Israeli soldiers prepare white phosphorus 155mm artillery shells (light green) as troops keep position on the Israel-Gaza border. Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images
Israel has admitted – after mounting pressure – that its troops may have used white phosphorus shells in contravention of international law, during its three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip.
One of the places most seriously affected by the use of white phosphorus was the main UN compound in Gaza City, which was hit by three shells on 15 January. The same munition was used in a strike on the al-Quds hospital in Gaza City the same day.
Under review by Colonel Shai Alkalai is the use of white phosphorus by a reserve paratroop brigade in northern Israel.
According to army sources the brigade fired up to 20 phosphorus shells in a heavily built-up area around the Gaza township of Beit Lahiya, one of the worst hit areas of Gaza.
The internal inquiry – which the army says does not have the status of the full investigation demanded by human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – follows weeks of fighting in which Israel either denied outright that it was using phosphorus-based weapons, or insisted that what weapons it was using "were in line with international law".
Phosphorus is a toxic chemical agent that burns on contact with air and creates thick white smokes in order to hide troop movements. However phosphorus shells are largely indiscriminate scattering large numbers of fragments over a large area, which can cause severe damage to both human tissue and property.
As the Guardian reported yesterday, Palestinian doctors have reported treating dozens of cases of suspected phosphorus burns.
According to senior IDF officers, quoted today in the Ha'aretz newspaper, the Israeli military made use of two different types of phosphorus munitions.
The first, they insisted, was contained in 155mm artillery shells, and contained "almost no phosphorus" except for a trace to ignite the smoke screen.
The second munitions, at the centre of the inquiry by Col Alkalai, are standard phosphorus shells – both 88mm and 120mm – fired from mortars.
About 200 of these shells were fired during Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and of these – say the IDF – 180 were fired on Hamas fighters and rocket launch crews in northern Gaza.
Alkalai is investigating the circumstances in which the remaining 20 shells were fired, amid compelling evidence on the ground that phosphorus munitions were involved in the attack on a UN warehouse and a UN school.
The mortar system is guided by GPS and according to Israel a failure of the targeting system may have been responsible for civilian deaths. However, critics point out the same explanation was used for mis-targeting deaths in Beit Hanoun in Gaza in 2006.
The brigade's officers, however, added that the shells were fired only at places that had been positively identified as sources of enemy fire.
The use of phosphorus as an incendiary weapon as it now appears to have been used against Hamas fighters – as opposed to a smoke screen – is covered by the Convention of Certain Conventional Weapons to which Israel in not a signatory.
However, Israel also is obliged under the Geneva Conventions and customary international humanitarian law to give due care to protecting the civilian population when deciding on appropriate military targeting and response to hostile fire, particularly in heavily built up areas with a strict prohibition on the use of indiscriminate force.
"They obviously could not have gone on denying the use of phosphorus," Donatella Rovera, Amnesty researcher for Israel and the Occupied Territories, told the Guardian yesterday. "There are still phosphorus wedges burning all over Gaza including at the UN compound and at the school.
"It is clear they are not using it as smoke screen as they claimed. They used it in areas where they had no forces, and there are much less problematic smoke screens that they could have used."
Amnesty on Monday warned that Israel could be guilty of war crimes, saying the use of the shells in a civilian areas was "clear and undeniable".
Rovera demanded too that Israel produce clear evidence that there were fighters in the areas it says its troops were fired upon when the phosphorus munitions were fired.
The admission that the shells may have been used improperly follows yesterday's demand by the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon for an investigation into the targeting of UN facilities – including by phosphorus weapons.
It also follows the decision by the IDF to protect the names of battalion and brigade commanders who participated in Operation Cast Lead.
