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Part 14 of a series recounting the findings of South African jurist Richard Goldstone's UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.
When the Al-Bader flour mill was destroyed on 9 January, the strike happened without prior warning, raising questions about the efficacy or seriousness of the warnings system used by Israeli forces during their devastating assault on Gaza last winter. Odder still was that in two prior instances, Israel did warn mill owner Rashad Hamada that its jets intended to strike immanently, leading to two evacuations of the mill, neither of which ended in strikes. On 30 December 2008, a recorded warning was left on the flour mill’s answering machine by Israeli forces, indicating that his building should be evacuated immediately. |
The approximately 45 workers in the mill at the time were evacuated.
"We received a recorded message by telephone on a landline asking us to evacuate the mill. This call came from Israel," Hamada said, in testimony to Richard Goldstone's UN inquiry.
"We evacuated the factory of all workers, a total evacuation and waited until the next day. The factory was not hit."
Following the evacuation, Hamada called a business associate in Israel, explained what had happened and asked him for advice. The associate spoke with contacts in the Israeli military, and had been told that, although the mill had been on a list of proposed targets, they had decided not to proceed with the strike. Hamada did not receive any information as to why his mill might have been targeted.
Based on these conversations and the fact that there had been no strike, the mill's employees returned to work the next day. Work continued for a number of days as flour ran out across the Strip, until a second recorded warning was received on or around 4 January 2009.
"We received another message," Hamada said. "We were told to evacuate the factory. The factory was evacuated."
Again, there was no attack. "They were put into a state of fear as a result of the false alarms," Goldstone's report states.
Hamada received a call later in the week from his business associate in Israel, who said Israeli forces told him the mill would not be hit. The employees returned to work in light of the information.
Then on 9 January, without warning, "we received a call from the guard telling us that the factory was targeted by air with a missile and that it had caught fire. After 15 minutes, he called us again and told us that there are tanks approaching the area and that the factory was targeted with tank fire. We immediately informed the [Red Cross] and the Civil Defense in order to put out the fire in the mill," Hamada said.
The flour mill was hit by an airstrike, possibly by an F16. The missile struck the floor that housed one of the machines indispensable to the mill’s functioning, completely destroying it. In the next 60 to 90 minutes the mill was hit several times by missiles fired from an Apache helicopter. These missiles hit the upper floors of the factory, destroying more key machinery.
Hamada recounted: "What happened at the mill is a total destruction, a total destruction of the whole production line of the factory. Because this factory, in fact, is vertical, the equipment is set vertically. There are six floors. The production line was destroyed from the sixth floor to the ground floor. Three floors, the fifth, sixth and fourth, were destroyed including all the equipment, total destruction, therefore the building and the equipment. And the other three floors, the first, second and third floors, they were totally burned."
Adjoining buildings, including the grain store, were not hit. The strikes entirely disabled the factory, which has remained in disrepair because of the siege on building supplies. Even amid subsequent food shortages, a large amount of grain remains at the site but cannot be processed.
"During the war, the mill was working 24 hours a day and we had also been working 24 hours a day one month prior to this date; we were working around the clock," Hamada said. "As for the targeting, it is because a flour mill [was] working. There were four flour mills that were not producing and were not targeted."
Israeli forces occupied the disabled building until around 13 January. Hundreds of shells were found on its roof after the soldiers left. They appeared to be 40-mm grenade machine-gun spent cartridges.
Attacks on the foundations of civilian life in Gaza
Goldstone's team said Hamada and his brother provided information that was corroborated by other representatives of the Gaza business community with whom the investigators discussed the context and consequences of the strike on the flour mill.
The consequences of the strike on the flour mill were significant, his report states. Not only are all the employees out of work, the capacity of Gaza to produce milled flour, the most basic staple ingredient of the local diet, has been greatly diminished. As a result, the population of Gaza is now more dependent on the Israeli authorities’ granting permission for flour and bread to enter the Gaza Strip.
"From what we could see on the ground and from what we had in Gaza, this flour mill was the only flour mill for the past ten years providing for the needs of the Gaza Strip in wheat," Hamada said. "It is well-known everywhere in Gaza. And in Israel, they know that Al-Bader Flour Mill [which is] the strategic reserve of flour for the strip, was there."
"There is no flour mill that works except ours and it was shelled. I do not want to give conclusions. It is well-known, this is a flour mill that works and that provides for the needs of the country. It was targeted because we are in a state of war. There is no peace. What I know is that war is war. We hope that all of this will end and will be replaced by peace and that we will forget about these hearings."
The Israelis have apparently not investigated the flour mill's destruction, according to the report, nor made any suggestion that the site was targeted for military purposes.
Nevertheless, Hamada rejected any suggestion that the building was at any time used for any purpose by Palestinian armed groups. They pointed out that all of the buildings and factories were surrounded by a high wall and manned by at least one guard at night.
"There is no resistance there," Hamada said. "After the end of the war, I went to have a look and I asked are there any combatants that died here, any Israelis that died? Not at all, nobody told me of any kind of resistance in the whole area."
I do not know what they were targeting, I wasn't there," Hamada conceded. "However, I saw the results of the firing in the flour mill, ... Testimony has to be real, it's a word of truth, I cannot tell you what they targeted or who they targeted. What I did see are the empty bullets in the factory, on the factory roof, that's what I saw."
He added, however, that "All the factories in the eastern region were destroyed. Did they also have resistance? I don't know, but what I do know is that vital factories were targeted. Why? Because war is war, I say it again, and we want peace, enough war."
Addressing the UN mission directly, Hamada added: "We do not want words, we want acts. We want the United Nations to take action. We have been suffering for two full years under siege. We did not see the United Nations doing anything for us. We see that in Darfur there is a problem, the whole world goes running to Darfur, in Cambodia and Laos, everywhere in the world, but here, when we speak of the Palestinian people, everybody closes his ears, they do not want to hear about us or our problems."
Starvation as a method of warfare is prohibited
No other buildings in the industrial compound belonging to the Hamadas were damaged at the time of the strikes. "It appears that the strikes on the flour mill were intentional and precise," Goldstone's final report states.
Hamada and his brothers are well-known businessmen. Israeli authorities did not appear to consider them either before or after the military operations to be a threat, given the unrestricted issuance of their Businessman Cards and their ability to travel to Israel afterwards.
