For the first time, an international human rights organization has publicly declared that there is evidence to indicate that war crimes were committed by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who allegedly used civilians as "human shields" during Operation Cast Lead.
The statement was made to The Jerusalem Post by Bill Van Esveld, the Jerusalem-based researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW), following a report on the military operation in Gaza issued last week by the Foreign Ministry.
However, Van Esveld stressed that the fact that Palestinians may have used civilians as human shields during the fighting did not justify what HRW believes to have been war crimes committed by Israel.
Until now, neither of the two major international human rights groups, Amnesty International and HRW, had acknowledged one of Israel’s main accusations against Hamas, one which it has used to explain the heavy damage the IDF inflicted on Palestinian civilians and civilian infrastructure during the fighting.
Last week HRW presented a report in which it stated that members of Hamas and other groups in Gaza had perpetrated war crimes by deliberately firing at Israel’s civilian population. The organization also charged that the groups had put Palestinian civilians at risk by firing from within residential areas in the Gaza Strip.
However, the organization stopped short of declaring that Hamas fighters had committed war crimes by deliberately endangering the civilian population in the hopes that Israeli forces would not shoot back to prevent civilian casualties.
In last week’s report, entitled "Harm to Civilians From Palestinian Armed Groups’ Rocket Attacks," HRW wrote, "Deliberately using civilians to deter attacks on military targets amounts to ‘human shielding,’ which is a war crime. Human Rights Watch either could not determine, or the evidence did not indicate, that militants launched rockets from areas close to civilians with the intention of deterring Israeli forces from counterattacking."
The report did mention, however, that another organization, The International Crisis Group, had interviewed three Hamas fighters in January who said they "often fired [rockets] in close proximity to homes and from alleys, hoping that nearby civilians would deter Israel from responding."
The Foreign Ministry report included additional evidence that war crimes had been committed. It quoted a report by Newsweek correspondent Rod Nordland on January 20 in which he wrote, "Suddenly there was a terrific whoosh, louder even than a bomb explosion. It was another of Hamas’ homemade Qassam rockets being launched into Israel – and the mobile launchpad was smack in the middle of the four [apartment] buildings, where every apartment was full."
Van Esveld added that the fact that the rocket launcher was located in the middle of four residential buildings proved intent on the part of those who fired the rockets.
On Thursday, HRW is due to hold a press conference to present its new report on Cast Lead and specifically the alleged killing of 11 Palestinians who were holding white flags – a sign that they are civilians – by IDF soldiers.
According to the HRW, most of the 11 were women and children and they were killed in seven different incidents during Cast Lead.
HRW said it conducted extensive investigations into each of these incidents by visiting the attack sites, examining ballistic evidence, collecting medical records, and interviewing multiple witnesses, at least three people separately for each attack. In one case, forensic pathologists examined a survivor.
In each of these incidents, the evidence strongly indicates that, at the least, Israeli soldiers failed to take feasible precautions to distinguish between civilians and combatants before attacking. At worst, the soldiers deliberately fired on persons known to be civilians.
Gerald Steinberg, the director of NGO Monitor who saw excerpts of the report, said there was a fundamental problem with HRW’s methodology.
"HRW had no people in Gaza during the war, so therefore everything they have to say is by definition based on hearsay and speculation – it is all based on secondary and tertiary reports," he said.
"A Palestinian says he took a white flag out, and says Israelis shot him. We don’t know if that was part of tactics Hamas used, like Hizbullah did in Lebanon. Remember, Hamas used ambulances to smuggle in and launch rockets. HRW doesn’t know," Steinberg said.
Steinberg said that all the organization’s reports on Gaza were based on what Palestinians said, or what other NGOs reported, or on what some journalists – who for the most part were also not in Gaza during the war – heard about afterward.
"This is a basic methodological problem," he said. "If you are looking for a target, you will find people who will tell you what you are looking for."
Steinberg said that HRW made similar allegations about the IDF firing at people waving white flags after the Second Lebanon War, but that these turned out to be false.
He said that in one instance HRW alleged that there was no Hizbullah presence when the IDF allegedly killed three people, and wounded 14 other people who were waving a white flag while fleeing in a van from the village of Kafra.
"Independent analysis showed that Hizbullah admitted flying white flags to prevent IDF attacks, 17 rockets were fired from within Kafra village houses, and Hizbullah regularly transported arms in vans," he said.
"The release of a third lengthy publication condemning Israel over Gaza within the space of a few months, is reflective of HRW’s Israel obsession," Steinberg said, adding that a critical report of Hamas issued last week for firing on civilians in the western Negev was a "fig leaf."
Steinberg said the "white flag" report was edited by Joe Stork, who, he
said, was anything but an impartial observer of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Steinberg said that Stork, one of the founders of the Middle East Research Information Project (MERIP) has "a long history of anti-Israel incitement.