According to Israel Army Radio on Wednesday the decision – ordered by defence minister Ehud Barak – was made in anticipation that war crimes charges may be filed against IDF officers, who could face prosecution when they travel overseas.
| War by any other name By Gideon Levy Fri., January 16, 2009 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1056153.html Words, it is true, do not kill; but words can ease the work of killing. From the dawn of the Israeli occupation in the territories - by now an ancient dawn - or perhaps from the very establishment of the state, or maybe even from the revival of Hebrew, the language has been mobilized in active reserve service. There has been a permanent emergency call-up and Hebrew has never doffed its uniform. War after war, doublespeak after doublespeak, words are on the front line. They don't shed blood, but somehow they make the sight of it easier to take, sometimes even pleasurably so. They justify, validate, purify, polish and clean; often they also whip up, incite, inflame, push, urge and encourage - all in standard usage. Dry cleaning, express, removes every stain instantaneously, our word-laundering is guaranteed. We were hurled into this war armed with lines written by our national poet for the Hanukkah holiday, the holiday of the onset of this war: "Cast Lead," from a poem by Bialik. From now on, when kindergarten children sing "My father lit me candles, and acted as my torch," people will remember this war, which some commentators are already calling "the most just in Israel?s history," no less. But as for "war," the authoritative Even-Shoshan dictionary defines it as "an armed clash between armies, a conflict between state bodies (nations, states) in battle operations with the use of weapons and by force of arms." The Litani Operation (Lebanon, March 1978), a large-scale action which lasted three full months, never gained the national honor of being considered a war. Even the "Second Lebanon War" was not given that official name until half a year after it ended. This time we were quicker and more determined. The forces had not yet raided at dawn, the planes had not yet finished bombing the graduation ceremony of the traffic police - leaving behind dozens of bleeding young bodies; and we were already calling it a war. For the time being it is a nameless war; yes, afterward the ministerial committee for ceremonies and symbols will convene and give it an appropriate name. The First Gaza War? Surely not the last. True, the dictionary raises doubts. This is certainly not "an armed clash between armies." After all, which army is fighting us, exactly? The army of Qassams and tunnels? It's even hard to call it "a conflict between nations and states in battle operations," because the battles are not actually battles and one of the sides is not exactly a state, barely half a nation, it has to be admitted. Still, war. What difference does it make if a senior officer in a reserve unit was quoted this week in Haaretz as saying, "It was a superb call-up and training exercise"? For us it?s a war. For months we longed for it, oh how we longed for the "big operation" in Gaza. No one talked about "war" then, but look, a war was born. Mazel tov. Advertisement There is nothing chance about this war. We went to "war" because that single, highly charged word serves infinite goals, all of them as just and as justified as the war itself. Say war, and you say heroism and sacrifice. Add some grit, mobilization and of course the inevitable bereavement, and it's ready: war's verbal arsenal. "Heroism and bereavement" was the headline the militant freebie Israel Today used in one of its combat editions. In war as in war, there is also "victory." Let the IDF win this war. Win over whom? How to win? Just win. But the goals of the war change quicker than a chameleon changes color - one day it's to stop the firing of the Qassams, and when that doesn?t work, you switch goals. Now we have moved to a war against smuggling and tunnels. Maybe also a war of pressure on Egypt. And of course a war against Hamas, most of which is aimed at and strikes - just our bad luck; the helpless civilian population whose only connection to Hamas, if at all, was in the voting booth. In war it is also necessary to upgrade the enemy's strength. First we are fed information for months on end about the Hamas arms buildup and its military sophistication, including bunkers and missiles from Tehran and Damascus, and now Ahmed Jaabari is being called "the Hamas chief of staff." Lieutenant General Jaabari, chief of the General Staff of the army of the semi-hollow Qassams. And why did we bomb Islamic University in Gaza City? Because that is where the Palestinians' version of the Rafael arms development authority was based, the Israeli press reported. That?s where they develop drones that carry ammunition and bunker-busting missiles, not only lathes