Investigating Gaza's 'war crimes'

To launch Al Jazeera's new weekly show, Focus On Gaza, correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin visited the village of Khuza'a where residents and human rights experts believe a possible war crime took place during Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip.
A photograph of her recent pilgrimage to Mecca is now all that remains of Rawhiyya al Najar.
The mother was a Gaza native who had lived her entire life through conflict before it was to end on January 13, aged 37, by what was estimated to be a single shot to the head.Testimony from eyewitnesses, friends, neighbours and human rights experts about the incident tell the story of how a woman carrying a baby and white flag was shot in broad daylight by an Israeli soldier.
Nasser al Najar, Rawhiyya's husband, still has the bloodstained white flag he says his wife was carrying when she was killed.
In 1949, the newly formed state of Israel, many of whose citizens had been victims of Nazi war crimes, signed the Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in time of war.
Among the conditions of the convention Article three states: "Persons taking no active part in the hostilities ... shall in all circumstances be treated humanely."
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Article 32 states: "Civilian hospitals organised to give care to the wounded and sick ... may in no circumstances be the object of attack."
But during Israel's recent war on Gaza there is evidence to suggest that these conditions were frequently ignored and that the Israeli military disregarded the laws of war.
Villagers in Khuza'a are accustomed to living under the guns that man the nearby Israeli watchtowers, but Nasser says there are normally no Palestinian resistance fighters in the area and consequently he felt the village would be spared an Israeli raid.
However, on January 12, the Israelis began an intense shelling of the area and deployed white phosphorous, a move that was considered a precursor to a ground-based attack.White flag hope
Bombs were falling and a number of houses in the area were on fire.
Nasser, along with many others, decided to leave the area, fearing the men in the village would be taken prisoner by the Israelis. He could not persuade his wife to join him.
"She said ... If they were going to kill her, then she would rather die in her own house," he says.
"She thought that maybe if we lifted white flags they might have some mercy on us and not kill us.
"She said the white flag represents peace so they won't harm us ... But they didn't respect the white flag."
Expert view
Fred Abrahams of Human Rights Watch gives his report on the incident
Rawhiyya's daughter, Hiba, stayed with her mother but the white phosphorous caused them to have coughing fits and hampered their efforts to put out the fires.
By 11pm that night, Khuza'a was shut off from the outside world by Israeli tanks, with bulldozers to the east and special forces to the west.
The villagers, now mostly old men, women and children, sheltered together in the larger houses but neither the size of the buildings nor the white flags were to offer any protection.
By 0730am, tanks and bulldozers were busy demolishing houses. Increasingly hemmed in, the women and children decided they had no choice but to try and leave.No assistance
"Rawhiya was leading them. She said if all the women and children start moving out then everyone else could follow afterward. So she distributed white flags and led them out," Iman says.
"She walked at the front carrying a white flag, followed by other women carrying white flags or holding out their children."
Yasmine al Najar, another of the women, was at the front of the group with Rawhiyya when they spotted Israeli special forces positioned in a house opposite them.
Despite the presence of children and white flags allegedly on display the soldiers began to open fire.
Rawhiyya was trying to lead women and children to safety"I was right next to her, a centimetre away," Hiba recalls. "Our neighbour was also walking next to her … she was holding up her child as though a flag … Then he shot her."
Yasmine tried to help her neighbour.
"A bullet hit Rawhiya in the head… it entered through one side and went out through the other… I took a bullet in the foot," she says.
In the nearby town of Khan Yunis, Marwan Abu Raida, a paramedic at the Nasser hospital, was finishing his first call out of the day when he received the call sending him to Khuza'a. It was 0745am
"I drove straight there… I was still 60 to 70 metres away from the body when what I think were Israeli special forces started shooting at me," he says.
"I felt powerless… there was nothing I could do for her. My understanding was that medical teams were protected under international ethics and law and that medical teams should be protected and they should have freedom of movement."
With the emergency services unable to help them and the bulldozers closing in, the women made frantic appeals for help, some of which aired live on the midday news.
"No one answered our calls for help," Iman, another of the stranded residents, says.
"At the end we decided to go out together and face the bombardment. The way we saw it was: it's better to walk in to the fire than stay and die under the rubble."'Targeted killing'
Crawling on their hands and knees and still under fire, the villagers tried to reach the relative safety beyond the cordon of special forces but were shot at once more.
Nasser is convinced his wife's death was a deliberate killing"Everyone went into one of the houses on the street and they were stuck there," Yasmine says. "But I kept running for about 300 metres until I reached the ambulance and paramedics waiting for us.
It was six hours later that the Israeli army began to withdraw, leaving Iman's 16-year-old brother who had been captured tied up in a house and Rawhiyya’s body in the street.
Calm and everyday life as much as it can exist, has now returned to what is left of Khuza'a but the scars of the war remain.
Fred Abrahams, an analyst for Human Rights Watch, has been researching white flag killings in Gaza during the course of the recent conflict.
"Our job is to look at how the parties to the conflict, Hamas and Israel, respected or disrespected international law and there's such a long list of issues but this case seems to be quite clear cut and that's why we focused on it," he says.
"It seems to us to be a targeted killing, and all the evidence so far suggests that she [Rawhiyya] was shot in plain sight, it was daylight, they saw the flag.
"If proven, that would be a war crime."
It is not easy for investigators to build a picture of exactly what happened. The recollections of people under artillery and sniper fire are often contradictory but in the case of Rawhiyya’s killing there is a remarkable consistency.
"In this case I don't see why they [the Israeli military] would have thought that these women were a risk or a threat to them and therefore that could potentially make this a war crime," Abrahams says.
Nasser has obtained a death certificate from the examining doctor, confirming the paramedic's earlier diagnosis that his wife's death was caused by a single shot to the head.
A GPS calculation of the distance confirms that she was shot at 120 metres.
This, together with Abrahams' findings in other parts of Gaza, have led him to a conclusion which, if correct, would point to a war crime implicating not only the soldier responsible but the entire Israeli military chain of command.
But there is little Human Rights Watch can do other than publish the findings of the report and Abrahams says the Israeli army, like many militaries, does not outline official rules of engagement.
Hiba has built a shrine to her dead motherFor Rawhiyya's friends and relatives there is also little comfort.
Nasser is doing what he can to look after his daughter but he says there is still so much that reminds them of Rawhiyya and their house overlooks the spot where she was killed.
Hiba has built a small memorial where her mother died.
"I thought about what she used to say about staying strong and steadfast," she says.
"When people called us and told us to leave we used to tell them that we will stay here, and we will stay strong."
Focus on Gaza, A War Crime? can be seen on Al Jazeera from Friday February 20 at the following times GMT: Friday 1430 and 2030; Saturday 0330 and 2230; Sunday 0830; Monday 0130; Tuesday 1030.

