SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
operation shield and arrow
Amnesty Probe of Israeli Attacks on Gaza Shows 'Human Toll of​ Apartheid'
"It has been a month since the cease-fire agreement between Israeli authorities and Palestinian armed groups, but the suffering that these recurrent Israeli offensives inflict upon the civilian population in the Gaza Strip never ceases," said one campaigner.
Jun 13, 2023
One month after a cease-fire ended a five-day Israeli operation that killed Palestinian civilians and caused "extensive destruction" in the Gaza Strip, Amnesty International on Tuesday released a report highlighting the "human toll of apartheid."
Amnesty—which last year joined a growing list of global human rights groups that condemn Israeli policies and actions against Palestinians as apartheid—probed Operation Shield and Arrow, launched on May 9 by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to allegedly target senior operatives of Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
According to Amnesty's nine-page publication, "On that first night of bombing, 10 Palestinian civilians were killed and over 20 were injured, a high toll that could and should have been avoided by those planning, ordering, and authorizing the attack."
During the IDF operation, "a 21-year-old Palestinian medical student killed by a 'precision-guided' Israeli bomb while studying; a four-year-old Palestinian girl killed in her sleep during an Israeli airstrike; a young Palestinian woman living with a disability left without her electric wheelchair when Israeli bombs destroyed her home without adequate warning," the report notes. "These are just a few of the victims of Israel's latest military assault on the occupied Gaza Strip."
"Amnesty International is renewing its call on the ICC to consider the applicability of the crime against humanity of apartheid within its current formal investigation."
Overall, Amnesty found that Israeli forces killed at least 31 Palestinians, including 11 civilians, and caused "substantial destruction and damage to Palestinian property," while rockets fired by Palestinian armed groups killed three Gazan and two Israeli civilians.
Among those killed by Israeli strikes were two teenage sisters who lived in a Gaza City apartment building. In the early hours of May 9, a bomb manufactured by Boeing and exported to Israel from the United States killed not only the target, Khalil al-Bahtini, a senior member of Al-Quds Brigades, but also his wife Leila al-Bahtini, their four-year-old daughter Hajar, and their neighbors: 19-year-old Dania Adas and 17-year-old Iman Adas.
Alaa Adas, the sisters' father, told Amnesty that when he ran into the teens' bedroom, his elder daughter was already dead but the younger one was still breathing and rushed to the hospital. However, he said, "instead of graduating and studying at university and fulfilling her wish of becoming a doctor, she died."
Heba Morayef, Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa regional director, said in a statement that "as civilians, the lives of Leila and Hajar al-Bahtini and Dania and Iman Adas should have been protected, not snuffed out. Israel has an obligation to cancel an attack if it becomes apparent that it may disproportionately harm civilians and civilian objects. Intentionally launching a disproportionate attack is a war crime."
\u201cCivilian deaths and extensive destruction in May Gaza offensive highlight human toll of apartheid. Israel unlawfully destroyed Palestinian homes, often\u00a0without military necessity, in what amounts to a form of collective punishment against civilians. https://t.co/CRuImXoshC\u201d— Agnes Callamard (@Agnes Callamard) 1686658393
The human rights group is calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate as possible war crimes "the apparently unlawful killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces as well as the extensive destruction of Palestinian civilian homes and buildings," along with "the firing by Palestinian armed groups of inherently inaccurate rockets in and at areas populated by civilians."
Established when the Rome Statute entered into force in 2002, the Hague-based court investigates and tries individuals charged with genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. An existing ICC probe focuses on alleged crimes committed in occupied Palestinian territory since June 13, 2014.
"Since the root cause of these recurrent unlawful attacks against civilians is Israel's apartheid system against Palestinians," Tuesday's report says, "Amnesty International is renewing its call on the ICC to consider the applicability of the crime against humanity of apartheid within its current formal investigation."
"In order to prevent further harm to civilians, it is imperative that the ICC investigations are expedited and arrest warrants issued against alleged perpetrators of international crimes," the document adds. "Additionally, third states should ensure the prosecution of suspected international crimes before their courts under the principle of universal jurisdiction."
Morayef stressed that "it has been a month since the cease-fire agreement between Israeli authorities and Palestinian armed groups, but the suffering that these recurrent Israeli offensives inflict upon the civilian population in the Gaza Strip never ceases."
"In our investigation, we heard vivid accounts of bombs obliterating homes, of fathers digging their little girls out from under rubble, of a teenager fatally injured as she lay in bed holding a teddy bear."
"In our investigation, we heard vivid accounts of bombs obliterating homes, of fathers digging their little girls out from under rubble, of a teenager fatally injured as she lay in bed holding a teddy bear," she said. "More frightening than any of this is the near certainty that, unless perpetrators are held to account, these horrifying scenes will be repeated."
"That we have been documenting the same patterns of unlawful killings and destruction over and over again is an indictment of the international community's failure to hold Israel accountable," Morayef added. "Israel's impunity for the war crimes it repeatedly commits against Palestinians, and for its cruel ongoing 16-year illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip, emboldens further violations and makes injustice chronic."
