Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting today that “Now, as a result of unavoidable self-defense actions during which – to our regret – civilians were also hit, they are trying to turn what happened on its face and stick IDF soldiers and commanders – and not those who initiated the terrorism and turned it into a way of life against the residents of the State of Israel for many years – with the responsibility for this. The State of Israel did everything in order to avoid hitting civilians. I do not know of any military that is more moral, fair and sensitive to civilians’ lives, than the IDF…”
What I saw in Gaza on Friday looked exactly like this photo taken by Reuters the same day:
The ICRC has reported today that “Just over a week after a ceasefire took effect, life is very slowly returning to normal despite the immense destruction and grief caused by three weeks of conflict … The level of destruction throughout Gaza has yet to be fully assessed … According to preliminary findings, over 880 houses were fully destroyed and a further 650 partially destroyed in these areas … But for thousands, the situation is critical. In Jabalia, one of the worst-hit areas of Gaza, between one and two thousand families are living amid the debris of their houses, without electricity, a regular water supply or adequate sanitation facilities. ‘It was suggested to these people that they should move to UN shelters, but they want to stay where their homes were’, explained Ellen Verluyten, deputy head of the ICRC office in Gaza … There was another major concern, Ms Verluyten added – the very real risk posed by unexploded munitions, especially in the areas subjected to the most intense attacks … The ICRC has also continued to assess damage to key infrastructure, such as the power grid and water-supply systems. While the main power lines in northern Gaza have been repaired, the low-voltage lines taking electricity directly to households are still not working in Jabalia, Zeytun and Sudania. This also affects water-distribution networks in those areas. The local electricity company says that the lines can be repaired within three weeks provided that the necessary parts and other supplies are made available. ‘The company has ordered what they need’, said Marek Komarzynski, an ICRC engineer. ‘It’s essential now that it should be delivered from Israel to Gaza as soon as possible” …
The Israeli PM also said in remarks to the cabinet meeting on Sunday that “Defense Minister Ehud Barak, IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi and I, and others who closely monitored the fighting, can attest to many instances in which IDF soldiers and their commanders refrained from carrying out actions or diverted bombs lest innocents among the enemy be hit. This was also done when terrorists that threatened our soldiers were intentionally shooting at them from among civilian population concentrations and were using them as human shields against an Israeli response … Last Thursday, I appointed Justice Minister Prof. Daniel Friedmann to chair an interministerial team to coordinate the State of Israel’s activity to provide a legal defense for those who took part in the military operation. The State of Israel will fully back those who acted on its behalf. Minister Friedmann – along with senior civil-service jurists, international and military law experts – will formulate answers to possible questions regarding IDF operations, which the self-righteous are liable to raise concerning the character of the Israeli fighting and its results” …
This protection operation is already well underway. Haaretz reported this weekend that “In recent days the censor has forbidden publishing the full names and photographs of officers from the level of battalion commander down. It is assumed that the identity of brigade commanders has already been made known. The censor also forbids any reports tying a particular officer of such battlefield command rank (lieutenant to lieutenant colonel) to destruction inflicted in a particular area. There is particular concern at the Defense Ministry that interviews in the press by officers describing the destruction of homes or harm to civilians in areas where they commanded forces could become ‘self-incriminating’ evidence, used by human rights groups and political groups seeking to bring suits against IDF officers. The new regulations were finalized earlier this week, tightening censorship rules that had allowed more detailed reporting, as well as revealing the identities of officers … The commander of the Gaza Division, Brigadier Eyal Eisenberg, when asked Thursday whether he was concerned that legal steps would be taken against him and his officers abroad, said that ‘the state is supposed to provide security to its citizens. The operation [in Gaza] came after eight years of suffering thousands of Qassam rockets in the Negev. I think we embarked on a just war and I stand behind the troops’.” The report on the new IDF censorship rules is published in Haaretz here.
Meanwhile, Donald MacIntyre reported for The Independent from northern Gaza on Friday that “The sight that greeted Mahmoud, 20, is one which will presumably haunt him for the rest of his life. The rest of his family had been eating lunch in one of the rooms but when they first heard shooting had moved – fatally – into the hallway for safety. The corpse of his 45 year old tenant farmer father Sadallah, directly hit from a shell – one of three all the family say arrived in quick succession – was, Mahmoud said, ‘stuck together’ with the bodies his three still smouldering sons, Abed, 14, Zaid,10 and Hamza,8 seemingly having hugged them to him in his last seconds. His 15 month old sister Shahed was lying separately after, in the words of her severely burned mother Sabah, also 45, she ‘melted away’ as the missiles struck while she was being breast-fed. If the investigation which the Israeli military announced this week into the use of white phosphorous is serious, it will have to examine the events at the Abu Halima house here in this semi-rural suburb of of Beit Lahiya, among many other locations. It’s unlikely to dwell for long on the fact that the war saw the first use of artillery in Gaza since late 2006.