"The issuance of a Businessman Card is no trifle, especially in the context of the ongoing restrictions on trade. It is not plausible that the Israeli authorities would issue such a document to any party it regarded with suspicion," the report notes.
As for whether the flour mill could have been deemed a military objective, Goldstone notes that the building was one of the tallest in the area and would have offered extensive views to Israeli forces. The mission notes that taking control of the building might be deemed a legitimate objective in the circumstances.
"However, by 9 January the Israeli armed forces were fully aware that the flour mill could be evacuated at short notice by using the warning message system. If the reason for attacking the mill was to gain control of it for observation and control purposes, it made no sense to bomb the principal machinery and to destroy the upper floors.
There is also no suggestion that Israeli forces considered the building to be a source of enemy fire, the report states.
"The nature of the strikes on the mill and in particular the precise targeting of crucial machinery on one of the mid-level floors suggests that the intention was to disable its productive capacity," Goldstone alleges. "There appears to be no plausible justification for the extensive damage to the flour mill if the sole objective was to take control of the building. It thus appears that the only purpose was to put an end to the production of flour in the Gaza Strip."
According to the report, "there has been a violation of the grave breaches provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Unlawful and wanton destruction which is not justified by military necessity would amount to a war crime."
Having concluded that the strikes were without any military justification, and therefore wanton and unlawful, the mission found it useful to consider if there was any non-military purpose to the strikes. "The aim of the strike, if not military, could only have been to destroy the local capacity to produce flour." Thus, according to Goldstone, the question is whether such deliberate destruction of the sole remaining flour-producing capacity in the Gaza Strip can be described as having been done for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population.
International law, the report describes, prohibits acts whose specific purpose is the denial of sustenance for whatever reason, including starvation, forced displacement or anything else. "In short, the motive for denying sustenance need not be to starve the civilian population. Indeed, the motive is irrelevant."
Due to the ongoing Israeli-led blockade, Gaza's civilian population is increasingly dependent on external humanitarian assistance, whose arrival depends on permission from Israeli authorities. While it is not suggested that starvation is imminent, the health and welfare of the population at large have been profoundly affected by the blockade and the military operations.
"The only reason why starvation is not imminent however is precisely the provision of humanitarian assistance. Without such assistance Gaza’s civilian population would not be able to feed itself," the report notes.
"States cannot escape their obligations not to deny the means of sustenance simply by presuming the international community will fill the gap they have created by deliberately destroying the existing capacity.
"From the facts ascertained by it, the Mission finds that the destruction of the mill was carried out for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population, which is a violation of customary international law," the report concludes, "and may constitute a war crime."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=252905
"We received a recorded message by telephone on a landline asking us to evacuate the mill. This call came from Israel," Hamada said, in testimony to Richard Goldstone's UN inquiry.
"We evacuated the factory of all workers, a total evacuation and waited until the next day. The factory was not hit."
Following the evacuation, Hamada called a business associate in Israel, explained what had happened and asked him for advice. The associate spoke with contacts in the Israeli military, and had been told that, although the mill had been on a list of proposed targets, they had decided not to proceed with the strike. Hamada did not receive any information as to why his mill might have been targeted.
Based on these conversations and the fact that there had been no strike, the mill's employees returned to work the next day. Work continued for a number of days as flour ran out across the Strip, until a second recorded warning was received on or around 4 January 2009.
"We received another message," Hamada said. "We were told to evacuate the factory. The factory was evacuated."
Again, there was no attack. "They were put into a state of fear as a result of the false alarms," Goldstone's report states.
Hamada received a call later in the week from his business associate in Israel, who said Israeli forces told him the mill would not be hit. The employees returned to work in light of the information.
Then on 9 January, without warning, "we received a call from the guard telling us that the factory was targeted by air with a missile and that it had caught fire. After 15 minutes, he called us again and told us that there are tanks approaching the area and that the factory was targeted with tank fire. We immediately informed the [Red Cross] and the Civil Defense in order to put out the fire in the mill," Hamada said.
The flour mill was hit by an airstrike, possibly by an F16. The missile struck the floor that housed one of the machines indispensable to the mill’s functioning, completely destroying it. In the next 60 to 90 minutes the mill was hit several times by missiles fired from an Apache helicopter. These missiles hit the upper floors of the factory, destroying more key machinery.
Hamada recounted: "What happened at the mill is a total destruction, a total destruction of the whole production line of the factory. Because this factory, in fact, is vertical, the equipment is set vertically. There are six floors. The production line was destroyed from the sixth floor to the ground floor. Three floors, the fifth, sixth and fourth, were destroyed including all the equipment, total destruction, therefore the building and the equipment. And the other three floors, the first, second and third floors, they were totally burned."
Adjoining buildings, including the grain store, were not hit. The strikes entirely disabled the factory, which has remained in disrepair because of the siege on building supplies. Even amid subsequent food shortages, a large amount of grain remains at the site but cannot be processed.
"During the war, the mill was working 24 hours a day and we had also been working 24 hours a day one month prior to this date; we were working around the clock," Hamada said. "As for the targeting, it is because a flour mill [was] working. There were four flour mills that were not producing and were not targeted."
Israeli forces occupied the disabled building until around 13 January. Hundreds of shells were found on its roof after the soldiers left. They appeared to be 40-mm grenade machine-gun spent cartridges.
Attacks on the foundations of civilian life in Gaza
Goldstone's team said Hamada and his brother provided information that was corroborated by other representatives of the Gaza business community with whom the investigators discussed the context and consequences of the strike on the flour mill.
The consequences of the strike on the flour mill were significant, his report states. Not only are all the employees out of work, the capacity of Gaza to produce milled flour, the most basic staple ingredient of the local diet, has been greatly diminished. As a result, the population of Gaza is now more dependent on the Israeli authorities’ granting permission for flour and bread to enter the Gaza Strip.
"From what we could see on the ground and from what we had in Gaza, this flour mill was the only flour mill for the past ten years providing for the needs of the Gaza Strip in wheat," Hamada said. "It is well-known everywhere in Gaza. And in Israel, they know that Al-Bader Flour Mill [which is] the strategic reserve of flour for the strip, was there."
"There is no flour mill that works except ours and it was shelled. I do not want to give conclusions. It is well-known, this is a flour mill that works and that provides for the needs of the country. It was targeted because we are in a state of war. There is no peace. What I know is that war is war. We hope that all of this will end and will be replaced by peace and that we will forget about these hearings."
