Report

On September 15, 2009, a 574 page report was released. ^[64] The report concluded that the Israel Defence Force (IDF) and Palestinian militant groups had committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity. While the report condemned violations by both sides, it differentiated between the moral and legal severity of the violations of the Israeli forces compared to those of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.^[65][66]Goldstone stated that the mission "wasn’t an investigation, it was a fact-finding mission” and that the conclusion that war crimes had been committed "was always intended as conditional". He described the allegations as "a useful road map" for independent investigations by Israel and the Palestinians.^[67] He later added that the mission did not conduct a judicial investigation, and stated that its findings did not amount to "the criminal standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt". He described it as a prima facie case, "reasonable on weighing the evidence" and said that the information obtained would not be admissible as evidence in a criminal court.^[68]

[edit] Accusations against Israel

[edit] Blockade of Gaza allegations

The report stated that the blockade constituted a violation of Israel's obligations as an occupying power in Gaza.^[69]

[edit] Civilian targeting allegations

The report disputes Israel's claim that the Gaza war would have been conducted as a response to rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, saying that at least in part the war was targeted against the "people of Gaza as a whole". Intimidation against the population was seen as an aim of the war. .^[70] The report also says that Israel’s military assault on Gaza was designed to "humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability”.^[48]

The report focused on 36 cases that it said constituted a representative sample. In 11 of these episodes, it said the Israeli military carried out direct attacks against civilians, including some in which civilians were shot “while they were trying to leave their homes to walk to a safer place, waving white flags”.^[48] Talking to Bill Moyers Journal, Goldstone said that the committee chose 36 incidents that represented the highest death toll, where there seemed to be little or no military justification for what happened.^[71] According to the report, another alleged war crime committed by IDF include “wanton” destruction of food production, water and sewerage facilities; the report also asserts that some attacks, which were supposedly aimed to kill small number of combatants amidst significant numbers of civilians, were disproportionate.^[48]

The report concluded that Israel violated the Fourth Geneva Convention by targeting civilians, which it labeled "a grave breach".^[72] It also claimed that the violations were "systematic and deliberate", which placed the blame in the first place on those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw the operations.^[73] The report recommended, inter alia, that Israel pay reparations to Palestinians living in Gaza for property damage caused during the conflict.^[74]

[edit] Al-Maqadmah mosque incident

The report stated that the strike on the al-Maqadmah mosque on the outskirts of Jabilyah occurred when between 200 and 300 men and women attended for their evening prayer, with 15 people being killed and 40 wounded as a result of the attack. The Mission has established that the Israeli armed forces fired a missile that struck near the doorway of the mosque. The Mission found that the mosque was damaged and lodged in its interior walls with "small metal cubes", several of which were retrieved by the Mission when it inspected the site. The Mission concluded that the mosque had been hit by an air-to-ground missile fitted with a shrapnel fragmentation sleeve, fired from an aircraft. The Mission based its findings on investigation of the site, photographs and interviewing witnesses. The Mission found no indications that the mosque was used to launch rockets, store munitions or shelter combatants. The Mission also found that no other damage was done in the area at the time, making the attack an isolated incident. The Mission concluded that the Israelis intentionally bombed the mosque.^[3][75] Judge Goldstone said: "Assuming that weapons were stored in the mosque, it would not be a war crime to bomb it at night... It would be a war crime to bomb it during the day when 350 people are praying". He further added that there is no other possible interpretation for what could have occurred other than a deliberate targeting of civilians.^[67] The report also reproduces a statement from the Israeli government concerning the attack, where the Israeli government both denies that the mosque was attacked and states that the casualties of the attack were Hamas operatives. The report says that the position of the Israeli government contains "apparent contradictions" and is "unsatisfactory" and "demonstrably false".^[3]

[edit] Zeitoun incident

According to interviews with family members, neighbors, Palestinian Red Crescent personnel, submissions from various NGOs and visits to the site, the extended al-Samouni family gathered together in one house after the fighting in the area was over, ordered there by Israeli soldiers patrolling their Gaza neighborhood of Zeytoun as part of the ground phase of the Gaza War; when five men stepped out of the house to collect firewood, a missile struck them, fired, possibly, from an Apache helicopter; several more missiles followed, this time aimed directly at the house. In all, 21 family members were killed, including women and children. When the surviving al-Samounis attempted to leave and make their way to Gaza City, they were told by an Israeli soldier to return to the house.^[67] In April 2011, Goldstone wrote that the shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image.^[76]

[edit] Al-Fakhura school incident

The report says that IDF's mortar shelling near a United Nations-run Al-Fakhura school in the Jabaliya refugee camp, which was sheltering some 1,300 people, killed 35 and wounded up to 40 people. The investigation did not exclude the possibility that Israeli forces were responding to fire from an armed Palestinian group, as Israel said, but said that this and similar attacks "cannot meet the test of what a reasonable commander would have determined to be an acceptable loss of civilian life for the military advantage sought".^[48] The mission criticized IDF for the choice of the weapons for the supposed counterstrike and concluded that the IDF fire at the Al-Fakhura street violated the law of proportionality.^[77]

