By : Abu Yusef

The Israeli targeting of the make-shift UN refugee camps has shown us that there is nowhere to hide from the Israeli invasion and bombardment of the Gaza Strip; yet most families have chosen to try and ‘wait it out’ in their homes, praying that the next shell to fall will be further away than the last.

However, even if the missile strikes and mortar rounds from the sea, air and land, do not damage the home and kill the inhabitants, they have other, more terrifying things to worry about as the ground invasion enters its seventh day.

According to Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program Director, Malcolm Smart, Israeli soldiers have been routinely entering into civilian homes, barricading families into a single room or a single floor, and using the rest of the home as a makeshift base from which to carry out attacks and take up ‘sniper positions’.

The problem with such a tactic being carried out by the IDF is that they mimic the very Hamas strategy which they have so publicly condemned.

Firing from a civilian home will provoke a response which directly endangers the innocent civilians trapped inside. Both sides of this conflict are guilty of this crime, but it is the IDF who has hypocritically condemned the tactics of Hamas so as to create a moral differentiation to legitimize their disproportionate use of violence against Palestinians.

Amnesty’s report shows once and for all that this moral differentiation, in either intention or practice, does not exist. When this lie is removed from the Israeli discourse surrounding the war, their overwhelming use of military force against a low-tech guerilla army looks less and less like self-defense and more like asymmetric ‘bullying’.

Mr. Smart goes on to underline ‘the urgent need for an independent investigation into alleged abuses, including possible war crimes, by both sides and for perpetrators to be held to account’.

The list of possible crimes is growing by the day:

 There has been a massive loss of civilian life, and civilian areas have been targeted. The UN school massacre which killed 45 innocent people and injured a further 50 is the best example, but it is only one amongst many reported.

 Israel has been accused of using White Phosphorous in order to illuminate the battle field which is in contravention to the United Nations Convention on Weapons of 1980, which bans the use of incendiary devices against personnel in densely inhabited civilian areas.

 Israel has also gone so far as to continue fighting straight through the supposed temporary cease-fires or ‘humanitarian lulls’ in violence. During the Wednesday ‘lull’ between 1 and 4 o’ clock, the Israeli Air Force struck a Palestinian home in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp. This time three young sisters were killed. The sisters were identified as two-year-old Amal (‘hope’ in English), four-year-old Su’ad and six-year-old Samar.

May they rest in peace; and may those who so carelessly stolen their innocent lives find eternal rest in the Hague.

Source : The Palestine Monitor