The Israelis have apparently not investigated the flour mill's destruction, according to the report, nor made any suggestion that the site was targeted for military purposes.
Nevertheless, Hamada rejected any suggestion that the building was at any time used for any purpose by Palestinian armed groups. They pointed out that all of the buildings and factories were surrounded by a high wall and manned by at least one guard at night.
"There is no resistance there," Hamada said. "After the end of the war, I went to have a look and I asked are there any combatants that died here, any Israelis that died? Not at all, nobody told me of any kind of resistance in the whole area."
I do not know what they were targeting, I wasn't there," Hamada conceded. "However, I saw the results of the firing in the flour mill, ... Testimony has to be real, it's a word of truth, I cannot tell you what they targeted or who they targeted. What I did see are the empty bullets in the factory, on the factory roof, that's what I saw."
He added, however, that "All the factories in the eastern region were destroyed. Did they also have resistance? I don't know, but what I do know is that vital factories were targeted. Why? Because war is war, I say it again, and we want peace, enough war."
Addressing the UN mission directly, Hamada added: "We do not want words, we want acts. We want the United Nations to take action. We have been suffering for two full years under siege. We did not see the United Nations doing anything for us. We see that in Darfur there is a problem, the whole world goes running to Darfur, in Cambodia and Laos, everywhere in the world, but here, when we speak of the Palestinian people, everybody closes his ears, they do not want to hear about us or our problems."
Starvation as a method of warfare is prohibited
No other buildings in the industrial compound belonging to the Hamadas were damaged at the time of the strikes. "It appears that the strikes on the flour mill were intentional and precise," Goldstone's final report states.
Hamada and his brothers are well-known businessmen. Israeli authorities did not appear to consider them either before or after the military operations to be a threat, given the unrestricted issuance of their Businessman Cards and their ability to travel to Israel afterwards.
"The issuance of a Businessman Card is no trifle, especially in the context of the ongoing restrictions on trade. It is not plausible that the Israeli authorities would issue such a document to any party it regarded with suspicion," the report notes.
As for whether the flour mill could have been deemed a military objective, Goldstone notes that the building was one of the tallest in the area and would have offered extensive views to Israeli forces. The mission notes that taking control of the building might be deemed a legitimate objective in the circumstances.
"However, by 9 January the Israeli armed forces were fully aware that the flour mill could be evacuated at short notice by using the warning message system. If the reason for attacking the mill was to gain control of it for observation and control purposes, it made no sense to bomb the principal machinery and to destroy the upper floors.
There is also no suggestion that Israeli forces considered the building to be a source of enemy fire, the report states.
"The nature of the strikes on the mill and in particular the precise targeting of crucial machinery on one of the mid-level floors suggests that the intention was to disable its productive capacity," Goldstone alleges. "There appears to be no plausible justification for the extensive damage to the flour mill if the sole objective was to take control of the building. It thus appears that the only purpose was to put an end to the production of flour in the Gaza Strip."
According to the report, "there has been a violation of the grave breaches provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Unlawful and wanton destruction which is not justified by military necessity would amount to a war crime."
Having concluded that the strikes were without any military justification, and therefore wanton and unlawful, the mission found it useful to consider if there was any non-military purpose to the strikes. "The aim of the strike, if not military, could only have been to destroy the local capacity to produce flour." Thus, according to Goldstone, the question is whether such deliberate destruction of the sole remaining flour-producing capacity in the Gaza Strip can be described as having been done for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population.
International law, the report describes, prohibits acts whose specific purpose is the denial of sustenance for whatever reason, including starvation, forced displacement or anything else. "In short, the motive for denying sustenance need not be to starve the civilian population. Indeed, the motive is irrelevant."
Due to the ongoing Israeli-led blockade, Gaza's civilian population is increasingly dependent on external humanitarian assistance, whose arrival depends on permission from Israeli authorities. While it is not suggested that starvation is imminent, the health and welfare of the population at large have been profoundly affected by the blockade and the military operations.
"The only reason why starvation is not imminent however is precisely the provision of humanitarian assistance. Without such assistance Gaza’s civilian population would not be able to feed itself," the report notes.
"States cannot escape their obligations not to deny the means of sustenance simply by presuming the international community will fill the gap they have created by deliberately destroying the existing capacity.
"From the facts ascertained by it, the Mission finds that the destruction of the mill was carried out for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population, which is a violation of customary international law," the report concludes, "and may constitute a war crime."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=252905
Abbas takes blame for Goldstone delay, commission says
President Mahmoud Abbas gave the directive to change the Palestinian stance on the Goldstone report at the UN Human Rights Commission following a September meeting with US and Arab officials, a report revealed Friday.
The report, aired on Al-Watan TV, was the result of months of research and interviews conducted by a commission charged with the investigation of Palestinian leaders conduct around the mishandling of the Goldstone report at the first UN Human Rights Council meeting on the document in September and October.
“We listened to testimonies of President Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Presidential aide Nimir Hammad, chief PLO Negotiator Saeb Erekat, Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki, PLO leader Yasser Abed Rabbo, Fatah member Hussein Ash-Sheikh, and Palestinian representative to the UN Ibrahim Khraisha,” Palestinian Lawmaker Dr Azmi Shu’aybi, a member of the investigation commission said in the broadcast.
Despite extensive interviews, the commission failed to pinpoint the reasons and mechanisms behind the postponement of the Goldstone report. Though Abbas said he was the one who made decision, his subordinates did not pinpoint him as the issuer of the directive, and throughout the report the commission highlighted poor communication between members.
Timeline of the decision
According to Shu’aybi, Khraisha made an initial assessment of the Goldstone report and passed his findings on to Palestinian Foreign Minister Al-Maliki. Following his discussions with PLO leaders and government officials, Khraisha went ahead and sought international support for the report, in an attempt to see it adopted by the UNHRC when it was set to be presented on 3 October.
The commission also found, however, that a letter written by Khraisha on 16 September seeking directives from Al-Maliki on the Goldstone report motion went unanswered for 17 days. The commission said the Foreign Ministry was to blame for the lack of communication to the UN representative. It was not until 3 October, the day the report was to be discussed at the UN, that the request was answered, according to the report.
As a result, between 16 and 28 September 2009, the commission found, the Palestinian stance on the Goldstone report was steady in Geneva, and an increasing amount of support for the document was earned, according to Shu’aybi quoting Khreisha.
Arab, American intervention
On 28 September, Abbas visited Washington where he attended UN General Assembly meetings as well as side meetings with the Arab Quartet (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Arab League), where he was reportedly made aware of larger issues with the international standing of the report.
According to the commission, during those meetings Abbas was told he should deal with the report very carefully, particularly because the way the report dealt with Palestinian resistance groups.
The Goldstone report said war crimes and crimes against humanity may have been committed by both the Israeli army and Palestinian militant groups. The report recommended inquiries and possibly the prosecution of those responsible for the alleged war crimes. If Palestine adopted the report, it would be responsible for the prosecution of some militant leaders.
According to Shu’aybi, it was also at this time that Abbas learned about what he called an American plan to “wage a campaign against the Palestinian delegation in Geneva,” as part of its mandate to protect the Israeli position.
US demands delay
Before 1 October 2001, the Palestinian position around the report was still to lobby for its adoption by UNHCR.
According to the commission, however, it was on 1 October that the American Ambassador in Ramallah spoke with Fayyad and asked him to delay the UNHCR vote on the Goldstone report. Fayyad testified to the commission that he refused the request, and asked Al-Maliki to contact Khraisha and make sure everything in Geneva was going as planned. Fayyad said he received word from his aide Nimir Hammad that the vote on the report would go ahead.
On the evening of Thursday 1 October 2009, Fayyad telephoned Al-Maliki to double check the information, Shu’aybi explained, saying media reports in the Israeli arena had reported figures at the UN asking for a delay. Fayyad told the commission that he was reassured by Al-Maliki that Khraisha had the situation under control and the report was going forward as planned.
The next day, the report said, Khraisha met with the Arab, African, Islamic, and representatives of the Non-Aligned Movement and told them he had been asked by the Palestinian leadership to delay the discussion of the Goldstone report.
Responding to this meeting, the report said, Pakistan’s representative to the UN asked for the delay until the next meeting of the UNHRC in March 2010.
According to the findings of the commission, the decision to request a delay was taken after Khraisha received directives from Abbas through his aide Nimir Hammad.
The source of Hammad’s directive appears to have originated from a trilateral phone call between the aide, Saeb Erekat, who was in Washington, and Khraisha in Geneva.
Abbas takes the blame
However, during the three hours of testimony Abbas gave to the commission, the President said it was he himself who requested the delay and he was ready to take responsibility.
In its conclusions, the commission found that despite American pressure to delay the report, Abbas also said that it was not that pressure that lead him to make the decision.
Shu’aybi noted that as he admitted he was at fault, “the president seemed very upset about how the delay was taken advantage of.”
His testimony for the commission contradicts an earlier television interview Abbas gave with Egyptian host Amr Adib, who pressed him on the issue. He showed Abbas a recording of the Ambassador of Pakistan formally requesting a delay on a vote, and asked the president to explain why the PA allowed the motion to go forward.
"I told the Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council that if all parties wanted to delay the vote, than he should agree," Abbas said on live television.
He said the tape clearly showed that it was not the ambassador for the PA who requested the delay.
Despite the investigations of the commission, it remained unclear whether Abbas told Hamamd, Erekat or Khraisha about the directive, and none of the officials said that Abbas had given the order.
Political fallout
While a clear answer was not found for the process behind the decision to drop the Goldstone report at the UNHRC on 3 October, the commission found near unanimous and stunned agreement over the magnitude of the fallout over the act.
According to Shu’aybi, none of the Palestinian officials involved properly estimated the reaction of Palestinians to the postponement. The only thing on the minds of the leaders influencing the decision, the commission found, were the final days in Geneva and Ramallah when the United States began applying pressure on the issue.
The commission noted that Abbas decision to delay the vote on Goldstone was wrong, and the president was to be held responsible for the repercussions of that decision. The commission also foisted blame on the foreign ministry, for failing to communicate with the UN representative.
The full report of the commission was set to be published, on the order of Abbas, but the report on Al-Watan TV said the issue of a published report has yet to be okayed by the PLO Executive Committee, which Abbas said would review the issue.
The Commission
The commission was appointed in the wake of Palestinian anger and Hamas protests against the Palestinian decision to delay the UNHRC vote on the Goldstone report. The members were appointed by Abbas’ caretaker government.
Members include:
PLO’s Executive Committee Member Dr Hanna Amira,
President of An-Najah National University in Nablus Dr Rami Hamdallah,
Palestinian lawmaker from Ramallah Dr Azmi Shu’aybi (Fida party)
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=253025
President Mahmoud Abbas gave the directive to change the Palestinian stance on the Goldstone report at the UN Human Rights Commission following a September meeting with US and Arab officials, a report revealed Friday.
The report, aired on Al-Watan TV, was the result of months of research and interviews conducted by a commission charged with the investigation of Palestinian leaders conduct around the mishandling of the Goldstone report at the first UN Human Rights Council meeting on the document in September and October.
“We listened to testimonies of President Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Presidential aide Nimir Hammad, chief PLO Negotiator Saeb Erekat, Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki, PLO leader Yasser Abed Rabbo, Fatah member Hussein Ash-Sheikh, and Palestinian representative to the UN Ibrahim Khraisha,” Palestinian Lawmaker Dr Azmi Shu’aybi, a member of the investigation commission said in the broadcast.
Despite extensive interviews, the commission failed to pinpoint the reasons and mechanisms behind the postponement of the Goldstone report. Though Abbas said he was the one who made decision, his subordinates did not pinpoint him as the issuer of the directive, and throughout the report the commission highlighted poor communication between members.
Timeline of the decision
According to Shu’aybi, Khraisha made an initial assessment of the Goldstone report and passed his findings on to Palestinian Foreign Minister Al-Maliki. Following his discussions with PLO leaders and government officials, Khraisha went ahead and sought international support for the report, in an attempt to see it adopted by the UNHRC when it was set to be presented on 3 October.
The commission also found, however, that a letter written by Khraisha on 16 September seeking directives from Al-Maliki on the Goldstone report motion went unanswered for 17 days. The commission said the Foreign Ministry was to blame for the lack of communication to the UN representative. It was not until 3 October, the day the report was to be discussed at the UN, that the request was answered, according to the report.
As a result, between 16 and 28 September 2009, the commission found, the Palestinian stance on the Goldstone report was steady in Geneva, and an increasing amount of support for the document was earned, according to Shu’aybi quoting Khreisha.
Arab, American intervention
On 28 September, Abbas visited Washington where he attended UN General Assembly meetings as well as side meetings with the Arab Quartet (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Arab League), where he was reportedly made aware of larger issues with the international standing of the report.
According to the commission, during those meetings Abbas was told he should deal with the report very carefully, particularly because the way the report dealt with Palestinian resistance groups.
The Goldstone report said war crimes and crimes against humanity may have been committed by both the Israeli army and Palestinian militant groups. The report recommended inquiries and possibly the prosecution of those responsible for the alleged war crimes. If Palestine adopted the report, it would be responsible for the prosecution of some militant leaders.
According to Shu’aybi, it was also at this time that Abbas learned about what he called an American plan to “wage a campaign against the Palestinian delegation in Geneva,” as part of its mandate to protect the Israeli position.
US demands delay
Before 1 October 2001, the Palestinian position around the report was still to lobby for its adoption by UNHCR.
According to the commission, however, it was on 1 October that the American Ambassador in Ramallah spoke with Fayyad and asked him to delay the UNHCR vote on the Goldstone report. Fayyad testified to the commission that he refused the request, and asked Al-Maliki to contact Khraisha and make sure everything in Geneva was going as planned. Fayyad said he received word from his aide Nimir Hammad that the vote on the report would go ahead.
On the evening of Thursday 1 October 2009, Fayyad telephoned Al-Maliki to double check the information, Shu’aybi explained, saying media reports in the Israeli arena had reported figures at the UN asking for a delay. Fayyad told the commission that he was reassured by Al-Maliki that Khraisha had the situation under control and the report was going forward as planned.
The next day, the report said, Khraisha met with the Arab, African, Islamic, and representatives of the Non-Aligned Movement and told them he had been asked by the Palestinian leadership to delay the discussion of the Goldstone report.
Responding to this meeting, the report said, Pakistan’s representative to the UN asked for the delay until the next meeting of the UNHRC in March 2010.
According to the findings of the commission, the decision to request a delay was taken after Khraisha received directives from Abbas through his aide Nimir Hammad.
The source of Hammad’s directive appears to have originated from a trilateral phone call between the aide, Saeb Erekat, who was in Washington, and Khraisha in Geneva.
Abbas takes the blame
However, during the three hours of testimony Abbas gave to the commission, the President said it was he himself who requested the delay and he was ready to take responsibility.
In its conclusions, the commission found that despite American pressure to delay the report, Abbas also said that it was not that pressure that lead him to make the decision.
Shu’aybi noted that as he admitted he was at fault, “the president seemed very upset about how the delay was taken advantage of.”
His testimony for the commission contradicts an earlier television interview Abbas gave with Egyptian host Amr Adib, who pressed him on the issue. He showed Abbas a recording of the Ambassador of Pakistan formally requesting a delay on a vote, and asked the president to explain why the PA allowed the motion to go forward.
"I told the Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council that if all parties wanted to delay the vote, than he should agree," Abbas said on live television.
He said the tape clearly showed that it was not the ambassador for the PA who requested the delay.
Despite the investigations of the commission, it remained unclear whether Abbas told Hamamd, Erekat or Khraisha about the directive, and none of the officials said that Abbas had given the order.
Political fallout
While a clear answer was not found for the process behind the decision to drop the Goldstone report at the UNHRC on 3 October, the commission found near unanimous and stunned agreement over the magnitude of the fallout over the act.
According to Shu’aybi, none of the Palestinian officials involved properly estimated the reaction of Palestinians to the postponement. The only thing on the minds of the leaders influencing the decision, the commission found, were the final days in Geneva and Ramallah when the United States began applying pressure on the issue.
The commission noted that Abbas decision to delay the vote on Goldstone was wrong, and the president was to be held responsible for the repercussions of that decision. The commission also foisted blame on the foreign ministry, for failing to communicate with the UN representative.
The full report of the commission was set to be published, on the order of Abbas, but the report on Al-Watan TV said the issue of a published report has yet to be okayed by the PLO Executive Committee, which Abbas said would review the issue.
The Commission
The commission was appointed in the wake of Palestinian anger and Hamas protests against the Palestinian decision to delay the UNHRC vote on the Goldstone report. The members were appointed by Abbas’ caretaker government.
Members include:
PLO’s Executive Committee Member Dr Hanna Amira,
President of An-Najah National University in Nablus Dr Rami Hamdallah,
Palestinian lawmaker from Ramallah Dr Azmi Shu’aybi (Fida party)
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=253025
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Part 13 of a series recounting the findings of South African jurist Richard Goldstone's UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.
On 8 January 2009, one year ago today, Israeli artillery shells struck the seventh-floor apartment of Dr Jaber Abu An-Naja, the former PLO ambassador to Senegal and a well-known Fatah politician. The doctor's wife and son-in-law were killed immediately as they sat on the balcony eating pastries. His wife was cut in half by the explosion and his son-in-law was thrown from the balcony on to the street below. His daughter, Ihsan, was seriously injured and taken for treatment to Al-Quds Hospital, a medical center located near Abu An-Naja's and a number of other civilian apartment buildings on Al-Abraj Street in Gaza's Tal El Hawa district, which had come under attack for four days. According to three senior doctors at the hospital and two residents from Al-Abraj Street, at some point between 3 and 6 January several tanks were stationed several hundred meters east of Al-Quds, visible from the hospital's ambulance depot. Throughout the days of 5-8 January, there was significant artillery fire on apartment buildings nearby to where Abu An-Naja's relatives were killed. The shelling on 8 January was just one incident of dozens in and around the area that damaged portions of the hospital and destroyed other buildings in their entirety during Israel's three-week assault on the Gaza Strip, which ended in late January 2009. Continuous damage to medical buildings |
When the air offensive began on 27 December, for instance, a government building opposite the hospital's administrative building on Al-Abraj Street was almost totally destroyed. The building had previously served as a criminal detention center and is still referred to locally by that designation although it had recently been used for other purposes, including customs administration. The same building was reportedly struck on a number of other occasions after 27 December, after which the site was completely demolished.