Amnesty's report comes as the far-right Israeli government is reportedly planning to build thousands of new Jewish-only settler homes in illegally occupied territory—which Adalah, an Israel-based advocacy group for Arab minority rights, called "part of an explicit plan by Israel to annex swaths of the West Bank and institute full Israeli sovereignty over them."
"They violate international law, including the Rome Statute," Adalah said, "constituting crimes against humanity (apartheid), war crimes, and a crime of aggression."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Heinous Crime': Israeli Strikes on Gaza Kill at Least 13 Palestinians, Including Children
While one United Nations official slammed the Israeli bombings as "unacceptable," an Israel Defense Forces colonel called the deaths of four children "irrelevant."
May 09, 2023
Human rights defenders on Tuesday condemned an intense Israeli aerial bombardment of densely populated areas of Gaza that killed at least 13 Palestinians—including at least 10 civilians and three leaders of a militant resistance group—while wounding more than 20 others.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF)—which is calling the airstrikes Operation Shield and Arrow—said it "targeted three senior Islamic Jihad commanders responsible for launching rockets toward Israel over the last month and planning further terror attacks," as well as "weapons manufacturing sites and military compounds."
"The strikes were carried out with pinpoint accuracy based on real-time intelligence while making efforts to avoid harming uninvolved civilians as much as possible," the IDF added.
However, the Palestinian Ministry of Health-Gaza said that at least 10 civilians, including six women and four children, died in the bombings, which killed Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders Jihad Shaker al-Ghannam, Khalil al-Bahtini, and Tariq Mohammed Ezzedine.
\u201cAftermath of today\u2019s attack by the #Israeli military targeting #Gaza. 13 people have been killed and many others wounded including several women and children, along with several resistance commanders. #Gaza_under_attack\u201d— Ramzy Baroud (@Ramzy Baroud) 1683614492
Standing in front of a bombed six-story apartment building in Gaza City, Adeeb al-Rabai, a 60-year attorney, told Al Jazeera that "I thought I was dreaming until I realized that the bombing was on my building."
"It's a civilian residential building," Rabai stressed. "Israeli missiles hit the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors, which were partially destroyed. Civilians live in those apartments, women and children. The Israeli occupation meant to destroy and kill those in the building."
Victims of Tuesday's attack include Dr. Jamal Khaswan, a Russian national who was the director of the El-Wafa Charity Hospital in Gaza City, his wife Mervat Khaswan, and their 21-year-old son Yousef Khaswan. Dania Adass, who was 21, and her 17-year-old sister Iman Alaa Adass died when the IDF bombed their home in the Tofah neighborhood east of Gaza City.
\u201cGaza| \u201cWhere is my Dad?\u201d\n\nThe moment a child, Miral Khawsan arrives at Al-Shifa Hospital, waiting for her father that was injured and evacuated to hospital following an Israeli airstrike\n\nSad to announce that it turned out that both her mother and father was killed.\u201d— Younis | \u064a\u0648\u0646\u0633 (@Younis | \u064a\u0648\u0646\u0633) 1683600556
"Dania was getting ready for her wedding in a few days, and Iman was sad because her sister was about to leave the family home," cousin Shaaban Adass told Al Jazeera as the slain woman's fiancée wept near her body. "What an enormous heartbreak and shock."
"What happened is a heinous crime by the Israeli occupation, which claimed the lives of innocent people who were supposed to be safe in their homes," Adass added.
Tor Wennesland, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in a statement that he is "deeply alarmed" by Israel's "unacceptable" bombings.
\u201cThis video shows footages of Palestinian child Mayar Ezzdin, who was murdered with her father and brother in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Gaza last night.\u201d— PALESTINE ONLINE \ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\uddf8 (@PALESTINE ONLINE \ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\uddf8) 1683651198
Maurice Hirsch, an IDF reserve colonel, responded by accusing Wennesland of "moral bankruptcy" for not condemning last week's barrage of rockets fired by Gaza militants into Israel, an attack that wounded as many as a dozen civilians.
The rocket attack followed the death of Khader Adnan—a Palestinian activist imprisoned in Israel without charge or trial—during an 87-day hunger strike.
"Considering the military advantage gained by eliminating these senior terrorists," Hirsh tweeted, "it is irrelevant to ask how many children were incidentally killed."
\u201cIsraeli strikes kill 12 Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip overnight, brags about targeting members of the Islamic Jehad \u2013 who were killed with their family members. These are Ali and Mayar IzzAlDeen, two of the children killed in the raids.\u201d— Rania Zabaneh (@Rania Zabaneh) 1683603796
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party said Tuesday that they would end their short-lived boycott of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government due to what they said was an insufficient response to last week's rocket attack.
"If there's one thing Israeli leaders can agree on, it's killing Palestinians," tweeted Yumna Patel, Palestine news director at Mondoweiss. "Nothing bands them together quite like bombing the hell out of Gaza."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular