The Social Medicine Portal

Replying to accusations of human rights violations in Gaza, the Israeli Military says, “We investigated ourselves and found out that we did nothing wrong”

In the aftermath of the attack on Gaza, the Israeli Military conducted an investigation in reply to accusations of human rights violations, and concluded that it had “maintained a high professional and moral level” during the 22-day war, which ended Jan. 18, though it faced “an enemy that aimed to terrorize Israeli civilians whilst taking cover” among Palestinian civilians and “using them as human shields.”

The New York Times promptly reported on this with the headline “Israeli Military Says Actions in Gaza War did not Violate International Law“. The article, consistent with New York Times reporting on the Israel-Palestine conflict, had the usual tone “he said she said” , which at best aims at “a balanced view” and parrots claims from “both sides”, yet assesses the claims against no independent standard. This is likely to leave readers who are unfamiliar with international law or lack an independent knowledge of the conflict as clueless about what to make of the particular story as they were before reading the New York Times. (moreover, somebody who reads nothing but the headlines would assume that the issue is fully settled).

To fill this gap, let us note that from the standpoint of international law, the occupation continues to be as illegal in 2009 as it was in 1967, when the UN Security Council passed UN Resolution 242, declaring it inadmissible for countries to acquire territory by war, and emphasizing “the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security”. So whatever the Israeli Military does in this context is prima facie illegal.

(For those who wonder about Israel’s “disengagement” from Gaza in 2006, click here to find out what Jerome Slater, from the John Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, says about the attack on Gaza given its particular status, or what Neve Gordon, chair of the Department of Politics and Government of Ben Gurion University says about the alleged disengagement).

In this same spirit, B’Tselem, an Israeli-based human rights organization, published a “response to the Israeli Military’s investigations of operation “Cast Lead”". (The fully developed principles can be accessed here):

“On the 22.4.08, the Israeli Military made public the conclusions of five internal investigations held by teams headed by officers, who “were not a direct part of the chain of command, and who were appointed by the chief of staff to investigate several issues in regards to which questions were raised during the fighting.” The military did not publish the investigations themselves .

The chief conclusion of the investigations is that “the “IDF acted in accordance with the principles of international law, while keeping a high professional and moral standard; all of this, against an enemy that was deliberately engaging in terror activities against Israeli civilians.” However, “the investigations shed light on a very small number of mistakes and incidents in which intelligence or operational mistakes occurred during the fighting.”

However, the IDF spokesperson is quick to qualify the military’s responsibility for these cases. Thus, it determines in its statement, “the fighting in Gaza took place in a complex battlefield against an enemy who chose, as a conscious part of its doctrine, to position itself in the midst of the civilian population, booby trapping their houses with explosives, firing from schools attended by their own children and even using their own people as human shields.”

These are only some of the issues investigated by the military, and the IDF spokesperson stated that a central operational investigation is still being conducted, and is expected to be finalized in two months. However, even at this stage it is possible to point out several central problems in the way the military investigates the suspicions of violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) during operation “Cast Lead”.

Problems of principle

1. The military cannot investigate itself (this is like giving somebody accused of murder the task of assessing whether in fact he or she is guilty of murder and taking the results at face value).
   
2. The standards obligating the military were ignored, and specific accusations about targeting civilians were not investigated.
   
3. The report ignored whether there was a policy set by high-ranking officials and focused on alleged misdeeds of individual soldiers. However, there is much evidence to believe that there was, indeed, a policy of destroying civilian infrastructure and targeting civilians (or not caring enough whether or not civilians were harmed).
   
4. The investigation into the harming of civilians is vague
   
5. The investigation regarding harm to medical teams and hospitals is inaccurate
   
6. The investigation regarding white phosphorus focuses on the theory and ignores the horrific consequences on the ground during the operation, which the military was in a perfect position to anticipate.
   
7. The investigation regarding destruction of houses and harm to infrastructure is flawed. It fails to explain the need to massively destroy public buildings, whole neighborhoods, and extensive agricultural areas.”

For a good website on international humanitarian law and human rights click here.

For weekly updates on human rights violations in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem (yes, they continue), click here.