Tag: Samouni family

UN’s Gaza war crimes investigation faces obstacles

YNet News

9 June 2009

After interviewing dozens of war victims and poring through the files of human rights groups, a veteran UN war crimes investigator acknowledged that his probe into possible crimes by Israel and Hamas is unlikely to lead to prosecutions.

Israel has refused to cooperate, depriving his team access to military sources and victims of Hamas rockets. And Hamas security often accompanied his team during their five-day trip to Gaza last week, raising questions about the ability of witnesses to freely describe the militant group’s actions.

But the chief barrier remains the lack of a court with jurisdiction to hear any resulting cases.

“From a practical political point of view, I wish I could be optimistic,” Judge Richard Goldstone said, citing the legal and political barriers to war crimes trials.

Still, Goldstone hopes his group’s report — due in September — will spur action by other UN bodies and foreign governments.

Goldstone, a South African judge who prosecuted war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, refused to comment on the investigation’s content. But AP interviews with more than a dozen Gazans who spoke to the team reveal a wide-ranging investigation into the war’s most prominent allegations.

In Gaza, Goldstone’s 15-member team met with Hamas and UN officials, collected reports from Palestinian human rights groups and interviewed dozens of survivors.

Among them was a Bedouin man who told the investigators how he watched Israeli soldiers shoot his mother and sister dead as they fled their home waving white flags. But he, too, doubted he would see justice.

“The committee was just like all the others who have come,” said 46-year-old Majed Hajjaj. “There are lots of reports written, but they’re nothing more than ink on paper.”

The UN team also stepped through the shrapnel-peppered doorway of a mosque where an Israeli missile strike killed 16 people, witnesses said. During the war, Israel accused Hamas of hiding weapons in mosques. Witnesses said no weapons or militants were present.

They inspected holes in the street near a UN school where Israeli artillery killed 42 people, and visited the charred skeleton of a hospital torched by Israeli shells. In both cases, the army said militants had fired from nearby, and witnesses said some had been near the school.

And they visited the Samouni family, whose members say they took refuge on soldiers’ orders in a house that was then shelled, killing 21 people.

Israel denies the account, but says the house may have been hit in crossfire with militants.

Israel launched the offensive to stop eight years of Hamas rocket attacks. Palestinian human rights groups say more than 1,400 Gazans were killed, most of them civilians. Israel says around 1,100 Gazans were killed and that most were militants, but — unlike the Palestinian researchers — did not publish the names of the dead. Thirteen Israelis were also killed, three of them civilians.

Human rights groups called for war crimes investigations soon after the war’s end, accusing Israel of disproportionate force and failing to protect civilians. Some groups and the Israeli army said Hamas fought from civilian areas and used human shields — all of which can be war crimes.

Hamas ‘very cooperative’

Israel’s refusal to cooperate meant that Goldstone — a Jew with close ties to the Jewish state — had to enter Gaza via Egypt.

Israel alleges anti-Israeli bias by the probe’s sponsor, the UN Human Rights Council, which has a record of criticizing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said investigators could not reach an “unbiased conclusion” since they couldn’t question those who fired rockets at Israel.

When asked if the team met with Hamas fighters, team member Hina Jilani declined to comment, but said Hamas had been “very cooperative.”

A Hamas official, Ahmed Yousef, said he hoped the group’s report would be “like ammunition in the hands of the people who are willing to sue Israeli war criminals.”

Some survivors said the team pressed them on Israel’s assertion that it made warning phone calls before airstrikes and whether militants fought or fired rockets from their neighborhoods.

“They asked for all the details. Were there rockets fired from the area, why did they target this area specifically, stuff like that,” said Ziad Deeb, 22, who told the team how he lost 11 relatives and both his legs when an artillery shell exploded on his doorstep.

Alex Whiting, a professor at Harvard law school, called Goldstone “supremely qualified” for such an investigation, but said such cases are hard to investigate, especially without military records. He also said there are few mechanisms for prosecution if crimes are uncovered.

But even without prosecution, Whiting said, inquiries can spur countries to investigate themselves or affect future wartime conduct.

“Many times, the immediate result is a disappointment for the victims and survivors, but the hope is for the future,” he said.

Speaking Truth to Power

Sharon Lock | Tales to Tell

We were back at Faraheen this morning accompanying farmers again, eying the jeeps driving along the Israeli border while our farmers removed the irrigation pipes from one of the fields we have visited regularly. Since Mohammed was shot in the leg, the farmer here has decided to give up on this field, its convenient well, and its half-grown parsley crop – 200,000 shekels worth – in case of further injury or death of harvesters. It was a quiet morning, thank goodness.

Tristan is conscious and was breathing on his own until he caught pneumonia. He has a long way to go and it’s not known what will be ahead – for sure, more surgery, including on his damaged right eye.

A second time this week we spotted an Israeli gun boat traveling at 3 miles from the shoreline, all the way from near Deir al Balah to Gaza city (it kept pace with our shared taxi) as fishermen were out trying to get in a catch in, and inevitably the next day we heard that a fisherman had been shot; Deeb Al Ankaa who we understand to now be in Kamal Odwan hospital.

