quote:

ORIGINAL: KaineD

An investigation released by Amnesty International brings further confirmation that Israel used human shields in the Gaza conflict, while finding no evidence that the Palestinians used human shields.

quote:

ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

From the horses mouth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0wJXf2nt4Y

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen

Actually the report says Hamas did exactly the same thing the IDF did. The report is quite explicit that both groups attacked from civilian occupied buildings. AI for some reasons calls it 'human shields' when the IDF did it but not when Hamas did it.

quote:

Israel committed war crimes and carried out reckless attacks and acts of wanton destruction in its Gaza offensive, an independent human rights report says.

Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed using high-precision weapons, while others were shot at close range, the group Amnesty International says.

Its report also calls rocket attacks by Palestinian militants war crimes and accuses Hamas of endangering civilians.

The Israeli military says its conduct was in line with international law.

Israel has attributed some civilian deaths to "professional mistakes", but has dismissed wider criticism that its attacks were indiscriminate and disproportionate.

Amnesty says some 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the 22-day Israeli offensive between 27 December 2008 and 17 January 2009, which agrees broadly with Palestinian figures.

GAZA REPORT
Amnesty International report on Operation 'Cast Lead'
Download the reader here
More than 900 of these were civilians, including 300 children and 115 women, it says.

In March, Israel's military said the overall Palestinian death toll was 1,166, of whom 295 were "uninvolved" civilians.

Pattern

The 117-page report by Amnesty International says many of the hundreds of civilian deaths in the conflict "cannot simply be dismissed as 'collateral damage' incidental to otherwise lawful attacks - or as mistakes".

It says "disturbing questions" remain unanswered as to why children playing on roofs and medical staff attending the wounded were killed by "highly accurate missiles" whose operators had detailed views of their targets.


GAZA CIVILIAN DEATHS

Children: 300
Women: 115
Men over 50: 85
Civilian men under 50: 200
Non-combatant police: 240
Total: 940
Source: Amnesty International


Gaza conflict: Who is a civilian?
Gaza case studies: Weapons use
Lives were lost because Israeli forces "frequently obstructed access to medical care," the report says. It also reiterates previous condemnations of the use of "imprecise" weapons such as white phosphorous and artillery shells.

The destruction of homes, businesses and public buildings was in many cases "wanton and deliberate" and "could not be justified on the grounds of military necessity", the report adds.

"All of those things occurred on a scale that constitutes pattern - and constitutes war crimes," Donatella Rovera, who headed the research, told the BBC.

The document also gives details of several cases where it says people - including women and children posing no threat to troops - were shot at close range as they were fleeing their homes in search of shelter.

Israeli officials responded saying the military targeted only areas where Palestinian militants were operating, and accused Hamas of turning civilian neighbourhoods into "war zones".

"We tried to be as surgical as is humanly possible in a difficult combat situation," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev told the BBC.

Human shields

The Amnesty report says no evidence was found that Palestinian militants had forced civilians to stay in buildings being used for military purposes, contradicting Israeli claims that Hamas repeatedly used "human shields".

However, Amnesty says Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups had endangered Palestinian civilians by firing rockets from residential neighbourhoods and storing weapons in them.

It says local residents had in one case told researchers that Hamas fighters had fired a rocket from the yard of a government school.

The Israeli military has repeatedly blamed Hamas for causing civilian casualties, saying its fighters operated from buildings like schools, medical facilities, religious institutions, residential homes and commercial premises.

In the cases it had investigated, Amnesty said civilian deaths "could not be explained as resulting from the presence of fighters shielding among civilians, as the Israeli army generally contends".

However, Amnesty does accuse Israel of using civilians, including children, as human shields in Gaza, forcing them to remain in houses which its troops were using as military positions, and to inspect sites suspected of being booby trapped.

It also says Palestinian militants rocket fire from the Gaza Strip was "indiscriminate and hence unlawful under international law", although it only rarely caused civilian casualties.

Hamas leader in Gaza Ismail Haniya declined to comment on the Amnesty International criticism, but said: "We believe the leaders of the occupation state must be tried for these crimes."

