Blood
Of The Innocent Is
On Their Hands
By Chris McGreal
Guardian, U.K
30 July, 2003
Nine-year-old
Abdul Rahman Jadallah's promise to the corpse of the shy little girl
who lived up the street was, in all probability, kept for him by an
Israeli bullet. The boy - Rahman to his family - barely knew Haneen
Suliaman in life. But whenever there was a killing in the dense Palestinian
towns of southern Gaza he would race to the morgue to join the throng
around the mutilated victim. Then he would tag along with the surging,
angry funerals of those felled by rarely seen soldiers hovering far
above in helicopters or cocooned behind the thick concrete of their
pillboxes. Haneen, who was eight years old, had been shot twice in the
head by an Israeli soldier as she walked down the street in Khan Yunis
refugee camp with her mother, Lila Abu Selmi.
"Almost every
day here the Israelis shoot at random, so when you hear it you get inside
as quickly as possible," says Mrs Selmi. "Haneen went to the
grocery store to buy some crisps. When the shooting started, I came
out to find her. She was coming down the street and ran to me and hugged
me, crying, 'Mother, mother'. Two bullets hit her in the head, one straight
after the other. She was still in my arms and she died."
Later that day,
the crowds pushed into the morgue at the local hospital to see the young
girl on the slab, partly in homage, partly to vent their anger. Rahman
pressed his way to the front so he could touch Haneen. Then he went
home and told his mother, Haniya Abed Atallah, that he too wanted to
die. "Rahman went to the morgue and kissed Haneen. He came home
and told us he had promised the dead girl he would die too. I made him
apologise to his father," Mrs Atallah says.
Weeks passed and
another Israeli bullet shattered the life of another young Palestinian
girl. Huda Darwish was sitting at her school desk when a cluster of
shots ripped through the top of a tree outside her classroom and buried
themselves in the wall. But one ricocheted off the window frame, smashed
through the glass and lodged in the 12-year-old girl's brain. Huda's
teacher, Said Sinwar, was standing in front of the blackboard. "It
was a normal lesson when suddenly there was this shooting without any
warning. The children were terrified and trying to run. I was shouting
at them to get under their desks. Suddenly the bullet hit the little
girl and she slumped to the floor with a sigh, not even screaming,"
he says.
Sinwar dragged Huda
from under her desk and ran with her across the road to the hospital,
itself scarred by Israeli bullets. After weeks in hospital, she has
started breathing for herself again, through a windpipe cut into her
throat. She has regained use of her arms and legs, but will be blind
for the rest of her life.
Rahman was in another
class at the same school. The next day, lessons were cancelled and the
boy defied his mother to tag along at the funeral of a slain Palestinian
fighter. The burial evolved into the ritual protest of children marching
to the security fence that separates Gaza's dense and beggared Khan
Yunis refugee camp from the spacious religious exclusivity of the neighbouring
Jewish settlement. As Rahman hung a Palestinian flag on the fence, a
bullet caught him under his left eye. He died on the spot. "It
looks as if the soldiers saw him put the flag on the fence and they
shot him," says Rahman's brother, 19-year-old Ijaram. "There
were many kids next to him, next to the fence. But he was the only one
carrying the flag. Why else would they have shot him?"
Britain's chief
rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, recently praised the Israeli military as the
most humanitarian in the world because it claims to risk its soldiers'
lives to avoid killing innocent Palestinians. It is a belief echoed
by most Israelis, who revere the army as an institution of national
salvation. Yet among the most shocking aspects of the past three years
of intifada that has no shortage of horrors - not least the teenage
suicide bombers revelling in mass murder - has been the killing of children
by the Israeli army.
The numbers are
staggering; one in five Palestinian dead is a child. The Palestinian
Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) says at least 408 Palestinian children
have been killed since the beginning of the intifada in September 2000.
Nearly half were killed in the Gaza strip, and most of those died in
two refugee camps in the south, Khan Yunis and Rafah. The PCHR says
they were victims of "indiscriminate shooting, excessive force,
a shoot-to-kill policy and the deliberate targeting of children".
And children continue
to die, even after the ceasefire declared by Hamas and other groups
at the end of June. On Friday, a soldier at a West Bank checkpoint shot
dead a four-year-old boy, Ghassan Kabaha, and wounded his two young
sisters after "accidentally" letting loose at a car with a
burst of machinegun fire from his armoured vehicle. The rate of killing
since the beginning of the ceasefire has dropped sharply, but almost
every day the army has continued to fire heavy machineguns into Khan
Yunis or Rafah. Among the latest victims of apparently indiscriminate
shooting were three teenagers and an eight-year-old, Yousef Abu Jaza,
hit in the knee when soldiers shot at a group of children playing football
in Khan Yunis.
