Israeli human rights group: Army guilty of 'indiscriminate attacks' on Gaza

The Israeli army carried out “indiscriminate attacks” on the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip during last summer’s offensive, an Israeli human rights group has said in a new report, ‘No Safe Place’.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel)’s report is based on the work of a fact-finding mission to Gaza compromising eight “independent international medical experts”, and includes evidence of attacks on medical workers and the use of human shields by Israeli soldiers.

According to PHR-Israel, “heavy explosives were used in residential neighbourhoods, resulting in multiple civilian casualties”, with “‘double tap’ or multiple consecutive strikes on a single location” leading “to multiple civilian casualties and to injuries and deaths among rescuers.”

The report records an “apparently deliberate attack” on Shuhada’ Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al Balah, where several people were killed and injured on 21 July.

The medical experts interviewed 68 Palestinians wounded during the war – only five of whom said that they had received Israeli army warnings of an impending strike.

In an examination of events in Khuza’a, the report details how “a convoy of hundreds of civilians came under fire while attempting to flee the town on 23 July 2014”, while, “civilians in a house occupied by Israeli soldiers suffered abuse and ill-treatment including beatings, denial of food and water, and use as human shields.” Furthermore, “one was shot dead at close range.”

Overall, PHR-Israel describe Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip as “characterised by heavy and unpredictable bombardments of civilian neighbourhoods in a manner that failed to discriminate between legitimate targets and protected populations”, causing “widespread destruction of homes and civilian property.”

The NGO points out that “such indiscriminate attacks, by aircraft, drones, artillery, tanks and gunships, were unlikely to have been the result of decisions made by individual soldiers or commanders; they must have entailed approval from top-level decision-makers in the Israeli military and/or government.”