Thirteen Israelis were killed, including three civilians, during the offensive, which Israel launched with the declared aim of curtailing cross-border rocket attacks.

quote:

Amnesty International, for its part, did not find evidence that Hamas or other Palestinian
groups violated the laws of war to the extent repeatedly alleged by Israel. In particular, it
found no evidence that Hamas or other fighters directed the movement of civilians to shield
military objectives from attacks. By contrast, Amnesty International did find that Israeli
forces on several occasions during Operation “Cast Lead” forced Palestinian civilians to serve
as “human shields”. In any event, international humanitarian law makes clear that use of
“human shields” by one party does not release the attacking party from its legal obligations
with respect to civilians.

Amnesty International delegates interviewed many Palestinians who complained about
Hamas’ conduct, and especially about Hamas’ repression and attacks against their
opponents, including killings, torture and arbitrary detentions,125 but did not receive any
accounts of Hamas fighters having used them as “human shields”.

In the cases investigated by Amnesty International of civilians killed in Israeli attacks, the
deaths could not be explained as resulting from the presence of fighters shielding among
civilians, as the Israel army generally contends. In all of the cases investigated by Amnesty
Israel/Gaza: Operation ‘Cast Lead’: 22 days of death and destruction
Index: MDE 15/015/2009 Amnesty International July 2009
77
International of families killed when their homes were bombed from the air by Israeli forces,
for example, none of the houses struck was being used by armed groups for military
activities. Similarly, in the cases of precision missiles or tank shells which killed civilians in
their homes, no fighters were present in the houses that were struck and Amnesty
International delegates found no indication that there had been any armed confrontations or
other military activity in the immediate vicinity at the time of the attack.

While the presence of Hamas and other fighters and weapons within civilian areas is not
contested, this in itself is not conclusive evidence of intent to use civilians as “human
shields”.

quote:

Hamas and other Palestinian groups endangered civilians by firing rockets from populated
residential neighbourhoods. In one case, local residents told Amnesty International that
Hamas fighters had fired a rocket at night from the courtyard of a government school in the
centre of Gaza City during Operation “Cast Lead”, when the schools were closed, and that the
fighters were killed in an Israeli air strike on the street as they were leaving the school yard.
In another case, a resident saw Hamas fighters setting up a rocket launcher in the middle of
a road in Gaza City at night.
In another area of Gaza City, a resident showed Amnesty International delegates a place from
where a rocket had been launched: a small patch of empty land some 50m from residential
houses. Television footage from the Arabic TV station al-Arabiya broadcast during Operation
“Cast Lead” also showed a presenter, seemingly caught off guard, saying that she had just
heard a rocket being fired from the street near the building which houses the TV station, in
the centre of Gaza City.

quote:

As confirmed by the testimonies and photographs of Israeli soldiers published in the Israeli
army magazine Bamachaneh and in footage available on the Israeli army website, both Israeli
troops and Palestinian fighters fought each other using similar tactics, including house-tohouse
fighting in residential areas, some of which were largely abandoned by civilians and
others where residents were trapped in their homes.

quote:

The patterns of attacks and statements by members and
leaders of Palestinian groups also indicate that they have no qualms about launching attacks against
civilians and that they in fact carry out such attacks intending to kill and injure Israeli civilians. Such attacks
constitute war crimes.

quote:

ORIGINAL: KaineD
Amnesty International did find that Israeli
forces on several occasions during Operation “Cast Lead” forced Palestinian civilians to serve
as “human shields”.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Loki45
Ohhhh I get it now. They're saying the IDF used Palestinians as shields.. Well...that makes sense, really. I mean if the Palestinians are willing to blow themselves up to kill IDF people, then you don't use IDF people as shields. You use the enemy as sheilds. But then if the Palestinians regard their own people's life so poorly, then you're just helping them out. The 'shields' they chose won't stop the Palestinians from firing, after all. So you're really just assisting in their suicide attackers in killing more of their own.

quote:

ORIGINAL: KaineD
I find this casual justification of over 1, 400 dead people, hundreds of whom were children, to be very chilling. I don't think Palestinian civilians deserve to die just as I don't think Israeli civilians deserve to die.