Officials claim they have evidence that Israel violated the Geneva Convention, writes Lara Marlowein Gaza
HUMANITARIAN AGENCIES and human rights groups complain bitterly that Israel denied access to rescue workers for much of its December 27th-January 17th war with Hamas, a clear violation of the Geneva Convention.
“People were left to bleed to death [by the Israelis],” says Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International.
“I spoke to one woman who stitched up her 14-year-old son’s chest with ordinary sewing thread and needle. He died because the Israelis wouldn’t let the ambulance through.”
The massacre at Zeitoun combines many of the reproaches levelled at Israel for its conduct of the war. Israeli troops herded more than 100 members of the Samouni clan into the biggest house in the farming area, then shelled the house with heavy artillery, killing 29 people. Three other family members were shot dead by Israeli troops. The Red Cross received word of the Zeitoun killings on a Saturday, said Iyad Nasr, the spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). “The Israelis kept postponing and postponing and delaying,” he recalled.
A rescue team approached the area on Tuesday night, but had to turn back when the Israelis fired warning shots. The ICRC returned on Wednesday afternoon, four days after learning of the atrocity. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) refused to remove an earthen barrier, and delegates walked 1½ kilometres through the battle zone.
“We found a donkey cart to bring the wounded out. ICRC delegates pulled the cart.”
One of Israel’s chief grievances against Hamas is that it “hides behind civilians”.
Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst with Human Rights Watch, said he is “trying to do a credible investigation of Hamas’s alleged use of human shields, weapons in mosques, booby traps, and attacks on Fatah members”. He has confirmed that Hamas fired some Kassams and Grads (missiles) from houses.
Israel – quite literally – used human shields, for example locking families in houses which the Israelis used as military bases. I interviewed Jamil (47) in the Abed Rabbo district, northeast of Gaza City. “The Israelis arrested 17 of us and locked us in a room,” he said. “They’d take several of us out at a time. We had to enter houses in front of them, with guns in our backs and dogs ready to attack us.” Israel calls this method of searching for weapons and fighters the “neighbour procedure”.
Nasr of the ICRC is dismayed at Israel’s violations of the Geneva Convention because he has for the past 18 months attempted to teach Palestinian factions the rudiments of the laws of war.
“People carrying arms have to be aware of the rules,” he said. “After that, they can be held responsible.” It was an uphill battle, but Nasr thought he was making progress. One commander told him his men had started refusing to fire from civilian locations, or to target the Israeli town of Sderot.
“Since the hostilities, I’ve received phone calls saying, ‘Iyad, we started to change, but the Israelis aren’t respecting the convention’,” said Nasr.
In a house occupied by Israeli soldiers in Zeitoun, one wall is covered with racist graffiti. Several sketches bear the Israeli flag, and at least one appears to have been drawn in blood. A cartoon of a tombstone bears the words “Arabs 1948-2009”. “Arabs need 2 die” and “1 down 999,999 to go,” said others.
The troops smashed the house up, and littered it with detritus. “We’ve seen lots of cases of soldiers vandalising houses,” said Rovera of Amnesty.
“This shows a lack of discipline: theft, leaving excrement and military equipment like sleeping bags, medicine, body warmers – you’re not supposed to abandon army property.” In a home next to Shatti beach camp, Liz Hodgkin of Amnesty found hundreds of bullet casings.
“Everything in the house was shot,” she said. “There were bullet holes in the television set, in the bottom of every saucepan, the plastic water tanks and every garment in the wardrobe.”
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, lawyers working for the IDF were tasked with finding legal stratagems to justify Israel’s bombing of the civilian police and government ministries.
The IDF’s legal division “also believed that the killing of civilians in a house, whose residents the IDF had warned, might be considered legally justified, although the IDF does not actually target civilians in this way,” Haaretz reported.