I met a great Manchester guy this week, Dr Sohail of Medical International Surgical Team (MIST) who has come here to do good work with peoples’ bones, for example working with amputees who have had limbs removed at a high point, to enable the otherwise impossible attachment of prosthetic limbs (if Israel lets the prosthetics through the border, which apparently is another problem of the siege…).

Thinking about bones, I immediately thought of Wafa. After wincing at the picture of her in hospital the day after soldiers shot out her kneecap, Dr Sohail said “I’m a kneecap man!” and told me a series of incomprehensible surgical things he might be able to do to give her back some movement. We rang her family today while standing in the Faraheen field (it’s a good time to get your phone-calling done) to say that Dr Sohail will see her in June if I go and take a photo of her medical records for him beforehand.

Dr Sohail spoke of the several limitations medical people are under here – mostly no access to the latest equipment – if any gets in, no access to training on how to use it – and of course very little of the ongoing training amongst their international peers that people doing tricky surgical things need to have.

In the last days there have been renewed calls for an International Criminal Court investigation into war crimes in Gaza, including for example “white flag killings” by Israeli soldiers. One of the big problems in the way is that during the attacks there were no forensic pathologists in Gaza trained to a level that would meet the requirements. (They are trying to send some people outside for training now, ready for the next time…) A second big problem is that when the International Criminal Court representatives tried to get in through Rafah to investigate the situation, Egypt refused to let them through, so they missed the February 8 deadline for submitting evidence.

And it was never going to be easy. Here is an example. One of the Al Quds Red Crescent medics talked about getting through to some of the surviving Samouni kids trapped with dead adults, on the first Red Cross/Red Crescent evacuation permitted by Israel. He said the kids (who they found in circumstances that left some of the medics who reached them, traumatised themselves) said the adults had been shot, and they had covered over the bodies themselves.

The medics knew it was important to try to take the adults’ bodies out, but the children were starving, dehydrated, and in a state of collapse. Since Israel had not permitted the medics to take ambulances, and several miles had to be covered, the medics found a donkey cart for the children. The Red Cross asked Israel to be allowed to take a donkey to pull the cart, but Israel said no.

My medic friend says: “We put the children on the donkey cart and pulled it ourselves, hurrying to get out before 4pm which was the deadline for the evacuation. And there was no room for the bodies. So a lot of time passed before those bodies could be retrieved, and while we have the verbal testimony of the children, we don’t have an early medical assessment of the adults bodies.”

I was called in to PressTV to give an interview today about what I witnessed myself, and it turned out this is because Israeli soldiers have themselves started to admit some of what went on, in the Israeli press today. This has been covered by the TimesOnline, and the International Middle East Media Centre. It includes an anonymous solider who ’says that he was told “we should kill everyone there (Gaza). Everyone there is a terrorist.”‘

Amid destruction, school resumes

Tara Jensen is an Australian Human Rights Volunteer in Gaza

“We have no bathroom, how can we wash ourselves? How can we go to school looking like this?”, implored 13 year-old Shaima al Samouni. It’s a pertinent question, given that schools reopened two days ago for the first time since the Israeli attacks on Gaza started.

With 29 family members killed during the attacks on the Zaytoun neighbourhood in Gaza City, however, it seems a strange concern. But life marches on, and the other children have gone back to school. Tugging at the clothes they were wearing, the children explain that, now, three weeks after their homes were destroyed, what they’re wearing is all they have. And, it seems, they’re not going to school wearing that.

They take us across the dirt, to a half-bombed house. On the way, we walk over the foundations of what used to be the house of Majid al Samouni and his family. The children stop to show us a drum of olives (zaytoun) that was destroyed. We pass by the carcass of a large sheep. Shot by the Israeli army. They show us their two pretty donkeys. “Donkeys quais”, I say in broken Arabic, relieved that they’re not taking us to more animal corpses. There used to be nine donkeys, they explain. But the Israeli soldiers shot seven of them. Then my colleague points out the gaping hole in the shoulder of the brown donkey – also shot by the Israeli army. Donkey mish quais.

One of the young girls, who is nine years old, is desperate for me to understand the extent to which their lives were destroyed. Not in terms of life lost, but livelihood. “Bas al shugul – al ard. Bas” (The land is the only work we have), and the land is totally destroyed. The children catalogue the types of fruit trees they had – lemon, guava, orange, mandarin, and the ubiquitous olive. They don’t talk about the battery-chicken shed that is crushed, chickens still in cages. When I finally ask just how many chickens there were, I find it difficult to believe the answer – two thousand chickens.

Her older cousin goes to great lengths to tell me repeatedly, at every opportunity, that they were just farmers, not Hamas. I know, I reply.