Al Jazeera

Zio-Nazi regime hopes world will forget Gaza genocide soon

Khalid Amayreh from Occupied Palestine

With the holocaust-like Israeli onslaught in Gaza entering its fourth week, and with thousands of Palestinian civilians mercilessly killed and maimed by the Israeli war machine while hundreds others still buried under rubble, Israel is planning a public relations campaign aimed at “making the world forget the bad images” from Gaza very soon.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry this week contacted an American PR firm requesting a “detailed PR plan” that would enhance Israel’s image following the Gaza blitz .
Some military experts have compared the rampant havoc wreaked on Gaza with conditions in the German City of Dresden following the devastating aerial bombings by the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the closing weeks of the Second World War.
According to the Israeli press, the Israeli Foreign Ministry Hasbara (propaganda) department has created a special task force to prepare for the aftermath of the Israeli blitz in Gaza.
The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz said the task force would be charged with repairing damage to Israel’s image.
“The working assumption is that Israel has suffered a blow to its image in the West in the wake of heavy civilian casualties in the Strip.”
Palestinian activists and human rights organizations operating in occupied Palestine have released gruesome images of hundreds of badly mutilated children killed or maimed by the continuing Israeli aerial bombing and artillery bombardment of residential areas.
Palestinian officials have described the ongoing Israeli offensive as a real holocaust.
“What Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza is a real holocaust. Israel is murdering civilians en mass, destroying homes, mosques and public institutions,” said Ismael Haniya, the Prime Minister of the Hamas government during a speech on Tuesday.
On Thursday, Palestinian hospital sources of more than 1100 Palestinians, mostly children and other innocent civilians, killed and over 5000 people injured, many critically, as a result of the wanton bombings by Israeli F-16 fighters.
Israel has been using excessively disproportionate fire power, including Bunker buster bombs and White Phosphor shells, against a totally defenseless civilian population.
The Israeli paper said Israeli officials were worried that “negative sentiment” toward Israel would grow the moment the full picture of the Israeli blitz emerged.
Israeli hasbara officials have recommended several steps aimed at enhancing Israel’s image, including the intensive involvement of the Israeli army in facilitating the transfer of food and medicine to the bombed-out inhabitants of Gaza.
One Israeli press officer reportedly recommended the employment of the so-called “ candy tactic” as an “image booster.” The “candy tactic” takes the form of filming Israeli soldiers while giving candies to Palestinian kids, especially after the perpetration of an especially-terrible massacre.
Non the less, Israeli sources admit that no matter how effective Israeli hasbara efforts could be, the shocking reality on the ground in Gaza will be proven indelible.
This is why the Israeli foreign ministry is suggesting that the Jewish state embark on a reactivated peace process with the Palestinian Authority (PA).