The military ended it after 18 members of one family were killed by shelling on a civilian house in Beit Hanoun in November 2006. But it will have to take into account that the Amnesty International have no doubt that the shells which killed the Abu Halima family contained phosphorus. Nafez al Shaban, the Glasgow and US trained head of Shifa Hospital’s Burns Unit is certain that the bone-deep tissue destruction sustained by Mrs Halima, her critically injured daughter in law and grandaughter, were caused by it. And finally fragments of the brown spongy substance, with its unpleasantly pungent smell, are still lying in the debris outside the Abu Halima house … Atatra has long been identified by the Israeli forces as a launching ground for Qassams, and maybe some of the ruined buildings a mile or more from the Abu Halima home were booby trapped. But the family insists that no gunmen were operating round the home when it was shelled as the Israeli forces occupied their commanding position here overlooking Beit Lahiya”. This report can be read in full here.
Another account of what happened to another family was compiled by Amira Hass and reported in Haaretz: “On Friday, January 16, the two [brothers Kassab and Ibrahim Shurab, aged 28 and 17] were driving with their father Mohammed, 64, in a red Land Rover from the family’s farm near the Green Line to their home in Khan Yunis. The father drove, Kassab sat in the passenger seat and Ibrahim sat in the back. The temporary cease-fire, allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, was held between 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. that day. They came to one Israel Defense Forces inspection point in the area and were allowed to continue. At about 1 P.M. they reached the Abu Zaidan supermarket in the Al-Foukhari neighborhood. An adjacent building had been converted into an IDF outpost. Soldiers moved in, turning the tenants into prisoners in their own homes … Suddenly intensive fire opened on the Land Rover from the army outpost, about 30 to 50 meters away, according to the father’s estimate. Kassab was hit in the chest, came out of the sport utility vehicle (SUV), collapsed and died. Ibrahim jumped out and was hit in the leg by the fire, which did not stop. He tried to call for help on his mobile phone but a soldier shouted at him not to call and swore at him in Arabic, the father told Tom, a member of Physicians for Human Rights, hours later. The father’s hand was injured in the fire. He managed to drag his living son to a nearby wall and telephoned home, the Red Crescent, journalists and even his son in the United States. He saw a tank, saw Israeli soldiers coming and going, he told Tom. At 11 P.M., 10 hours after they were injured, his bleeding son grew colder and his breath weakened. Mohammed managed to drag him back to the shell-riddled SUV in the hope of finding a warmer spot for him. But half an hour after midnight, between Friday and Saturday, the son took his last breath in his father’s arms, 30 to 50 meters away from the soldiers. Tom, from his Tel Aviv home, joined the night-long efforts of the Red Crescent and other organizations, trying to persuade the army to allow an ambulance to evacuate the wounded men. Every now and then, the father called Tom, who says he did not hear any shooting in the background when Mohammed talked to him. The European Hospital is located some two kilometers from the site. One minute’s ride in an ambulance? Two? At about 9:30 the next morning Tom was told that the IDF had permitted an ambulance to approach at 12 noon that day. The IDF spokesman commented: ‘The ambulance was permitted to enter only after a situation assessment of the area was held and it was decided that the operative conditions allowed for it. The wounded were evacuated by the Palestinian Health Ministry to a hospital in Rafah. As a rule, during the ‘humanitarian corridor’, the IDF responded with fire only when rockets were fired at Israel or when fire was directed at the IDF. We cannot investigate and reconstruct every occurrence and confirm or deny every information brought before us’. Anyone who has not escaped the consistent testimonies flowing from bombarded Gaza into self-satisfaction knows that this is not an isolated incident. As was published in Haaretz, soldiers shot at ambulances and at escaping civilians who carried white flags. As the Red Cross witnessed, people injured in the bombings, including children, were trapped for days among the corpses of their relatives at a hearing distance of IDF positions. Soldiers do not act in a void. They have commanders and there is esprit de corps, which enabled this, just as it enabled IDF mortars to land on UNRWA schools. The IDF is the people’s army. The people, an overwhelming majority of it, drank in the argumentations for these acts eagerly and supported them” … This report can be read in full here.