Inside the half-destroyed house, there is a clamour to show all of the atrocities crowded into one small space. Some of the children explain that their mother had given birth during the bombing, how they had to burn a knife over a candle to cut the umbilical cord. And about how their two-year-old sister was wounded on her face – lacerations from her eye across and down her cheek. Others point to where shells entered the house, some still stuck in the walls. They tell us how the soldiers had occupied the house, after the family had evacuated it. How they came back to find everything on the ground, including the Qu’ran. Then, worse, how one Qu’ran had been defecated on. Haram, was all I could say. I took photos somewhat helplessly, of everything they showed me. I’m well-practiced at documenting damage Israeli soldiers have done to Palestinian homes. And the families always seem to feel better if you take photos of everything. But the ridiculousness of what I was doing – taking photos of small holes in walls when half of the house was missing – hit, and I put the camera down.

A couple of the children – the ones who had been telling me that they were all farmers, and just farmers – led me around the corner to a house they said belonged to Arafat al Samouni. The house was leveled, just a small tarp erected in the middle of the debris. “Sleep here” one of the children informed. 10 people killed in that house. Just one left, seemingly. Haram.

I wanted to ask the children about their parents. I know at least some of them have surviving parents, saw them with their mother. Heard them talk about her. But I’m too scared to ask. I don’t want to hear a small child have to tell me that its parent or parents are dead. There’s so much I can’t bring myself to ask. I’ve taken a lot of reports in Palestine. I know how it goes. What you need to ask. What information is vital. I know it so well I don’t even need to think about it. I can ask with sympathy about how Israeli soldiers invaded a family home; beat people; abducted their children. But this is something else entirely. Here and now, such questions seem vile. I just want to hang out with the children. Let them show me what they want to show me. Listen to them talk.

While we’re hanging out with these kids, our friends encounter one of their cousins who watched both of her parents die when Israeli soldiers bombed a house that they had told everyone from neighbouring houses to shelter in. Later, watching the video they took, we’re all shocked by the confident way Mona talks about the night when so many from her extended family were killed. About how she watched her parents die, before the rest of the family ran from the house, in all directions, whilst they were being fired upon by the soldiers. How composed she is as she recalls how they ran to her school, which she had previously believed was a long way from here house. How she couldn’t believe she had walked all that way. How it didn’t seem like a long distance. And about how here grandparents told her that it was because they were scared and running that she didn’t notice the distance.

We’re not the only foreigners visiting this area – the al Samouni family have become famous for the tragedy they’ve endured. Teams of international journalists traipse around the dirt mounds and debris, making it seem like a macabre tourist attraction. “This is why the children don’t seem sad”, a local friend suggests later, while we watch Mona’s video. “When all the journalists leave, then they will feel sad”.

Driving back down the road towards Gaza city, we pass building after building bearing signs of shelling and bombing. Metre-wide holes punched through walls – some covered in plastic; a few already bricked in; most still open wounds in the masonry. It looks to me as though tanks drove down the street we now drive on, pausing to shell every apartment block and house they passed. As though for fun. It’s an idea I can’t get out of my mind. The possibility, that a large proportion of what the al Samounis and other families in Gaza have endured over the past month was done for kicks, haunts me.

Jan 18: At the Samouni house

Sharon Lock | ISM Volunteer

The planes are still buzzing overhead, but there have been no explosions near me today. However this supposed ceasefire from Israeli’s side since 2am does not seem to have extended to Beit Hanoun, where there was shelling this morning and F16s were attacking.

You can see 4 video clips I took during the attacks on the Al Quds hospital and local people, including my medic mates rescuing Jasmeen after she’d seen her sister and dad shot.

This morning the Al Quds Red Crescent headed out to Zaytoun, to the area we had a few approved evacuations and far more refused ones. Local people had begun excavating the rubble of the Sammouni house. You remember we heard some of their story before. I helped correct the English of some of the testimonies from the survivors that the Red Crescent was collecting. One of the more vivid images was one of the trapped and injured children describing the only food being tomatoes covered in the blood of his family, and having to sleep on their corpses amidst the rubble for 3 days. My nurse friend R at the hospital said treating one of the children that they got out to Al Quds was the first time she couldn’t help but cry. He was begging her for food and water which she had to deny him until his injuries were assessed.

Anyway, today we arrived in the devastated Zaytoun area, where medics, friends and family began to remove the bodies of the Samounis from a hole in the roof of their flattened home. During the hour we were there, they brought up a body every ten minutes, 7 total, and I believe locals brought up at least two more after the Red Cross told us to take those we had to Al Shifa and withdraw, as a further army incursion threatened. A relative was clutching a list of 25 names of the dead.

Meanwhile, THANK YOU Brighton and friends for the direct action on EDO weapons manufacturers – see a series of short clips on Youtube and Wikio.

ITT/EDO MBM arms factory in Moulescombe, Brighton which supplies Israel has been wrecked by activists campaigning against war. Swords into waste skips at least. Prior to entering the factory, the activists made a video (attached) in which they explained their reasons for the action. One commented: “Israel are committing a gross crime now in Gaza. Israel have killed hundreds of children…