The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign.
The report concludes that the series of Israeli strikes, exemplified by the six attacks carried out between 9 October and 2 December, suggested that Israel’s military had:
repeatedly violated fundamental principles of the laws of war.
Israel carrying out “indiscriminate attacks”
Among the attacks listed in Wednesday’s report were the strikes on Ash Shujaiyeh neighbourhood, in Gaza City on 2 December last year.
It caused destruction across an approximate diagonal span of 130 metres, destroying 15 buildings and damaging at least 14 others, it said.
The extent of the damage and the craters visible and seen on satellite imagery indicated that around nine 2,000-pound GBU-31 bombs were used. The UN said it had received information that at least 60 people were killed.
GBU-31s, along with 1,000-pound GBU-32s and 250-pound GBU-39s “are mostly used to penetrate through several floors of concrete and can completely collapse tall structures,” UN rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters.
Laurence continued:
Given how densely populated the areas targeted were, the use of an explosive weapon with such wide area effects is highly likely to amount to our prohibited indiscriminate attack.
“Completely flattened”
The report found that an Israeli attack on Jabalya refugee camp on 31 October 2023:
completely flattened an area of at least 2,500 square metres, destroying 10 structures. It [the strike] impacted across an approximate diagonal span of 75 metres, causing damage to at least 10 more buildings. OHCHR verified 56 people killed, including 12 women and 23 children, with information of an additional 43 fatalities.
They also discuss “a massive explosion” in Al Burejj camp on 2 November 2023. Here, the report explains that:
The IDF has not mentioned Al Bureij Camp specifically before or after the incident.
These attacks have been chosen, it would appear, as emblematic of Israel’s mode of operations in bombing Gaza. That the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) do not explain these attacks is a choice. The report concludes that:
Monitoring by OHCHR strongly indicates that the Israeli Defense Forces have systematically failed to comply with the following fundamental principles of international humanitarian law in its conduct of hostilities in Gaza since 7 October: the principle of distinction, the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks, the principle of proportionality and the principle of precautions in attack.
‘Crimes against humanity’
Ajith Sunghay, head of OHCHR’s office in the Palestinian territories, said that the report focused heavily on Israeli actions, since the weapons used by Israel’s military were far more destructive.
The missiles fired by Hamas, while “absolutely unacceptable”, he said, “have not caused significant killing during the war” by comparison.
The report highlighted that unlawful targeting was not only a violation of the laws of war. When committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, in line with an official state or organisational policy, it “may also implicate crimes against humanity.”
The report authors write:
Israel must conduct prompt, independent, impartial, thorough, effective and transparent investigations into these alleged violations of IHL and international human rights law (IHRL) and bring those reasonably suspected of criminal responsibility to account through trials that comply with international standards.
Yeah, don’t hold your breath.
If we want to stretch our intellectual and moral limits slightly beyond the irreproachable UN we may perhaps consider that Palestine is a nation under siege, whose people have been hunted, tortured, detained, and murdered for 75 years. That would cast rather a different light on things, and Israel can’t have that now, can it?
