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4/12/2002 (24:11) |
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13 April 2002 / 0 Israeli Army commits inhuman actions in Palestine
By Sam Bahour, Special to Arab News
AL-BIREH, West Bank — The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) attorney Manal Hazzan sent an urgent appeal to the Minister of Defense, Binyamin Ben Eliezer demanding an end to the severe human rights violations perpetrated by the Israeli Army within the framework of recent military actions in the refugee camps and population centers of the occupied territories.
For more than two weeks Israeli Army forces have taken widespread actions in refugee camps through the territories, including Balata, Jenin, Dheisheh, Ayda, Al-Amri, Jalzun, Tul Karem, Nur Shams, Jabaliya, Tal a Sultan, Al Aze and others, and also in additional Palestinian population centers in the cities of Jenin, Qalqilya, Tul Karem, Ramallah and others. These actions entail egregious human rights abuses including violating the right to life, prohibiting access to medical treatment and destroying basic living conditions (housing, water and electricity).
According to the reports of LAW: The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, 113 people have been killed and 368 injured in Israeli Army actions during the period from February 28th — March 10th 2002. The Red Crescent Society reports that 112 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli Army fire in the first days of March, and an additional 513 injured.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel reports that 42 Palestinians have been killed this past weekend alone. The large-scale loss of life and high number of people injured as a result of Israeli Army actions raise serious fears that the Israeli Army fires at and injures people without distinguishing between those participating in the fighting and the civilian population, who are protected by international humanitarian law.
Incidents of firing at medical teams and ambulances, and the number of children killed in the past weeks, serve to reinforce the fear that there are either no clear directives governing opening fire, or that the existing directives do not comply with the provisions of Israeli law, international humanitarian law, or the tests of reasonableness and proportionality, and are therefore illegal.
In addition to the violations set forth above, we are witness to the fact that the latest Israeli Army actions are accompanied by severe infringement of the right to medical services and disruption of the work of emergency medical teams.
According to reports of the International Red Cross, the Red Crescent, Physicians for Human Rights and media sources, Israeli Army forces continue to prevent the passage of ambulances into Palestinian cities and population centers, as well as prohibit the removal of the injured from these areas.
Numerous incidents of firing upon ambulances and medical teams resulted in the death of injured persons and also the tragic deaths of the director of the Red Crescent in Jenin, Dr. Khalil Saliman, the director of a hospital in Bethlehem, two ambulance drivers and the injury of members of various medical teams.
Last Thursday, in the wake of the Israeli Army action that was dubbed ‘unprecedented in its breadth’ according to reports of the Israeli Army spokesperson, the hospital in Ramallah announced that the result of the destruction of infrastructure in that area caused a severe lack of oxygen supplies, which was likely to result in the loss of innocent lives.
International humanitarian law and Israeli law require Israel, including the Israeli Army forces and its soldiers, to provide protection for the sick and injured, and to facilitate the search for and evacuation of the wounded.
It is Israel’s obligation under international humanitarian law to provide protection to hospitals, patients, the injured and medical vehicle convoys.
This ongoing protection is mandatory except in cases in which it is clear beyond any doubt that these institutions are no longer fulfilling their humanitarian function, but are deliberately being used for actions against Israeli Army forces.
Against the backdrop of these events and in contrast to declarations of the Israeli Army spokesperson, ACRI received additional reports that Israeli Army tanks continue to besiege the government hospital in the city and prevented the passage of wounded, actions that are both illegal and immoral.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) published a report estimating the damage inflicted on the homes of Palestinian refugee camp residents, infrastructure and public buildings. According to this report, 1,620 residential dwellings and 14 public buildings, including schools and clinics, were severely damaged. The report confirms the causal connection between this damage and the shootings, shellings, explosions and demolition of structures and walls by Israeli Army tanks.
Within the framework of Israeli Army actions in the refugee camps, soldiers systematically indiscriminately destroyed walls of homes and tramped through houses of frightened Palestinian families. These homes are populated, naturally, by women, children and the elderly, who live in crowded and dire conditions reflecting their refugee status. The destructive actions of the Israeli Army were carried out with complete disregard for the homes of innocent people, in the absence of any offer of alternative accommodation. This wanton disrespect displays contempt of the residents and results in damage to their property, dignity and privacy not justified by military needs.
The method of ‘passing’ through the walls of homes is especially grave given the fact that this entailed random destruction of all walls in the path of the armed forces, and thus caused general destruction to the houses. This mass destruction does not meet the test of proportionality for military actions.
In addition to the deliberate damage done to houses, the army destroyed infrastructure that cut off the flow of electricity and water in a number of Palestinian population centers. Hundreds of thousands of residents of Qalqilya, Balata, Dheisheh and Bethlehem are still living without a water supply following the Israeli Army invasion of these cities. The flow of electricity was also cut off in Bethlehem and Dheisheh. Residents of the cities of Ramallah and Hebron are also living under similar distress.
These actions contravene international humanitarian law, first and foremost as they harm a civilian population legally entitled to protection. The fact that the discontinuation of electricity and water continued for several days, and affected the entire civilian population of these cities, constitutes collective punishment and fails to pass the test of proportionality.
Israeli Army activities, as described above, were accompanied by declarations of high-ranking military and government officials concerning their goals. In a blatant and appalling step, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared with pride at the beginning of the actions that their goal is to ‘hit them hard and cause a large number of deaths and injuries,’ as quoted by the Internet edition of Ha‚aretz on 3 March 2002.
At the time of the invasion of the Balata and Jenin refugee camps, the official website of the Israeli Army spokesperson featured high-ranking military officers noting that the goal of the action was to make it clear ‘that there will be no places we cannot reach.‚ Brigadier General Yitzhak Gershon added that ‘there was no intention to detain activists, but primarily to make it clear that the Israeli Army is capable of acting in every place it wishes to.’ Minister Matan Vilnai made similar statements in the nightly edition of Channel One news on March 12th namely that the goal of the action in Ramallah is ‘to hit the city which is the symbol of power’ and ‘every place where we decide the Israeli Army will enter.’
These declarations clearly demonstrate the lack of military justification or necessity and show in no uncertain terms the egregious and gratuitous nature of the actions. The gross violations of the most fundamental human rights of a protected civilian population, in light of the articulated goals of the actions as quoted above, show that these are actions of retaliation and collective punishment, expressly forbidden by international humanitarian law that Israel is obligated to uphold and on moral grounds.
These actions are further forbidden as they fail the tests of reasonableness and proportionality, both of which are mandated by Israeli and international law. In light of the above, we request that you instruct the Israeli Army commanders as follows:
1. To halt the severe human rights violations committed by Israeli Army forces in the fighting in refugee camps and Palestinian population centers in the territories.
2. To respect the right to life, the value of life, and to stop the killing of innocent persons and the firing at medical teams and ambulances.
3. To respect the right to receive medical treatment, to permit and even assist in the evacuation of wounded Palestinians and others, and to permit the steady supply of medicines and oxygen to hospitals.
4. To respect human dignity, preserve the homes of the civilian population as an integral part of protecting basic human rights and the fundamental right to adequate housing, and to halt the house demolition methods and the Israeli Army practice of hammering holes in house walls in order as a passageway from home to home in a clandestine manner.
(Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American businessman living in the besieged Palestinian city of Al-Bireh in the West Bank. He may be reached at sbahour@palnet.com and other of his writings may be found at://www.amin.org/eng/sam_bahour/.)
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