Kitty-corner to the hospital, on Jami'at Ad-Duwal Al-Arabiya Street, was another building rented to the de facto government and used primarily as a public registry office. At the time of writing, only the ground floor of the building remained. Witnesses, speaking to the Goldstone commission, indicated that the upper floors had been destroyed, probably by artillery fire, on 6 and 7 January.
By 15 January, the area immediately to the south of Al-Quds Hospital (the customs building and the registry building) had been totally or very substantially destroyed. The area to the east on Al-Abraj Street had been significantly attacked by artillery fire.
By this time, several hundred civilians had also gathered in the hospital buildings seeking safety.
The Al-Quds Hospital belongs to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS). It consists of three buildings facing west toward the sea on the corner of Jami’at Ad-Duwal Al-Arabiya Street and Al-Abraj Street in the area of Tel Al-Hawa.
The building nearest the cornerwas seven stories high. Its principal purposes were administrative and cultural rather than medical. It stored a huge quantity of PRCS archives. The middle building contained the accident and emergency treatment areas as well as other offices of medical and administrative staff. The building furthest from the corner was the main medical building with operating theaters in the basement. About 200 meters east on Al-Abraj Street was the PRCS ambulance depot.
The buildings all suffered significant damage in the course of an Israeli bombardment on 15 January 2009, which included the use of white phosphorous, endangering the lives of staff and more than 50 patients. There was no warning given for any of the attacks.
Direct Attack on the Hospital
During the night of 14 January, Israeli forces began an extended barrage of artillery fire over the area. It continued into the morning of 15 January. Between 8 and 9am doctors in the main building were in the principal meeting room when shells landed on either side of the building. They saw white phosphorous wedges burning near a container of diesel and efforts were successfully made to move those away.
The initial explosions blew out the office windows. The administrative building on the corner was also hit. Because the hospital building was largely constructed out of timber (rare in Gaza), staff were worried that the fire would spread. A witness described how hospital staff, including senior doctors, all sought to break, by hand, the wooden bridge linking the administrative building to the hospital building, in an attempt to prevent the fire from spreading.
Shortly after the initial explosions and fire were observed, a tank shell directly penetrated the rear of the middle hospital building. That part of the building was made of corrugated iron. The shell made a clearly defined home in the hospital wall, and the impact crater continues through the cement wall into the hospital's pharmacy.The pharmacy was completely destroyed as a result.
An eyewitness said that through the resulting hole, he observed a tank on a road between two buildings about 400 meters east of the building. Although he could not say whether it was this tank that had struck the hospital directly, it was in a direct line in relation to the entry point of the shell.
No civil defense forces were available to fight the fire at the hospital, so medical staff worked on their own to save the building and ensure the safety of the patients.
It was not until 4pm that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was able to respond and help evacuate patients. Officials at the ICRC made it clear upon arrival that it would be able to carry out this procedure only once. Those not evacuated at 4pm were relocated to the operating theaters of the damaged hospital.
At 8pm, another fire broke out in the hospital. As a result, a total evacuation of remaining patients and those who had sought refuge at the hospital was carried out. It was at this stage that one of the senior doctors took an eight-year-old girl who had been struck by a bullet in the jaw and was critically ill to Ash-Shifa Hospital, where she later died. One of the medical staff at the hospital told the Goldstone commission that there was very heavy fire in the area, and he felt sure there were direct hits by Israeli forces on the ambulance depot.
As the hospital was evacuated, the depot, 200 meters to the east in Al-Abraj Street, sustained damage, and one of its principal buildings was entirely destroyed. Remnants of three PRCS ambulances that had been parked at the entrance to the depot were seen were still visible by summer. Two had been crushed by tanks but not burned out. The other ambulance showed signs of having been struck directly in the front below the windscreen by a missile of some description and having been burned out.
The devastation caused to both the hospital buildings, including the loss of all archives in the administrative building, and the ambulance depot was immense, as was the risk to the safety of the patients.
The Israeli position
In the conclusions of their investigations on 22 April 2009, Israeli authorities did not specifically mention the incident at Al-Quds Hospital, although a portion of it addresses some allegations regarding the use of ambulances. In another report, released in July 2009, the Israeli government quotes part of an article from Newsweek magazine:
One of the most notorious incidents during the war was the Jan. 15 shelling of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society buildings in the downtown Tal-al Hawa part of Gaza City, followed by a shell hitting their Al Quds Hospital next door; the subsequent fire forced all 500 patients to be evacuated.
Asked if there were any militants firing from the hospital or the Red Crescent buildings, hospital director general Dr. Khalid Judah chose his words carefully.
"I am not able to say if anyone was using the PRCS buildings [the two Palestine Red Crescent Society buildings adjacent to the hospital], but I know for a fact that no one was using the hospital."
In the Tal-al Hawa neighborhood nearby, however, Talal Safadi, an official in the leftist Palestinian People's Party, said that resistance fighters were firing from positions all around the hospital. He shrugged that off, having a bigger beef with Hamas.
"They failed to win the battle." Or as his fellow PPP official, Walid al Awad, put it: "It was a mistake to give Israel the excuse to come in." [para. 173].
While the Israeli government does not comment further on the specific attack, it would appear to invoke these comments to justify the strikes on the hospital and surrounding area.
The final report of Richard Goldstone's UN inquiry understood that the Israeli government "may consider relying on journalists' reporting as likely to be treated as more impartial than reliance on its own intelligence information," but said its investigators were "nonetheless struck by the lack of any suggestion in Israel's report [PDF] of July 2009 that there were members of armed groups present in the hospital at the time."
The report also said it addressed questions to Israel's government regarding the use of white phosphorous munitions against the hospital and the direct military advantage pursued by their use under the circumstances, but received no reply.
Factual findings
The Goldstone report finds that on the morning of 15 January the hospital building and the administrative building were struck by a number of shells containing white phosphorous and by at least one high explosive shell. "The fires these caused led to panic and chaos among the sick and wounded, necessitated two evacuations in extremely perilous conditions, caused huge financial losses as a result of the damage and put the lives of several hundred civilians including medical staff at very great risk."
In its conclusions, the mission also notes that as a result of the conditions the attack created, the hospital was unable to provide the necessary care for an eight-year-old girl. "Despite heroic attempts to save her, she died later in another hospital. The girl had been shot by an Israeli sniper. The Mission finds the Israeli armed forces responsible for her death."
