farmers were middle-aged women. Many of the international solidarity activists were wearing fluorescent or Red Crescent vests. But after a few minutes of watching, the Israeli soldiers started shooting.
One of the ISM activists tried to deescalate the situation by talking to the army by megaphone but they still continued shooting. The farmers resisted the attack by ignoring the fire and continuing their work. After awhile, the soldiers withdrew and quit their attempt to expel the Palestinian farmers from their land. Despite the intimidation of the Israeli soldiers, and despite the fact that they could hear the intense battles between Israeli occupation forces and Palestinian resistance fighters (two of them killed and another two injured) east of Al Meshazi camp further north, the farmers stayed and defended their rights to work their land. Today they won the battle, tomorrow is another day.
How can I affect what is happening and how can the world respond?
The concept of civil resistance is not new at all. This non-violent, unarmed, citizen oriented strategy of resistance in modern history played a role in the struggles against colonialism, and neo-colonialism especially in British colonies of Africa, in Apartheid South Africa, India, and the Middle East, particularly Palestine.
We live in a very imbalanced world, where language, dress, technology, education, food, media, and other aspects in post-modern life are dictated by a few and are imposed on the many, the rest of the world. This few decides the flow of politics, and dictates how the world will rotate around. This few, also, will accept no resistance, at any cost.
I come from a country that has, since 1982, the last Israeli occupation, officially founded a paramilitary resistance. Despite being an armed resistance, the Lebanese muqawama (resistance) is a resistance in many forms. It is a culture of resistance, against any form of colonialism, occupation and, most importantly, the evil of all evils, imperialism. During the war on Lebanon, another form of resistance coming from ordinary citizens managed to form. This occurred between July-August 2006, a group of activists local and international, decided to “resist” the Israeli shelling, defying it by driving a series of vehicles to the South of Lebanon to help the internally displaced. This movement was called the Civil Resistance campaign and its aim was to defy Israeli siege on Lebanon during the strikes in any way the citizens in it found possible.
During 2006, another siege was also being imposed on a population, this time more savage, and extending till this moment on. The siege on Palestinian citizens in the Gaza Strip came as a collective punishment imposed on almost one and a half million souls who, due to a democratically elected government that they chose. The only fault this government committed to the few dominating our world is that it was and is a resistance- it resisted those few, with their decisions, their indirect and direct forms of neo-colonialism, occupation and imperialism.
Again, on the 8th of August, 2008, the world witnessed a historical event of a group of activists from all over the world, resisting, non-violently. They resisted the Israeli Apartheid state’s collective punishment and illegal siege. The mighty illusion of power that Apartheid Israel conveyed to the world, again, as in 2006 with the war on Lebanon, was broken. On Dec. 20th, 2008, seven days prior to the Israeli genocidal attacks and ethnic cleansing strategy in the Gaza Strip, a group of activists and journalists, arrived in Gaza’s port. It also included the first Arab delegation consisting of Lebanese and Qataris on board.
For seven days prior to the attacks, since my arrival on an occupied land, a besieged people, collectively punished, I listened to and saw what the blockade of the Strip has created. It created a Bantustan of the worst kind: a concentration camp with a coming wave of slaughtering. A Bantustan with underground tunnels extending to Egypt which were one of the reasons people survived and are still surviving, and one with a slow, genocide, unnoticed by the world; there were weekly if not daily Israeli attacks on civilians such as farmers and fishermen, and, if you track down those figures noted by human rights observers in the Strip, you would also read through the perpetual killing of children.
I remained with a Palestinian family during the attacks. Together, we shared one room under the bombings. On the floor we slept, in the only room far away from the front of the building so as to minimize the devastation of strikes. We were four individuals, the parents and their child, and I. At night, when no sleep was possible, we heard the surveillance plane with its frightening buzzing sound linger above us, then, we heard the F16s and F35s bomb the place near by… this would happen every night for 21 nights…
During the attacks, I accompanied the Red Crescent ambulances that were not free of attacks by the Israeli Occupation Forces. 16 paramedics were killed during the IOF attacks of ambulances. There was no safe place to be in, in this largest concentration camp that modern history has noted similar. Can Auschwitz and Warsaw be repeated again? They were. No one around me was capable of understanding the extent of savagery. It was random slaughtering, with a racially discriminative tone, and a blinded, ignorant hatred. What was worse, was that the world had become so familiar with the death of Arabs, from Iraqis to Palestinians, that the increasing numbers add on to the immunity of response.
