INTRODUCTION
"Until now we don't understand why. We want peace; and we want an investigation; we want to know why me and my sisters have been orphaned. Why did they kill our parents, our family?"
Fathiya Mousa, whose parents and siblings were killed in an Israeli air strike while sitting in their yard (see Chapter 1.1.2).
At 11.30am on 27 December 2008, without
warning, Israeli forces began a devastating bombing campaign on the Gaza
Strip codenamed Operation "Cast Lead". Its stated aim was to
end rocket attacks into Israel by armed groups affiliated with Hamas and
other Palestinian factions. By 18 January 2009, when unilateral ceasefires
were announced by both Israel and Hamas, some 1,400 Palestinians had been
killed, including some 300 children and
hundreds of other unarmed civilians,
and large areas of Gaza had been razed to the ground,leaving many thousands
homeless and the already dire economy in ruins.
Much of the destruction was wanton and
resulted from direct attacks on civilian objects as well as indiscriminate
attacks that failed to distinguish between legitimate military targets
and civilian objects. Such attacks violated fundamental provisions of international
humanitarian law, notably the prohibition on direct attacks on civilians
and civilian objects (the principle of distinction), the prohibition on
indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks,
and the prohibition on collective punishment.
Hundreds of civilians were killed in
attacks carried out using high-precision weapons - airdelivered bombs
and missiles, and tank shells. Others, including women and children, were
shot at short range when posing no threat to the lives of the Israeli soldiers.
Aerial bombardments launched from Israeli F-16 combat aircraft targeted
and destroyed civilian homes without warning, killing and injuring scores
of their inhabitants, often while they slept. Children playing on the roofs
of their homes or in the street and other civilians going about their daily
business, as well as medical staff attending the wounded were killed in
broad daylight by Hellfire and other highly accurate missiles launched
from helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, and by
precision projectiles fired from tanks.
Disturbing questions remain unanswered
as to why such high-precision weapons, whose operators can see even small
details of their targets and which can accurately strike even fast moving
vehicles,1 killed so many children and other civilians.