On the issue of armed groups being present in the hospital buildings, the team does not agree that anything in the extract cited from Newsweek magazine justifies the conclusion that the hospital premises were being used by armed groups.
The fact that Dr Judah spoke with certainty about matters within his knowledge "cannot be presumed to mean that he believed other parts of the hospital premises were being used by armed groups," the Goldstone report notes, speculating that it could have been "journalistic gloss and is tantamount to putting words in the mouth of Dr. Judah." The comments attributed to Safadi that "resistance fighters were firing from positions all around the hospital" can mean either that people were inside the hospital firing or were in positions outside but near to the hospital, Goldstone adds, "The journalist did not clarify precisely what was meant."
The mission carried out over eight hours of interviews with senior and junior staff at the hospital, and having sought to verify the matter with others, including journalists who were in the area at that time, concluded that it was unlikely there was any armed presence in any of the hospital buildings at the time of the attack. It also notes that no warning was given at any point of an imminent strike and at no time has the Israeli government suggested such a warning was given, compared to other instances in which they insist they did.
Goldstone's report states that in reviewing the scene at the time of the strikes, "it is important to bear in mind that a great deal of destruction had already occurred and that buildings with an apparent connection to the local government had been attacked and largely destroyed. As such, Israeli tanks had a relatively clear view of the area immediately to the south of the hospital.
"The Mission also notes that as a result of the attacks on al-Abraj Street by tanks for several days, the scope for resistance, if any, from that particular quarter had been significantly reduced.
The mission concedes that it was aware of reports [PDF] that there was significant resistance from Palestinian groups in the area on the night of 14 January, in which Israeli troops entered buildings along the street and allegedly used human shields to check if there was any presence of enemy combatants of explosive devices and found none.
Legal findings
Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides that civilian hospitals may in no circumstances be the object of attack but shall at all times be respected and protected by the parties to the conflict. Civilian hospitals' protection shall cease "only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit and after such warning has remained unheeded," article 19 states.
"Even in the unlikely event that there was any armed group present on hospital premises, there is no suggestion even by the Israeli authorities that a warning was given to the hospital of an intention to strike it," the Goldstone report states. "As such the Mission finds on the information before it that Israeli armed forces violated articles 18 and 19 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
"On considering the information before it, the Mission takes the view that there was intent to strike the hospital, as evidenced in particular by the high explosive artillery shell that penetrated the rear of the hospital and destroyed the pharmacy.
"Even if it is suggested that there was no intent to directly strike the hospital but that Palestinian armed groups had taken up positions near al-Quds hospital, the Israeli armed forces would still have been bound to ensure that risk of death, injury or damage to the people in the hospital or the hospital itself would not be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated in attacking the hospital.
"Taking into account the weapons used, and in particular the use of white phosphorous in and around a hospital that the Israeli armed forces knew was not only dealing with scores of injured and wounded but also giving shelter to several hundred civilians, the Mission finds, based on all the information available to it, that in directly striking the hospital and the ambulance depot the Israeli armed forces in these circumstances violated article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and violated customary international law in relation to proportionality."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=252710
Kitty-corner to the hospital, on Jami'at Ad-Duwal Al-Arabiya Street, was another building rented to the de facto government and used primarily as a public registry office. At the time of writing, only the ground floor of the building remained. Witnesses, speaking to the Goldstone commission, indicated that the upper floors had been destroyed, probably by artillery fire, on 6 and 7 January.
By 15 January, the area immediately to the south of Al-Quds Hospital (the customs building and the registry building) had been totally or very substantially destroyed. The area to the east on Al-Abraj Street had been significantly attacked by artillery fire.
By this time, several hundred civilians had also gathered in the hospital buildings seeking safety.
The Al-Quds Hospital belongs to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS). It consists of three buildings facing west toward the sea on the corner of Jami’at Ad-Duwal Al-Arabiya Street and Al-Abraj Street in the area of Tel Al-Hawa.
The building nearest the cornerwas seven stories high. Its principal purposes were administrative and cultural rather than medical. It stored a huge quantity of PRCS archives. The middle building contained the accident and emergency treatment areas as well as other offices of medical and administrative staff. The building furthest from the corner was the main medical building with operating theaters in the basement. About 200 meters east on Al-Abraj Street was the PRCS ambulance depot.
The buildings all suffered significant damage in the course of an Israeli bombardment on 15 January 2009, which included the use of white phosphorous, endangering the lives of staff and more than 50 patients. There was no warning given for any of the attacks.
Direct Attack on the Hospital
During the night of 14 January, Israeli forces began an extended barrage of artillery fire over the area. It continued into the morning of 15 January. Between 8 and 9am doctors in the main building were in the principal meeting room when shells landed on either side of the building. They saw white phosphorous wedges burning near a container of diesel and efforts were successfully made to move those away.
The initial explosions blew out the office windows. The administrative building on the corner was also hit. Because the hospital building was largely constructed out of timber (rare in Gaza), staff were worried that the fire would spread. A witness described how hospital staff, including senior doctors, all sought to break, by hand, the wooden bridge linking the administrative building to the hospital building, in an attempt to prevent the fire from spreading.
Shortly after the initial explosions and fire were observed, a tank shell directly penetrated the rear of the middle hospital building. That part of the building was made of corrugated iron. The shell made a clearly defined home in the hospital wall, and the impact crater continues through the cement wall into the hospital's pharmacy.The pharmacy was completely destroyed as a result.
An eyewitness said that through the resulting hole, he observed a tank on a road between two buildings about 400 meters east of the building. Although he could not say whether it was this tank that had struck the hospital directly, it was in a direct line in relation to the entry point of the shell.
No civil defense forces were available to fight the fire at the hospital, so medical staff worked on their own to save the building and ensure the safety of the patients.
It was not until 4pm that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was able to respond and help evacuate patients. Officials at the ICRC made it clear upon arrival that it would be able to carry out this procedure only once. Those not evacuated at 4pm were relocated to the operating theaters of the damaged hospital.
