Letter to Richard Medhurst #5

Operation Cast Lead Part 3 Many Deserved to Go to Jail

Operation Cast Lead Part 3 Many Deserved to Go to Jail

Ofer, a fighter in the Golani Brigade, said: “The first time we went in, we were given orders to target our machine guns at every suspicious point that could be used to fire upon us. And we shot at anything that moved. The civilians in the area had already been told that we were coming in, so I don’t feel bad for anyone hurt there. If they remained there, they must have been Hamas...”

On the 4th of January 2009 16 members of the Abu Halima family were sheltering in the home of Muhammad Sa’ad Abu Halima and Sabah Abu Halima in Sifaya village. Most had moved from the bedroom into a hallway in the middle of the upper floor, where they thought they’d be safe when, at roughly 4.30 p.m., a white phosphorous shell came through the ceiling.

22-year-old Ahmad Abu Halima told Human Rights Watch: “I was talking with my father when the shell landed. It hit directly on my father and cut his head off. The explosion was large and the smell unbearable. It caused a big fire. The pieces [from the shell] were burning and we could not put them out ... We ran outside, the four of us who were unharmed. My brother’s wife and daughter, Ghada and Farah, came down with no clothes [because they were burned off]. My brothers Yusif and Ali too; Yusif was burned on his face and Ali on his back.”

Omar Abu Halima, 18 years old, stated: “I heard the sound of an explosion. We ran into the street and saw that it had hit our house. We ran upstairs and when we arrived I found my father and four others dead. We took them out and then dealt with the four wounded. The stairs were very smoky. We went inside and it smelled very strange. We had never experienced that before. It was difficult to go forward. First, I saw my mother with burns coming out of the house. We found her at the entrance. She told us to go in and get my injured brothers. But when we got inside we saw nothing because of the smoke and dust, and we couldn’t breathe. We found my brother’s wife, Ghada, she was burning in flames, and also her daughter Farah, also burning. There were also my brothers Yusif and Ali. All of them were burning badly; their clothes were melting. They were all burned but Abd al-Rahim and my father had their heads cut from their bodies too. We took the wounded in two tractors, with my mother in the first one. We tried to call an ambulance but they said they couldn’t come.”

The list of killed included: Sa‘dallah Abu Halima, 45, ‘Abdel Rahim, 14, Zeid, 11, Hamza, 10, and Shahid, 15 months, those wounded: Sabah Abu Halima, 44, Yusif, 16, ‘Ali, 5, Ghada, 21, and Farah, 2.

The Goldstone Report takes up the narrative: “The remaining survivors and the injured were placed on a ... tractor trailer to take them to Kamal Idwan hospital. The remains of Shahid Abu Halima were also taken; the tractor was driven by a cousin, Muhammad Hekmat Abu Halima (aged 16). Another cousin, Matar Abu Halima (aged 17), his brother Ali (aged 11) and his mother, Nabila, accompanied them. When they reached the crossroads next to the Omar Bin Khattab School in al-Atatra, Israeli soldiers positioned on the roof of a nearby house, some ten meters away, ordered them to stop. Muhammad Hekmat, Matar, Ali, Nabila and Matar got down and stood beside the tractor. One or more soldiers opened fire, hitting Muhammad Hekmat Abu Halima in the chest and Matar Abu Halima in the abdomen. Both died as a result of their injuries. Ali, Omar and Nabila Abu Halima fled. Omar was shot in the arm, but they eventually reached Kamal Idwan hospital. The remaining family members were ordered to abandon the tractors and walk. They were not permitted to take the bodies of the two dead boys, or the remains of Shahid Abu Halima, which were recovered four days later, on the 8th of January. Ghada Abu Halima, who had burns on 45 per cent of her body, had great difficulty walking. After some 500 meters, a vehicle picked up several members of the family, including Ghada and Farah, and took them to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.”