[edit] Abd Rabbo family incident

According to the Mission's report, the committee found Khaled and Kawthar Abd Rabbo to be credible and reliable witnesses and it had no reason to doubt the veracity of the main elements of their testimony, which it says is consistent with the accounts it received from other eyewitnesses and NGOs.^[77] The report concludes that the Israeli soldiers deliberately shot at the family members, as they could not perceive any danger from the house, its occupants or the surroundings. The report bases its conclusion on the premise that the family, consisting of a man, a young and an elderly woman and three small girls, some of them waving white flags, stepped out of the house and stood still for several minutes waiting for instructions from the soldiers.^[77]

[edit] White phosphorus allegations

The report says that Israeli forces were "systematically reckless" in determining the use of white phosphorus in built-up areas.^[78] The writers highlighted the Israeli attack on the UN Relief and Works Agency compound in Gaza City on 15 January, the attack on the Al Quds hospital, and the attack on the Al Wafa hospital, each of which involved using white phosphorus. They described its use as disproportionate or excessive under international law. More generally, the UN report recommended that "serious consideration should be given to banning the use of white phosphorus in built-up areas.”^[79]

[edit] Human shields allegations

The report also accused Israel of using Palestinians as “human shields” and torturing detainees.^[79] The human shields accusations were supported in 2010, with Israel charging two soldiers with forcing a 9-year-old Palestinian boy to open bags suspected of containing bombs.^[80]

[edit] Accusations against Palestinian militants

The report also stated there is evidence that Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity by deliberately launching rockets and firing mortars into Israel, calculated to kill civilians and damage civilian structures.^[81] The report accused Palestinian armed groups of causing psychological trauma to the civilians within the range of the rockets. It also concluded that killings and abuses of members of the Fatah political movement amount to a “serious violation of human rights”.^[48]

The Mission, however, found no evidence of Palestinian armed groups placing civilians in areas where attacks were being launched; of engaging in combat in civilian dress; or of using a mosque for military purposes or to shield military activities.^[82] This statement contrasted with media reports that Hamas fighters wore civilian clothes and concealed their weapons.^[83] In March 2009, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (Malam) published a report that included material supplied by the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) as part of an effort to counter the Goldstone Report. It included videos and photographs reportedly showing that "dozens of mosques that were used by Hamas to store weapons, functioned as command centers or whose grounds were used to fire rockets into Israel."^[84]

While discussing an obligation of Palestinian armed groups to protect the civilian population in Gaza, the report notes that those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian armed groups. The Mission does not discount that the interviewees’ reluctance may have stemmed from a fear of reprisals.^[85] The report also criticized the treatment of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and called for his release.

[edit] Reactions

[edit] Israel

The Israeli government issued an initial 32-point formal response to the fact-finding mission's report on 24 September 2009. The response listed a series of what it argued were serious flaws and biases in the report, finally concluding that the report perverts international law to serve a political agenda. (See below.)

Also in October 2009, Israel pressured the Palestinian president to postpone asking for a UN vote on the Goldstone report. Yuval Diskin, head of the Israeli Shin Bet security service, met in Ramallah with President Mahmud Abbas and informed him that if Abbas refuses to ask to postpone the UN vote on the Goldstone report then Israel will turn the West Bank into a "second Gaza": the Shin Bet chief told Abbas that if he did not ask for a deferral of the vote, Israel would withdraw permission for mobile phone company Wataniya to operate in the Palestinian Authority and threatened to revoke the easing of restrictions on movement within the West Bank that had been implemented earlier in 2009.^[86]

Israeli President Shimon Peres said that the report "makes a mockery of history" and that "it does not distinguish between the aggressor and the defender. War is crime and the attacker is the criminal. The defender has no choice. The Hamas terror organization is the one who started the war and also carried out other awful crimes. Hamas has used terrorism for years against Israeli children." Peres also stated that "the report gives de facto legitimacy to terrorist initiatives and ignores the obligation and right of every country to defend itself, as the UN itself had clearly stated." He added that the report "Failed to supply any other way for Hamas fire to stop. The IDF's operations have boosted the West Bank's economy, liberated Lebanon from Hezbollah terror and allowed Gazans to resume normalcy. The Israeli government withdrew (from Gaza) and Hamas began a murderous rampage, firing thousands of shells on women and children – innocent civilians, instead of rebuilding Gaza and caring for the population's welfare. (Hamas) builds tunnels and used civilians and children to shield terrorists and hide weapons."^[87]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "The Goldstone Report is a field court-martial, and its findings were prewritten. This is a prize for terror. The report makes it difficult for democracies to fight terror."^[88] On another occasion, Netanyahu said that the report ignored Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and the Palestinian rocket attacks that preceded the war. He also warned world leaders that they and their anti-terror forces could be targets for charges similar to those in the report.^[89] At the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu called the report biased and unjust, asking: "Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists? We must know the answer to that question now. Only if we have the confidence that we can defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace."^[90]

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said: "The Goldstone Commission is a commission established with the aim of finding Israel guilty of crimes ahead of time, [the commission] was dispatched by countries in which the terms 'human rights' and 'combat ethics' are unknown". He added that "the IDF was forced to deal with the lowest form of terrorists that set themselves the goal of killing women and children [by] hiding behind women and children. The state of Israel will continue to protect its citizens from the attacks of the terrorists and the terror organizations, and will continue to protect its soldiers from hypocritical and distorted attacks."^[91]

 

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