Haaretz correspondents Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff wrote over the weekend that “A series of conversations with officers this week reinforces the conclusion formed at the outset of the ground operation: The General Staff identified the public’s intolerance for soldiers’ deaths as an Achilles heel. The IDF used tremendous firepower, knowing this would claim the lives of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, to reduce its own casualties and forestall a situation in which the war would be brought to an end prematurely. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, conjectured that Israel wanted to ‘educate’ Hamas and the inhabitants of Gaza by means of brutal collective punishment. Such an interpretation is not entirely wrong, given the scale of the destruction wrought by the Israeli-made Viper mine-clearing machines (which cause an underground explosion that sets off hidden land mines). Officers in command posts describe a different atmosphere that was dictated by the senior command level. Reports from the field mention a directive for bulldozers to raze dozens of buildings – not because they were booby-trapped, but because they were blocking the forces’ ‘line of vision’. The truth must be said: For years the army has demonstrated insensitivity in regard to killing Palestinian civilians, certainly in times of heavy fighting” … This account was published in Haaretz here.
And, a commentary published in Haaretz today suggested that what happened in Gaza was not a war at all, and urged more humility, while cautioning against drawing the wrong conclusions:
“…what happened in the Strip was essentially a military operation characterized by advancing forces in hostile territory, densely populated by civilians, without facing a military force. At the start of the ground offensive, senior command decided to avoid endangering the lives of soldiers, even at the price of seriously harming the civilian population. This is why the IDF made use of massive force during its advance in the Strip. As a Golani brigade commander explained, if there is any concern that a house is booby-trapped, even if it is filled with civilians, it should be targeted and hit, to ensure that it is not mined – only then should it be approached. Without going into the moral aspects, such fighting tactics explain why there were no instances in which there was a need to assault homes where Hamas fighters were holed up. Other outcomes of this fighting method were the extensive damage and the deaths of many civilians. According to IDF statistics, almost two thirds of Palestinians killed were civilians. Moreover, even though it was one of the war’s aims, hardly any Hamas fighters were taken prisoner, and the holding center set up to imprison them remained almost empty. The Israel Air Force, too, received a great deal of praise. The media asserted that during Cast Lead it proved that it is the world’s best air force. While the IAF’s quality is beyond dispute, it would be a serious mistake to bolster such a claim on the basis of its activity in the Gaza Strip. The planes operated in an environment free of air defenses, enjoying complete aerial superiority. A flight over the Strip and a mostly ‘accurate’ bombing run, which can be dropped from a relatively short range, is not a complicated mission. The flights over Gaza are like test flights, which every pilot does dozens of times a year”. This commentary can be read in full here.
And, Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz today that “None of the people involved in the Gaza war can speak of peace now. Those who delivered such a brutal blow to the Palestinians, only to sow more hatred and fear among them, have no intention of making peace with them. Those responsible for firing white phosphorous shells into a civilian population and destroying thousands of homes cannot talk the following day about two states living peacefully side by side. In one fell swoop, Ehud Olmert, who issued some of the bravest statements ever made in these parts about ending the occupation, singlehandedly turned them into a cynical babble of hollow cliches. Who will now believe that he wanted peace? And who will believe Barak or Livni? … Granted, these impostors still enjoy the support of world leaders, but for many people around the globe, they have become war-mongers and suspected war criminals. Their diplomatic immunity will protect them – but who wants those leaders, with their bloodied hands, to represent us? No less severe is the fact that there are no ideological differences between the candidates. Let Barak and Livni step up and explain what the hell sets them apart. What ideological argument are they conducting, apart from bickering on who should be credited for the war? Facing them is Netanyahu – what does he have to offer? ‘Economic peace’. After this war, which wasn’t enough as far as he is concerned, his doctrine sounds even more ludicrous than ever. This is how we’re going into elections – with three leading parties that are hardly different from each other. We always used to say, ‘There aren’t any moderates in the Arab world’. Now we are the ones who don’t have any. Vote as you will, but don’t fool yourself. Every ballot cast for Kadima, Labor and Likud is an endorsement of the last war and a vote for the next one”. This commentary is posted here.