palestine-info

GAZA, (PIC)-- A Palestinian cancer patient died on Sunday in Gaza after efforts to secure his treatment abroad failed, the PA health ministry in Gaza announced.
It said that 31-year-old Shadi Hillis had all necessary papers that facilitated his travel abroad but due to the siege he died in Gaza where there is no advanced treatment for cancer patients.
The ministry noted in a statement that the number of victims of the siege thus rose to 287 with 12 of them dying in February so far, warning that the number could increase any time due to the presence of tens of patients in intensive care units waiting for opening of crossings especially the Rafah border terminal with Egypt to enable them travel for treatment abroad.
In a related development, Ihab Al-Ghussein, the PA interior ministry spokesman in Gaza, called on the Ramallah government to provide passports for the Gaza Strip to enable those patients to travel for treatment.
He added in a press release on Sunday that more than 200 patients could not travel for lack of passports, and added that the step would be viewed as a goodwill gesture to prepare the atmosphere for the success of the expected Palestinian national dialog in Cairo.

palestine-info

Israel Admits White Phosphorous Use in Gaza

CAIRO — As calls are crying louder for an international probe into Israel's war crimes in Gaza, Israel admitted Saturday, January 24, using white phosphorous, a chemical that burns away human flesh to the bone, in shelling the densely-populated strip.
"Yes, phosphorus was used but not in any illegal manner," Yigal Palmor, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told The Times.
"Some practices could be illegal but we are going into that."
The Israeli Ministry of Defense confirmed the use of white phosphorous in bombing Gaza, saying it has been used only for making smokescreens.
"Everyone knew we were using it, and everyone else uses it. We didn't think it would get this much attention," an Israeli defense official said on condition of anonymity.
Israel has repeatedly denied using the controversial chemical during the Gaza offensive, which killed more than 1350 people including 437 children, and wounded over 5,450 others.
The use of white phosphorus as a weapon, even against military targets situated within population centers, is banned by the 1980 third Convention on Conventional Weapons.
Amnesty International, which considers the use of white phosphorous in heavily-populated areas a war crime, said it has found many phosphorous particles in civilian areas, including Gaza's Al-Quds hospital.
The UNRWA compound in Gaza City was also among places hit by white phosphorus shells when Israeli troops fired three shells at the compound on January 15.
Israel has used white phosphorous bombs against civilian targets many times.
The Israeli army has admitted before using white phosphorus munitions during its 34-day war on Lebanon in 2006.
The US, Israel's chief ally, also used white phosphorus munitions during the siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004 and also defended its act.
Burnt Skin
The white phosphorus shells cause human flesh to burn to the bone.
"It hurts me terribly, my skin is burning," said Sabah Abu Halima, whose house in northern town of Beit Lahiya was hit by an Israeli white phosphorous shell on January 5.
The attack left five of her family killed and four others, including herself, wounded.
At Al-Shifa hospital, survivors recount how their wounds began smoking when they washed them or took off their bandages, as white phosphorus remains active for a long time and continues to burn whenever trying to smother it.
"I don't sleep any more, neither day nor night," Abu Halima added in the burns unit of Al-Shifa hospital.
British weapons expert Chris Cobb-Smith, who has been in Gaza since last week to investigate Israel's use of white phosphorous bombs, said there was no excuse for Israel to use such incendiary weapons against civilians.
"There is absolutely no military, tactical reason for the use of white phosphorus in this environment," Cobb-Smith said.
"Obviously it's going to cause physical harm as well because it can kill people and it can destroy property.
"I believe it's just being purely used as a weapon of terror to frighten, to intimidate people."

