["It has been a month since the cease-fire agreement between
Israeli authorities and Palestinian armed groups, but the suffering
that these recurrent Israeli offensives inflict upon the civilian
population in the Gaza Strip never ceases." ]
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AMNESTY PROBE OF ISRAELI ATTACKS ON GAZA SHOWS ‘HUMAN TOLL OF
APARTHEID’  
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Jessica Corbett
June 13, 2023
Common Dreams
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_ "It has been a month since the cease-fire agreement between Israeli
authorities and Palestinian armed groups, but the suffering that these
recurrent Israeli offensives inflict upon the civilian population in
the Gaza Strip never ceases." _

Civilians are seen in the streets of Gaza City after Israeli
warplanes launched airstrikes on May 9, 2023. , Ali Jadallah/Anadolu
Agency via Getty Images

 

One month after a cease-fire ended a five-day Israeli operation that
killed Palestinian civilians and caused "extensive destruction" in the
Gaza Strip, Amnesty International
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released a report
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highlighting the "human toll of apartheid."

Amnesty—which last year joined
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a growing list of global human rights groups that condemn Israeli
policies and actions against Palestinians as apartheid—probed
Operation Shield and Arrow, launched
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Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to allegedly target senior operatives of
Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

According to Amnesty's nine-page publication, "On that first night of
bombing, 10 Palestinian civilians were killed and over 20 were
injured, a high toll that could and should have been avoided by those
planning, ordering, and authorizing the attack."

During the IDF operation, "a 21-year-old Palestinian medical student
killed by a 'precision-guided' Israeli bomb while studying; a
four-year-old Palestinian girl killed in her sleep during an Israeli
airstrike; a young Palestinian woman living with a disability left
without her electric wheelchair when Israeli bombs destroyed her home
without adequate warning," the report notes. "These are just a few of
the victims of Israel's latest military assault on the occupied Gaza
Strip."

"Amnesty International is renewing its call on the ICC to consider the
applicability of the crime against humanity of apartheid within its
current formal investigation."

Overall, Amnesty found that Israeli forces killed at least 31
Palestinians, including 11 civilians, and caused "substantial
destruction and damage to Palestinian property," while rockets fired
by Palestinian armed groups killed three Gazan and two Israeli
civilians.

Among those killed by Israeli strikes were two teenage sisters who
lived in a Gaza City apartment building. In the early hours of May 9,
a bomb manufactured by Boeing and exported to Israel from the United
States killed not only the target, Khalil al-Bahtini, a senior member
of Al-Quds Brigades, but also his wife Leila al-Bahtini, their
four-year-old daughter Hajar, and their neighbors: 19-year-old Dania
Adas and 17-year-old Iman Adas.

Alaa Adas, the sisters' father, told Amnesty that when he ran into the
teens' bedroom, his elder daughter was already dead but the younger
one was still breathing and rushed to the hospital. However, he said,
"instead of graduating and studying at university and fulfilling her
wish of becoming a doctor, she died."

Heba Morayef, Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa regional
director, said
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in a statement that "as civilians, the lives of Leila and Hajar
al-Bahtini and Dania and Iman Adas should have been protected, not
snuffed out. Israel has an obligation to cancel an attack if it
becomes apparent that it may disproportionately harm civilians and
civilian objects. Intentionally launching a disproportionate attack is
a war crime."

The human rights group is calling on the International Criminal Court
(ICC) to investigate as possible war crimes "the apparently unlawful
killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces as well as the
extensive destruction of Palestinian civilian homes and buildings,"
along with "the firing by Palestinian armed groups of inherently
inaccurate rockets in and at areas populated by civilians."

Established when the Rome Statute entered into force in 2002, the
Hague-based court investigates and tries individuals charged with
genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of
aggression. An existing ICC probe focuses on
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occupied Palestinian territory since June 13, 2014.

"Since the root cause of these recurrent unlawful attacks against
civilians is Israel's apartheid system against Palestinians,"
Tuesday's report says, "Amnesty International is renewing its call
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on the ICC to consider the applicability of the crime against humanity
of apartheid within its current formal investigation."

"In order to prevent further harm to civilians, it is imperative that
the ICC investigations are expedited and arrest warrants issued
against alleged perpetrators of international crimes," the document
adds. "Additionally, third states should ensure the prosecution of
suspected international crimes before their courts under the principle
of universal jurisdiction."

Morayef stressed that "it has been a month since the cease-fire
agreement between Israeli authorities and Palestinian armed groups,
but the suffering that these recurrent Israeli offensives inflict upon
the civilian population in the Gaza Strip never ceases."

"In our investigation, we heard vivid accounts of bombs obliterating
homes, of fathers digging their little girls out from under rubble, of
a teenager fatally injured as she lay in bed holding a teddy bear."

"In our investigation, we heard vivid accounts of bombs obliterating
homes, of fathers digging their little girls out from under rubble, of
a teenager fatally injured as she lay in bed holding a teddy bear,"
she said. "More frightening than any of this is the near certainty
that, unless perpetrators are held to account, these horrifying scenes
will be repeated."

"That we have been documenting the same patterns of unlawful killings
and destruction over and over again is an indictment of the
international community's failure to hold Israel accountable," Morayef
added. "Israel's impunity for the war crimes it repeatedly commits
against Palestinians, and for its cruel ongoing 16-year illegal
blockade of the Gaza Strip, emboldens further violations and makes
injustice chronic."

Amnesty's report comes as the far-right Israeli government is
reportedly planning to build thousands of new Jewish-only settler
homes in illegally occupied territory—which Adalah, an Israel-based
advocacy group for Arab minority rights, called
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explicit plan by Israel to annex swaths of the West Bank and institute
full Israeli sovereignty over them."

"They violate international law, including the Rome Statute," Adalah
said, "constituting crimes against humanity (apartheid), war crimes,
and a crime of aggression."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel
free to republish and share widely.

===

Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

* Amnesty International
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