The Times · 30 July 2015

CP-2015-002

Amnesty International deems Israel’s 2014 bombardment of Gaza war crime

Joel Greenberg, McClatchy Foreign Staff, Jerusalem

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Transcribed from the clipping

“JERUSALEM — On Aug. 1, 2014, after a temporary cease-fire was announced in the war between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli officer, Lt. Hadar Goldin, went missing after a firefight with Hamas gunmen in the town of Rafah.

Suspecting that he had been seized, Israeli troops launched a fierce onslaught, heavily bombarding and shelling parts of Rafah in an attempt to pin down the suspected kidnappers.

The intensive attack, following the ‘Hannibal Directive,’ under which Israeli forces can respond to the capture of a soldier with overwhelming firepower, left at least 135 Palestinian civilians dead, including 75 children, according to Amnesty International, one of the deadliest episodes of the 50-day campaign.

In a report issued Wednesday that used digital technology and satellite images along with witness testimonies to piece together the sequence of events, the human rights group said Israeli forces committed war crimes during three days of attacks that continued even after Goldin was declared to have been killed in action.

‘There is strong evidence that Israeli forces committed war crimes in their relentless and massive bombardment of residential areas of Rafah in order to foil the capture of Lt. Hadar Goldin, displaying a shocking disregard for civilian lives,’ said Philip Luther, director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa program.

‘Israeli forces appear to have thrown out the rule book, employing a gloves-off policy with devastating consequences for civilians,’ Luther said. ‘The obligation to take precautions to avoid the loss of civilian lives was completely neglected.’

The report was dismissed by the Israeli Foreign Ministry as ‘fundamentally flawed in its facts, in its legal analysis and in its conclusions.’ The ministry said the report ignored Hamas’ strategy of fighting ‘from behind the civilian population’ and showed Amnesty International’s ‘political bias’ against Israel.

The report combines witness testimonies with analysis provided by Forensic Architecture, a London-based research team that used photos, videos and digital models to reconstruct incidents based on physical impact left on buildings damaged or destroyed in the conflict.”

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The finding and the Israeli Foreign Ministry's rejection of it, in the same column.

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