The military says
it is difficult to distinguish between youths and men who might be Palestinian
fighters, but the statistics show that nearly a quarter of the children
killed were under 12. Last year alone, 50 children under the age of
eight were shot dead or blown up by the Israeli army in Gaza: eight,
one of whom was two months old, were slaughtered when a one-tonne bomb
was dropped on a block of flats to kill a lone Hamas leader, Sheikh
Salah Mustafa Shehada. But Rahman, Huda and Haneen were not "collateral
damage" in the assassination of Hamas "terrorists", or
caught in crossfire. There was no combat when they were shot. There
was nothing more than a single burst of fire, sometimes a single bullet,
from an Israeli soldier's gun.
It was the same
when seven-year-old Ali Ghureiz was shot in the head on the street outside
his house in Rafah. And when Haneen Abu Sitta, 12, was killed while
walking home after school near the fence with a Jewish settlement in
southern Gaza. And when Nada Madhi, also 12, was shot in the stomach
and died as she leaned out of her bedroom window in Rafah to watch the
funeral procession for another child killed earlier.
The army offered
a senior officer of its southern command to discuss the shooting of
these six children over a period of just 10 weeks earlier this year.
The military told me I could not name him, even though his identity
is no secret to the Israeli public or his enemies; it was this officer
who explained to the nation how an army bulldozer came to crush to death
the young American peace activist, Rachel Corrie.
"I want you
to know we are not a bunch of crazies down here," he says. At his
headquarters in the Gush Khatif Jewish settlement in Gaza, the commander
rattles through the army's version of the shootings: either the military
knew nothing of them, or the children had been caught in crossfire -
a justification used so frequently, and so often disproved, that it
is rarely believed. But three hours later, after poring over maps and
military logs, timings and regulations, he concedes that his soldiers
were responsible - even culpable - in several of the killings.
The Israeli army's
instinctive response is to muddy the waters when confronted with a controversial
killing. At first, it questioned whether Huda was even shot. I described
for the soldiers the scene in the classroom with blood rippling up the
wall behind the child's desk.
"I don't know
how this happened," says the commander. "I take responsibility
for this. It could have been one of ours. I think it probably was."
The killing of Haneen
is clearer in the commander's mind. "We checked it and we know
that on the same day there was shooting of a mortar," he says.
"The troops from the post shot back at the area where the mortar
was launched, the area where the girl was killed. We didn't see if we
hit someone. I assume that a stray bullet hit Haneen. Unfortunately."
Doesn't he think that simply shooting back in the general direction
of a mortar attack is irresponsible at best? He says not. "You
cannot have soldiers sitting and doing nothing when they are shot at,"
he says.
Haneen's mother,
Mrs Selmi, believes her daughter was shot from "the container".
The metal box dangling from a crane evokes more constant fear in Khan
Yunis than the helicopter rocket attacks and tank incursions. Nestled
inside is an Israeli sniper shielded by camouflage netting and hoisted
high enough to see deep into the refugee camp. From inside, it is striking
how much the box moves around in the wind, leaving little hope of an
accurate shot. Peering from behind the camouflage, the view is mostly
of Palestinian houses riddled with bullet holes, a testament to the
scale of incoming Israeli fire. Haneen's home sits a few metres from
the security fence separating Khan Yunis from the Jewish settlement.
But, because the house is inhabited, the damage is mostly limited to
the upper floor, with 27 bulletholes around the windows. "In this
area, we shoot at the houses," says the Israeli commander. "We
don't want people on the second floor. I gave the order: shoot at the
windows."
He may concede his
soldiers are responsible for shooting Huda and Haneen, but he denies
their responsibility for the slaying of Rahman, the nine-year-old shot
while hanging the flag at the security fence. "We saw the children,
we saw them for sure. They always demonstrate in this area after funerals.
But I don't have any report from the troops on our shooting on this
occasion," he says. "We have rules of engagement that we don't
shoot children."
Seven-year-old Ali
Ghureiz's father scoffs at the claim. "They meant to kill him,
for sure," says Talab Ghureiz. "I can't imagine anyone who
considers himself a human being can do this."
The killing of Ali
and wounding of his five-year-old brother is particularly disturbing
because the commander admits there was no combat and the boys were the
focus of the soldier's attention. The Ghureiz house lies on the very
edge of Rafah. At the bottom of the street, an Israeli armoured vehicle
and guard posts sit in the midst of a "no-go" area of tangled
wire, broken buildings and mud. On the other side is the Egyptian border.
"There were three kids. They were playing 50m from the house,"
says Ghureiz. "The Israelis fired two or three bullets, maybe more.
No one could have made a mistake. They were only 100m from the children.
I don't know why they did it. Ali was shot in the face immediately below
his left eye. It was a big bullet. It did a lot of damage," he
whispers.