At 8pm, another fire broke out in the hospital. As a result, a total evacuation of remaining patients and those who had sought refuge at the hospital was carried out. It was at this stage that one of the senior doctors took an eight-year-old girl who had been struck by a bullet in the jaw and was critically ill to Ash-Shifa Hospital, where she later died. One of the medical staff at the hospital told the Goldstone commission that there was very heavy fire in the area, and he felt sure there were direct hits by Israeli forces on the ambulance depot.
As the hospital was evacuated, the depot, 200 meters to the east in Al-Abraj Street, sustained damage, and one of its principal buildings was entirely destroyed. Remnants of three PRCS ambulances that had been parked at the entrance to the depot were seen were still visible by summer. Two had been crushed by tanks but not burned out. The other ambulance showed signs of having been struck directly in the front below the windscreen by a missile of some description and having been burned out.
The devastation caused to both the hospital buildings, including the loss of all archives in the administrative building, and the ambulance depot was immense, as was the risk to the safety of the patients.
The Israeli position
In the conclusions of their investigations on 22 April 2009, Israeli authorities did not specifically mention the incident at Al-Quds Hospital, although a portion of it addresses some allegations regarding the use of ambulances. In another report, released in July 2009, the Israeli government quotes part of an article from Newsweek magazine:
One of the most notorious incidents during the war was the Jan. 15 shelling of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society buildings in the downtown Tal-al Hawa part of Gaza City, followed by a shell hitting their Al Quds Hospital next door; the subsequent fire forced all 500 patients to be evacuated.
Asked if there were any militants firing from the hospital or the Red Crescent buildings, hospital director general Dr. Khalid Judah chose his words carefully.
"I am not able to say if anyone was using the PRCS buildings [the two Palestine Red Crescent Society buildings adjacent to the hospital], but I know for a fact that no one was using the hospital."
In the Tal-al Hawa neighborhood nearby, however, Talal Safadi, an official in the leftist Palestinian People's Party, said that resistance fighters were firing from positions all around the hospital. He shrugged that off, having a bigger beef with Hamas.
"They failed to win the battle." Or as his fellow PPP official, Walid al Awad, put it: "It was a mistake to give Israel the excuse to come in." [para. 173].
While the Israeli government does not comment further on the specific attack, it would appear to invoke these comments to justify the strikes on the hospital and surrounding area.
The final report of Richard Goldstone's UN inquiry understood that the Israeli government "may consider relying on journalists' reporting as likely to be treated as more impartial than reliance on its own intelligence information," but said its investigators were "nonetheless struck by the lack of any suggestion in Israel's report [PDF] of July 2009 that there were members of armed groups present in the hospital at the time."
The report also said it addressed questions to Israel's government regarding the use of white phosphorous munitions against the hospital and the direct military advantage pursued by their use under the circumstances, but received no reply.
Factual findings
The Goldstone report finds that on the morning of 15 January the hospital building and the administrative building were struck by a number of shells containing white phosphorous and by at least one high explosive shell. "The fires these caused led to panic and chaos among the sick and wounded, necessitated two evacuations in extremely perilous conditions, caused huge financial losses as a result of the damage and put the lives of several hundred civilians including medical staff at very great risk."
In its conclusions, the mission also notes that as a result of the conditions the attack created, the hospital was unable to provide the necessary care for an eight-year-old girl. "Despite heroic attempts to save her, she died later in another hospital. The girl had been shot by an Israeli sniper. The Mission finds the Israeli armed forces responsible for her death."
On the issue of armed groups being present in the hospital buildings, the team does not agree that anything in the extract cited from Newsweek magazine justifies the conclusion that the hospital premises were being used by armed groups.
The fact that Dr Judah spoke with certainty about matters within his knowledge "cannot be presumed to mean that he believed other parts of the hospital premises were being used by armed groups," the Goldstone report notes, speculating that it could have been "journalistic gloss and is tantamount to putting words in the mouth of Dr. Judah." The comments attributed to Safadi that "resistance fighters were firing from positions all around the hospital" can mean either that people were inside the hospital firing or were in positions outside but near to the hospital, Goldstone adds, "The journalist did not clarify precisely what was meant."
The mission carried out over eight hours of interviews with senior and junior staff at the hospital, and having sought to verify the matter with others, including journalists who were in the area at that time, concluded that it was unlikely there was any armed presence in any of the hospital buildings at the time of the attack. It also notes that no warning was given at any point of an imminent strike and at no time has the Israeli government suggested such a warning was given, compared to other instances in which they insist they did.
Goldstone's report states that in reviewing the scene at the time of the strikes, "it is important to bear in mind that a great deal of destruction had already occurred and that buildings with an apparent connection to the local government had been attacked and largely destroyed. As such, Israeli tanks had a relatively clear view of the area immediately to the south of the hospital.
"The Mission also notes that as a result of the attacks on al-Abraj Street by tanks for several days, the scope for resistance, if any, from that particular quarter had been significantly reduced.
The mission concedes that it was aware of reports [PDF] that there was significant resistance from Palestinian groups in the area on the night of 14 January, in which Israeli troops entered buildings along the street and allegedly used human shields to check if there was any presence of enemy combatants of explosive devices and found none.
Legal findings
Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides that civilian hospitals may in no circumstances be the object of attack but shall at all times be respected and protected by the parties to the conflict. Civilian hospitals' protection shall cease "only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit and after such warning has remained unheeded," article 19 states.
"Even in the unlikely event that there was any armed group present on hospital premises, there is no suggestion even by the Israeli authorities that a warning was given to the hospital of an intention to strike it," the Goldstone report states. "As such the Mission finds on the information before it that Israeli armed forces violated articles 18 and 19 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
"On considering the information before it, the Mission takes the view that there was intent to strike the hospital, as evidenced in particular by the high explosive artillery shell that penetrated the rear of the hospital and destroyed the pharmacy.
"Even if it is suggested that there was no intent to directly strike the hospital but that Palestinian armed groups had taken up positions near al-Quds hospital, the Israeli armed forces would still have been bound to ensure that risk of death, injury or damage to the people in the hospital or the hospital itself would not be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated in attacking the hospital.
"Taking into account the weapons used, and in particular the use of white phosphorous in and around a hospital that the Israeli armed forces knew was not only dealing with scores of injured and wounded but also giving shelter to several hundred civilians, the Mission finds, based on all the information available to it, that in directly striking the hospital and the ambulance depot the Israeli armed forces in these circumstances violated article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and violated customary international law in relation to proportionality."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=252710
