Israel committed war crimes in Gaza, says Amnesty International

Israel committed war crimes during the summer's 50-day war on Gaza by targeting densely populated neighbourhoods and killing 1,523 civilian Palestinians, including 519 children, Amnesty International said in a report yesterday.

The report also says “Palestinian armed groups fired thousands of indiscriminate rockets and mortar rounds into civilian areas of Israel” but focuses on Israel’s actions.

In the 49-page document, Families under the Rubble: Israeli Attacks on Inhabited Homes, Amnesty says Israel displayed "callous indifference" to the presence of women, children and the elderly when it bombed and shelled multistorey apartment blocks in urban areas of the narrow coastal strip.

Eight instances are cited of family homes being attacked by Israeli forces “without warning . . . causing the deaths of at least 104 civilians, including 62 children”.

Amnesty says there was a “pattern of frequent Israeli attacks using large aerial bombs to level civilian homes, sometimes killing entire families”. In some cases, civilians “were given no warning and had no chance to flee”.

Disproportionate devastation

While in several of the cases “possible military targets were identified . . . the devastation to civilian lives and property . . . was clearly disproportionate to the military advantage gained”.

The large, laser-guided aerial bomb dropped without warning on the Dali building in Khan Younis demolished the entire apartment block and killed 33 civilians, including 18 children, from four families, the report says. At least 21 people were injured, several critically. Among the dead and injured were members of a family displaced by Israeli bombing on the outskirts of Khan Younis. The toll was the highest from a single strike during the war. The target may have been one individual, Ahmad Muammar, a member of the engineering corps of the Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, Amnesty says. He and his two children were killed.

Residential targets

The devastation from an attack using high explosives on a residential building “should have been clearly anticipated [by Israel] and regarded as manifestly disproportionate”, the report states.

The Israeli army was “under an obligation to take all feasible precautions, including . . . calling off the attack or issuing a warning” to residents and neighbours.

The report cites a family’s two-storey home in Deir al-Balah, destroyed by a bomb that also shattered the neighbouring house. Vegetable seller Rifaat al-Louh, his pregnant wife, three children, two brothers and a niece were killed. No fighters were in the two houses.

"The repeated, disproportionate attacks on homes indicate that Israel's current military tactics are deeply flawed and fundamentally at odds with the principles of international humanitarian law," said Philip Luther, Amnesty's regional director.

The total number of Palestinians killed was 2,192, while 73 Israelis were killed – most of them soldiers, but six of them civilians. The UN estimated that 18,000 Palestinian housing unit s were destroyed or made uninhabitable, leaving 108,000 homeless, and another 37,650 houses were damaged.

The Israeli foreign ministry said “extreme bias” was displayed in Amnesty’s recommendations. “Hamas is not mentioned, as if the group has no responsibility for the bloodshed; meanwhile, the report dismisses Israel’s security challenges,” it said.