"This is the
first I've heard of this," says the commander. "According
to the log, in the afternoon there were children trying to cross the
border. The tower fired five bullets and didn't report any children
hurt. Usually with children this age, we don't shoot. There is a very
strict rule of engagement about shooting at children. You don't do it."
But Ali is dead. "They [Palestinian fighters] send children to
the fence. An older guy, usually 25 or so, gives them the order to go
to the fence, or dig next to it. They know we don't shoot at children.
If one of my soldiers goes out to chase them away, a sniper will be
waiting for him."
Fences usually mark
defined limits but, as with so much in the occupied territories, the
rules are deliberately vague. There is an ill-defined ban on "approaching"
the security fences separating Gaza from Israel or the Jewish settlements.
"We have a danger zone 100 to 200m from the fence around Gush Katif
[settlement]. They [the Palestinians] know where the danger zone is,"
the commander says. But many houses in Rafah and Khan Yunis are within
the "danger zone". Children play in its shadow, and many adults
fear walking to their own front doors.
"We have in
our rules of engagement how to handle this," the commander says.
"During the day, if someone is inside the zone without a weapon
and not attempting to harm or with hostile intent, then we do not shoot.
If he has a weapon or hostile intent, you can shoot to kill. If he doesn't
have a weapon, you shoot 50m from him into something solid that will
stop the bullet, like a wall. You shoot twice in the air, and if he
continues to move then you are allowed to shoot him in the leg."
The regulations
are drummed into every soldier, but there is ample evidence that the
army barely enforces them. The military's critics say the vast majority
of soldiers do not commit such crimes but those that do are rarely called
to account. The result is an atmosphere of impunity. Israel's army chief-of-staff,
Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, claims that every shooting of a civilian
is investigated. "Harming innocent civilians is firstly a matter
of morals and values, and we cannot permit ourselves to let this happen.
I deal with it personally," he told the Israeli press. But Yaalon
has not dealt personally with any of the killings of the six children
reported on here.
The army's indifferent
handling of the shootings of civilians has even drawn stinging criticism
from a member of Ariel Sharon's Likud party in the Israeli parliament,
Michael Eitan. "I am not certain that the responsible officials
are aware of the fact that there are gross violations of human rights
in the field, despite army regulations," he said.
The case of Khalil
al-Mughrabi is telling. The 11-year-old was shot dead in Rafah by the
Israeli army two years ago as he played football with a group of friends
near the security fence. One of Israel's most respected human rights
organisations, B'Tselem, wrote to the judge advocate general's office,
responsible for prosecuting soldiers, demanding an inquiry. Months later,
the office wrote back saying that Khalil was shot by soldiers who acted
with "restraint and control" to disperse a riot in the area.
However, the judge advocate general's office made the mistake of attaching
a copy of its own, supposedly secret, investigation which came to a
quite different conclusion - that the riot had been much earlier in
the day and the soldiers who shot the child should not have opened fire.
The report says a "serious deviation from obligatory norms of behaviour"
took place.
In the report, the
chief military prosecutor, Colonel Einat Ron, then spelled out alternative
false scenarios that should be offered to B'Tselem. B'Tselem said the
internal report confirmed that the army has a policy of covering up
its crimes. "The message that the judge advocate general's office
transmits to soldiers is clear: soldiers who violate the 'Open Fire
Regulations', even if their breach results in death, will not be investigated
and will not be prosecuted."
Towards the end
of the interview, the commander in Gaza finally concedes that his soldiers
were at fault to some degree or other in the killing of most - but not
all - of the children we discussed. They include a 12-year-old girl,
Haneen Abu Sitta, shot dead in Rafah as she walked home from school
near a security fence around one of the fortified Jewish settlements.
The army moved swiftly to cover it up. It leaked a false story to more
compliant parts of the Israeli media, claiming Haneen was shot during
a gun battle between troops and "terrorists" in an area known
for weapons smuggling across the border from Egypt. But the army commander
concedes that there was no battle. "Every name of a child here,
it makes me feel bad because it's the fault of my soldiers. I need to
learn and see the mistakes of my troops," he says. But by the end
of the interview, he is combative again. "I remember the Holocaust.
We have a choice, to fight the terrorists or to face being consumed
by the flames again," he says.
The Israeli army
insists that interviews with its commanders about controversial issues
are off the record. Depending on what the officer says, that bar is
sometimes lifted. I ask to be able to name the commander in Gaza. The
army refuses. "He has admitted his soldiers were responsible for
at least some of those killings," says an army spokesman who sat
in on the interview. "In this day and age that raises the prospect
of war crimes, not here but if he travels abroad he could be arrested
some time in the future. Some people might think there is something
wrong here."