The Goldstone Report stated: “In the night of the 4th to the 5th of January 2009, the family of Muhammad Hajji and his wife Abir was at home in the al-Samouni neighbourhood. In the hope of being safer from the shooting, they had put their mattresses on the floor. At around 1.30 a.m., Abir Hajji heard a very loud explosion, which shook the house and shattered the windows. Some minutes later, Abir Hajji was in a different room from the rest of the family, looking for her mobile phone to use as a torch, when she heard a second explosion, this time apparently inside the house. The children screamed, shouted “Dad!”, but her husband did not reply. In the pitch-darkness she found her husband and felt that he was injured on one side of his head, in the area of the eye and the ear. Her daughters Noor, aged 6, and Nagham, aged 13, were injured ... After some time, during which they were sitting on the ground as ordered by the Israeli soldiers, Mrs. Hajji, her children and Nasser Hajji were taken to Nasser’s house. There they found four households of the extended Hajji family. The young men had been handcuffed and four of them also blindfolded. About 60 Israeli soldiers were in the house. Mrs. Hajji recalled them carrying around food and drinks and relaxing on the couches. One of her daughters asked to be allowed to eat something. The soldiers first denied her request, but then allowed her to go into the kitchen and get a small piece of bread. After the midday prayers on the 5th of January 2009, the Israeli soldiers separated the men from the women and children. The latter were ordered to walk to Rafah. The Hajjis protested, asking to be allowed to go to Gaza City, where they had relatives, but the soldiers told them that they would be shot if they tried to walk to Gaza City. Nasser Hajji and his 18-year-old son were allowed to walk with the women and children, while the other men stayed behind. The group of Hajji family members walked down the alley to al-Sekka Street; there they were joined by members of the Arafat family, who also live in the al-Samouni neighbourhood, carrying white flags. On al- Sekka Street, one of the Israeli soldiers standing on a rooftop ordered the families to turn south and walk towards Rafah. The families begged to be allowed to walk to Gaza City instead. Without warning, the Israeli soldiers opened fire, “shooting at random” according to Abir Hajji. Ola Masood Arafat, a 28-year-old woman, was struck by a bullet and died on the spot. Mrs. Hajji was wounded in her right arm. Her three-year-old daughter Shahd was shot in the chest. Abir Hajji, who was still carrying Shahd, her other children, her mother-in-law and others managed to take refuge in a house.”

One IDF soldier said: “I serve in an operations company in the Givati Brigade. After we’d gone into the first houses, there was a house with a family inside. Entry was relatively calm. We didn’t open fire, we just yelled at everyone to come down. We put them in a room and then left the house and entered it from a different lot. A few days after we went in, there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sharpshooter’s position on the roof. The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn’t understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go, and it was okay and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders. They had also come out of the house that he was on the roof of, they had advanced a bit and suddenly he saw ... people moving around in an area where they were forbidden to move around. I don’t think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don’t know how to describe it ... the lives of Palestinians, let’s say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way.”

This was not an isolated incident. The Goldstone Report continued: “During the morning of the 4th of January 2009, Israeli soldiers entered many of the houses in the al-Samouni area. One of the first, around 5 a.m., was the house of Ateya Helmi al-Samouni, a 45-year-old man. Faraj, his 22-year-old son, had already met Israeli soldiers some minutes earlier as he stepped outside the house to warn his neighbors that their roof was burning. The soldiers entered Ateya al-Samouni’s house by force, throwing some explosive device, possibly a grenade. In the midst of the smoke, fire and loud noise, Ateya al-Samouni stepped forward, his arms raised, and declared that he was the owner of the house. The soldiers shot him while he was still holding his ID and an Israeli driving license in his hands. The soldiers then opened gunfire inside the room in which all the approximately 20 family members were gathered. Several were injured, Ahmad, a boy of four, particularly seriously.”

This might well be the same incident reported by one particular soldier: “As we were coming in, the commander was firing a volley, and mistakenly killed an innocent ... the family was hiding from the bombings. They were under the stairs and that happened to be just in front of the door and when he went in and fired, he didn't see who he was firing at. So, he happened to kill an elderly guy ... I’m against informing on people. But if I look at it from the side, there are people who deserve to go to jail.”