In Gaza, watching the international media report the events, many around the world thought there was an army in Gaza. “Where is the Palestinian army?” one commentator had asked. There is no Palestinian army. There are no nuclear weapons in the Strip. There are resistance fighters, with guns in their hands, and a minimal number of Grad rockets developed similar to those produced in the 1960s in the USSR, that sometimes fall back on their launchers. Does that make an army against the largest nuclear power in the region…? Apartheid Israel is not only the largest, but the most destructive nuclear power in the region.
The little boy in my house sang during the war… he sang to sleep, he sang to fight the shaking of our building and the breaking of our windows… the cold air at night and the sounds of gunboats, war planes, tanks and snipers around us… so close, death is so close.
I had no courage if it weren’t for that little boy. I had no courage in facing all this weaponry, this tragedy.
We laughed during the shelling. Yes, there was laughter. We made fun of the Israelis. When they struck, we argued what type of weapon was used. Now, we are war experts from the Palestinian Academy of 61 years of slow genocide and planned ethnic cleansing. People joked with me, and teased me, saying I, the Lebanese, brought the war from Lebanon here.
Along with other areas, Tal el Hawa, my street, was invaded by the occupation forces. They came in with their tanks into our street. Our building was bombed, on the seventh, sixth, and fifth floor. We didn’t know it was us until the next day that we were capable of stepping out. We found a street of rubble, dust and ruins. The Red Crescent building in front of ours burnt entirely, with the one-story storage adjacent compound containing medicine and tents for shelter, devastated with its contents.
I walked during the nights, under bombs. My comrades from the International Solidarity Movement and I had to constantly write. So, there was a need to visit the media agencies offices. They had electricity and internet. Walking around rubble, ruins, was like living one of the classical horror movies. A ghost town… I hid under the balcony shodows as I ran from one building to another hoping the soldier with the sniper in the surveillance plane would not see me… every noticeable walking shadow was a target. They targeted sheep, donkeys… and even pigeons.
We strived with activists in Gaza to begin a global boycott movement baring the South African experience in mind. We believed that Apartheid Israel had shot the two-state solution into pieces. What was the alternative? A one democratic state for all its citizens disregarding race, ethnicity, colour, religion and gender… this was the call to action. Zionism is a racist ideology, having a one state for Jews with discrimination against minorities is not the choice of people who support civil democracy, one person, one vote. The punishment of generals and commanders in the IOF as war criminals, and the state of Israel as an apartheid state responsible for war crimes and acts of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians is to be sought, and the creation of a one state on all of historic Palestine is the only solution after Gaza 2009. Palestinians can coexist with Jews, but not Zionism. A democratic, secular society could be established after transitional justice is sought. Nothing else can accomplish the return of the 6 million refugees scattered worldwide, some living in miserable conditions, particularly in Lebanon and other Arab countries, not to mention the drastic sense of alienation that is felt amongst all the Palestinians whether in the Diaspora, in what is now called Israel or the occupied 1967 Palestinian land.
I am in the struggle, I am living within it. But, I refuse to be subject, I am individual, I keep reminding myself. This reality creates an affect on a person making him or her feel less valuable than they really are… as humans, as citizens. The feeling that the world has abandoned you, renounced you, after all the loss, all the pain, is unbearable, is another death by itself. When one has lost a child, or a mother, or beloved one, to a sniper’s shots, to an Apaches’ impact, how could that be justified? Then, in watching the news broadcasts all over the world, we see the victims portrayed as aggressors… it doubles the pain.
After the attacks stopped, I visited a few orchards in Jabalya, 15 minutes away from where I live in Gaza city. I saw the trees plucked from their roots. What does that mean? When the aggressor plucks your trees from their roots… the aggressor wants you to know that you, and your identity, and your existence will be plucked similarly. The hate in the acts, in leveling the buildings down to sand in which they were made from, was heart wrenching. But, what was inspiring, were those families that drank tea above what used to be a home, a house. Tents were built near the rubble, and children played with what they could find of objects broken.
How can I affect what is happening and how can the world respond? The truth is that we can defy oppression and the illusion of power that the oppressor creates in our minds. I was asked once, “are you not afraid to die?” I am only afraid of what I consider the evil of all evils, repression, oppression, colonialism, and occupation, anything that can wipe my existence off, just erasing identities off the map, and this is what has been happening to the Palestinians for 61 years and on going now. What do you choose to do about it?