for machine-tooling. We built up their strength and so heightened our victory and sweetened its taste. In war as in war, silence is permitted: keep silent yourself and silence others. It?s not just permitted, it's obligatory. Here is another good reason to call this a war. War makes it possible to mobilize, call to the flag and unite the ranks of the people, which most of the time are more interested in the seacoast of Antalya than in any West Bank outpost. Only in war are we permitted to have media that sound more like the briefing room of the IDF Spokesman. In war, propaganda is all right. Using the word 'war' also validates war crimes, which might be prohibited in just a plain operation. If it's war, then let's go all the way: white phosphorus shells in the streets and artillery against population shelters; hundreds of women and children killed; strikes against rescue units and supply services. Hey, this is war, right? War also gives rise to poetry of its heroism. True, we will never again have songs like we had after the Six-Day War. Arik Lavie will no longer sing the lyrics of Yoram Taharlev: "We are past Rafiah, like you wanted, Tal, against the enemy we charged, and those who fell, fell. We passed by the fallen, we ran forward, Tal." (Major General Israel Tal commanded the division that captured Gaza in 1967.) It's true that we will never again sing "Nasser is waiting for Rabin, ay, ay, ay," or "Sharm al-Sheikh, we have come back to you again." But songs there will be, for sure. We have already had one rhymester wit in this war: "Hamas in Damascus is disconnected, the leadership in Gaza is dejected, the military wing is defecting, Hamas is screaming as expected." Cute, eh? (Lyrics as recited by the cabinet secretary, Oved Yehezkel, in a press briefing on Sunday about the briefing to the cabinet by the director of Military Intelligence.) Whoever the wag is, we already have our first war song, as boastful as "Nasser is waiting for Rabin." The swaggering lyrics go hand in hand with doublespeak. "The houses have to be distanced from the border," a learned military analyst explained incisively last week, referring to what needs to be done in Rafah along the "Philadelphi" route. "To distance the houses from the border," as though these were homes marked for conservation in the old Sarona neighborhood of Tel Aviv, on which the Kirya - the defense establishment compound - now stands. Why, you just slide them onto tracks and move them a few meters down the road. Has the learned analyst seen the Rafah homes opposite Philadelphi in recent years? Most of them have long since been reduced to rubble. People lived in them, a great many people, who have nowhere, but nowhere, to go. Now there are hundreds more destroyed homes, which we have "distanced from the border," so to speak. We "liberated" the territories, "preempted" the terrorists and "preserved order," the order of the occupation; consolidated the occupation with a "civil administration," being careful not to cause a "humanitarian disaster," jailed people in ?administrative detention," killed with "neighbor procedure," murdered with "rules of engagement" and liquidated "senior figures in Hamas"; children "died from their wounds," adults were killed with "rubber bullets," a 6-year-old child who is killed is a "youth," a 12-year-old youth who is killed is a "young man" and both are "terrorists"; we established a "crossings unit" which is a network of roadblocks, and a "coordination and liaison directorate" which hardly coordinates or liaises between anything; we killed "gunmen" and "wanted individuals" and people "required for questioning," all of them "ticking bombs." Now we have a "humanitarian corridor" and an equally "humanitarian" cease-fire. The "bank of goals" is also a friend." People "in shock" exist only in Israel, no one has gone into shock in Gaza. "Children of the south" live only in Sderot. Hamas fighters are "terrorists" and "Hamas activists," too, are not entitled to the honorific title of "noncombatants," so their fate is the same. Every postman of the Palestinian postal service, every policeman, every government accountant and maybe also every doctor working in Hamas' non-civil administration is considered an activist of the organization and therefore is to be killed before he kills us. Our air force bombs and levels "targets," sometimes also "structures," never houses. Israel demands a "security zone" in Gaza, and security is always ours, only ours. Only my colleague at Haaretz, Amira Hass, dares, with characteristic courage, to call the tens of thousands of new homeless people in Gaza, made homeless by us, refugees for the second and third time in their lives; dares to call them "displaced persons." A term that is so heavily charged and fraught with history. But these DPs have nowhere to escape the horrors of the "war. | |
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