islamonline

BBC Under Fire Over Gaza Appeal Ban

CAIRO — The BBC, the world's largest broadcaster, is provoking outrage in Britain over refusal to air an appeal by British charities for aid to the homeless Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip following a deadly Israeli onslaught.
"I write to express my disappointment at your decision not to support the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Gaza Crisis Appeal," International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said in a letter to the BBC cited by the Guardian on Saturday, January 24.
The BBC has refused to air an aid appeal by DEC, a coalition of British charities including Oxfam, British Red Cross and Islamic Aid, to raise funds for the Gazans in need of food, shelter and medicine.
"Dad, I'm Dying"
"I Will Never Walk Again"
Gaza's Empty Coffins
The British broadcaster said that the broadcasting could compromise its impartiality.
"I think the British public can distinguish between support for humanitarian aid and perceived partiality in a conflict," Alexander told the BBC.
"I really struggle to see, in the face of the immense human suffering in Gaza at the moment, that this is in any way a credible argument."
Thousands of people will demonstrate in London Saturday against the BBC's refusal to broadcast the Gaza aid appeal.
"The decision of the BBC to refuse to broadcast a national humanitarian appeal for Gaza, which has left aid agencies with a potential shortfall of millions of pounds in donations, is a betrayal of the obligation which it owes as a public service," veteran politician Tony Benn will address the protest organized by "Stop the War" coalition.
"To deny the help that the aid agencies and the UN need at this moment in time is incomprehensible and it follows the bias in BBC reporting of this crisis, which has been widely criticized.
"I appeal to the chairman of the BBC Trust to intervene to reverse this decision to save the lives of those who are now in acute danger of dying through a lack of food, fuel, water and medical supplies."
More than 1,300 people, including 410 children, were killed and 5,450 wounded in 22 days of air, sea and land Israeli attacks in Gaza.
The deadly Israeli onslaught also left 4,100 homes totally destroyed and 17,000 others damaged, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
About 1,500 factories and workshops, 25 mosques, 31 government buildings and 10 water or sewage pipes were also damaged.
The bureau estimates the physical damage so far to about $1.9bn (£1.4bn), including about $200m (£140m) of damage to infrastructure.
Disgraceful
British Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said that the BBC's reasoning is "flawed" and "completely feeble".
"First, the one about delivery - the British government is giving £25m to Gazan relief, we don't have a problem getting it in. There's no reason why there should be any problem getting the relief in," said Bradshaw, a former BBC journalist.
"Secondly, this nervousness about being biased. I'm afraid the BBC has to stand up to the Israeli authorities occasionally."
British Muslim leaders also lamented the BBC's Gaza aid appeal ban as "disgraceful".
"The excuses given by the BBC are simply untenable and the governors need to act quickly before the corporation's image is irretrievably tarnished," Muhammad Abdul Bari, the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), said.
He said the BBC's aid appeal ban was "a serious dereliction of its public duty".
Mohammed Sawalha, president of the British Muslim Initiative, was also appalled.
"The BBC should be ashamed for its coverage of the Israeli aggression which failed to address the catastrophic suffering on the Palestinian side, and now it's concerned about its impartiality," he said.
"Never was the BBC impartial throughout this crisis."
The BBC's news coverage of the Middle East frequently provokes controversy among commentators in Britain.
In 2006, a report by the BBC's board of governor found that the BBC's coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is "inconsistent, incomplete and misleading", failing to adequately report the hardships of Palestinians living under occupation.

islamonline