Reuters
Sitting at home for dinner or running for their lives in dark streets, generations of the same families are dying in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
Survivors are witnessing large numbers of relatives killed in a single strike and in their grief seek justice. According to a Reuters tally, at least 18 families in the Palestinian enclave have lost four or more members. One lost 27.
Israel says it seeks to target only militants who are firing rockets from the coastal strip into its territory, but the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said yesterday that the killing of over 400 Gaza civilians in the last two weeks may constitute war crimes.
Rights campaigners and Israel say the rocket fire aimed at Israeli cities by militants from Hamas and other Palestinian groups also breaks international law.
When Israeli shells rained down nearly non-stop in the early hours of Sunday morning, the Ayyad family cowered in their hallway too scared to escape the border town of Shejaiya, once home to 100,000 and now a rubble-filled war zone.
At first light, they made their move. Mothers swept up toddlers in their arms and fathers clasped children’s hands. “We walked, then ran as a group but they shelled us ... I’ll never forget the image I saw as long as I live. It may even follow me to my grave,” said Imran, 29.
Eleven of their number, including a pair of two-year olds, lay amid the dust and fallen trees.
“Painfully enough, we decided to help some of the lightly wounded who could walk, but we left the martyrs on ground. We left our beloved cousins dead. Can you believe it?” he said.
Relatives gathered at Gaza’s main Shifa hospital where three family members were being treated for their injuries. But no one had yet summoned the courage to tell one young woman sprayed with shrapnel how much she had lost that morning.
“She’s my daughter. I can’t tell her that her son, the one she gave birth to after eight years of marriage, was killed,” said the woman’s mother, Umm Osama Ayyad. “Her husband is also dead. We can’t tell her, she may die of shock...I don’t want to lose her too. We’ve suffered enough already.”
Samir Zaqout of the Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza said he is confident that “sooner or later” Israeli leaders will be held accountable by international justice.
“What can we call these atrocities but war crimes? What happened in Shejaiya was a massacre and a multiple war crime. The occupation army fired tank shells, which are mostly inaccurate, into the entire suburb and killed people indiscriminately inside their houses and as they fled,” he said.
Local medical staff say 72 Palestinians died, mostly civilians, as Israel battled Islamist militants on Sunday. Twelve Israeli soldiers were killed in the assault, its largest loss of life in a single day since 2006. They were among 32 troops killed since a ground incursion began on Saturday.
For Tareq Abu Jamea’, 40, of the southern city of Khan Younis, the distance between life and the instant death of 27 extended family members plus a visiting brother-in-law was just over a metre.
Mosque loudspeakers had just announced the evening invitation to break the Ramadan fast, and while his brothers and their families were dining he stepped out for a moment.
As soon as he left the house, the blast crashed down, sending him flying “like a bird” into the air and far away. “My leg was broken and I suffered a cut as well. I kept my head down and watched as death took away 28 of my family.”
A grandmother, a pregnant woman, and 19 children including four babies were crushed under the rubble.
“Their aim throughout this war is to kill civilians ... They gave us no warning, no phone call and no warning missiles from the drone as they claim to,” Abu Jamea’ said.
Jamea’ wants Israelis to face international justice in The Hague. “I wonder where is the pride of the world? Where is justice? Why aren’t they sent to the International Court of Justice? Are they above the law?” he said.
Abu Jamea’ said his family had no connection to any political groups. Israel says it is looking into the incident.
Israeli rights group B’Tselem says it believes the brother-in-law killed that night was a suspected Hamas operative, and was the likely target.
Ten Israeli human rights organisations including B’Tselem said the army’s shelling of Shejaiya may have violated the “fundamental principles of the laws of war, specifically the principle of distinguishing between combatants and civilians”.
