Palestinian Human Rights

"On 14 November, a woman, her 11-month-old infant, and an 87-year-old adult in Al Zaitoun were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel."
"In addition, OHCHR received reports related to an incident in which two civilians, including a child, were killed, and five persons, including three children, were injured, as a result of what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short and hit a house in Al-Quds Street, near Khilla Gas Station, Jabalya, on 16 November."
"Six civilians, including one woman and three children, may have been killed by rockets fired by Palestinian armed groups that landed in Gaza."
"While some projectiles were directed at military objectives, many, if not the vast majority of the Palestinian attacks on Israel constituted indiscriminate attacks. Such attacks violate international humanitarian law."
"Most rockets fired by the armed groups did not seem to be directed at a specific military objective. Furthermore, many Palestinian armed groups directly and indirectly indicated their determination to -- and took responsibility for -- attacks on Israeli civilians or large population centres in Israel. Such acts clearly violate international humanitarian law."
"The [Palestinian] armed groups failed to take all feasible precautions in attacks, in particular by launching rockets from populated areas, which put the population at grave risk."
UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

So there you have it, a somewhat balanced critique by an authorized agency of human rights abuses relating to the second IDF-Gaza conflict. Palestinian armed groups, criticized for indiscriminate attacks across the border from Gaza into Israel, the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians, the launching of rockets from populated areas within Gaza clearly endangering the Gazan public, and the summary execution of suspected/alleged Israeli spies.

Israel's performance in some respects also come under critical attack. With a handful of unfortunate deaths attributed to the IDF of Palestinians. Whom the report claims were not sufficiently warned beforehand, and whose deaths the IDF did not take sufficient care to avoid. A strange enough accusation, given the fact that the IDF issued countless pre-warnings to the Palestinian public before the launch of most of their counter-attacks.

For counter-attacks they were; entirely defensive in nature; a country deciding that the thousands of rockets fired across the border at their vulnerable towns and citizens, imperilling the lives of men, women and children, traumatizing the population, causing dreadful hardships and insulting the sovereignty of the country. Like any other people, Israelis have the right to peace and security.

In situations of war there are always casualties, it is impossible that casualties not occur in those circumstances. And given the propensity of groups like Islamic Jihad and Hamas to use their own civilian populations as living shields, and the popularity of sending off artillery attacks from within crowded populations, thus leaving civilians vulnerable to counter-attack, it is in fact little wonder that there were deaths caused by Palestinian rockets.

And it should also be borne in mind that Hamas is considered to be a legally constituted government, aside from its terrorist-militia function. The people of Gaza, as well as those of the West Bank, voted for Hamas to share rule with their political opponents, Fatah. Gaza was overtaken by Hamas, whose militias fought with Fatah in Gaza and routed them, to take full proprietary-political possession of the Strip and install their own Islamist government there.

This, then, represents an Islamist government dedicated to the destruction of its neighbour Israel, with the intention of restoring the territory upon which Israel sits, to Arab Palestinian possession and rule. And in which cause any kind of humanitarian atrocities are seen to be justified. As contrasted with Israel dropping 200,000 leaflets, making 20,000 telephone calls, sending 12,000 text messages to warn civilians in Gaza of imminent military action.

In view of the fact that Israel conducted 1,500 retaliatory air strikes on Gazan targets, seven naval attacks and several hundred artillery strikes, and the UNHRC discovered 101 civilian deaths indicates greatly unprecedented restraint in modern warfare and care to minimize civilian casualties on the part of the IDF. All the more remarkable given the dense population of the Gaza Strip.

So, when the UNHRC's report authors claim that Israel should have been careful that "all feasible measures to verify that their targets were military objectives", it seems that even while the UNHRC was forced by the obvious reality that they observed to slam the Palestinians, they still felt compelled to bring Israel to task, despite its monumental efforts to avoid civilian casualties.

Matthias Behnke, head of the OHCHR office for the Palestinian territories emphasized that Palestinian terrorists fired rockets toward Israel from within a short distance from the Masharawi home, where Ahmad Masharaw, the 11-month-old son of a BBC employee was killed. And although his father, Jihad Masharawi blamed Israel for his child's (and his sister-in-law's) death, and does to this day, Mr. Behnke points out that the salvo that hit the Masharawi home was "markedly different" from Israeli airstrikes.

Unsurprisingly, the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights also continues to insist Israel is responsible for the infant's death. Along with the death of four-year-old Mohammed Sadallah, presented to visiting Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil by Gaza's prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, as another martyr of Israeli genocide.