The Israeli military on Wednesday presented the conclusions of several internal investigations into its conduct during the war in Gaza and stated that it had operated in accordance with international law, countering widespread international criticism over its actions and continuing accusations of possible war crimes.
The military said in a statement that it had “maintained a high professional and moral level” during the 22-day war, which ended Jan. 18, though it faced “an enemy that aimed to terrorize Israeli civilians whilst taking cover” among Palestinian civilians and “using them as human shields.”
Israel mounted its attack on Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, with the stated purpose of preventing rocket fire on southern Israel from Gaza. But the offensive set off international outrage and condemnation as the Palestinian death toll grew, as United Nations facilities and medical teams came under fire and as allegations emerged of improper use of white phosphorus weapons.
This month, the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed an internationally renowned judge, Richard J. Goldstone, to lead a high-level mission to investigate allegations of war crimes during the Gaza war.
Though Mr. Goldstone, a former judge in South Africa and a former United Nations chief prosecutor for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, has said he will investigate possible violations by both Israel and Hamas, officials in Jerusalem have said it is unlikely that Israel will cooperate with the mission.
Gaza health officials said more than 1,300 Palestinians died during the war, but Israel disputes Palestinian claims that most of them were noncombatants. By the Israeli military’s count, 1,166 people were killed, of whom 295 were noncombatants, 709 were what it called Hamas terrorist operatives and 162 were men whose affiliations remain unidentified.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza put the number of dead at 1,417: 926 civilians, 236 combatants and 255 police officers. Israel says that about 400 Gazans die of natural causes every month, possibly accounting for the discrepancy in numbers.
Thirteen Israelis were killed during the fighting, among them 10 soldiers and 3 civilians.
Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, the Israeli military’s deputy chief of staff, told reporters on Wednesday that the army “discovered a small number of mistakes, not many, among the dozens of incidents we investigated, and we have already examined them and learned lessons from them.”
General Harel added that the army had “not found a single case of an Israeli soldier deliberately hurting innocent Palestinian civilians, whether from the land, air or sea.” If any such case was discovered, he said, it would be treated with the full severity of the law.
Describing the mistakes as “unfortunate” and ascribing them to “intelligence or operational errors,” the military said such incidents “were unavoidable and occur in all combat situations, in particular of the type which Hamas forced” on the army “by choosing to fight from within the civilian population.”
Three separate investigations whose conclusions were presented on Wednesday dealt with specific events that were brought to the army’s attention by the news media or other means. Two others examined general subjects, namely the use of weapons containing phosphorus and the destruction of infrastructure and buildings by ground forces.
In one case, where Israeli shells killed up to 40 Palestinians outside a United Nations school in the Jabaliya refugee camp, north of Gaza City, on Jan. 6, the soldiers were responding, according to the military, to mortar shells fired by militants in the vicinity of the school. Israel says that 12 to 17 Palestinians were killed, 5 of whom were militants.
Soon after the shelling, however, Palestinian hospital officials in the Jabaliya area told a reporter for The New York Times that 40 people had been killed, among them 10 children and 5 women. At a mass funeral in Jabaliya the next day, the reporter was unable to count the bodies in the press of the mourning crowd but described seeing the bodies of the children laid out in a long row on the ground. One of the mourners, Huda Deed, said she had lost nine members of her extended family, ages 3 to 25.
Another case investigated by the military involved the Daia family, 21 of whom were killed when their home, in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, was hit in an Israeli strike on Jan. 6. Expressing regret for the attack, a senior military official said the army had intended to hit the house next door, which was a weapons storage site; the Daia home was struck because of an “operational error.”
Israel has already come under heavy criticism for its use of white phosphorus in heavily populated Gaza. White phosphorus is a standard, legal weapon in armies, long used as a way to light up an area or to create a thick white smoke screen to obscure troop movements. But it can cause horrific burns, so using it against civilians, or in an area where many civilians are likely to be affected, can be a violation of international law.
Last month, Human Rights Watch issued a report citing six cases of improper use ofwhite phosphorus by Israel and calling them evidence of war crimes.
The military said it used two types of munitions containing white phosphorus, incendiary shells for marking and range-finding, which it said were used in limited quantities, and nonincendiary types of munitions used to create smoke screens. But officials said that both types were used in open areas only, in accordance with the limitations of international law.
The military noted that these investigations, conducted by officers with the rank of colonel, were not a replacement for the central operational army investigation of the entire campaign, which will be concluded by June.
The findings are not exhaustive. For example, the case of the Samouni family, some 30 of whose members were killed when the building in which they had sought shelter in Zeitoun was hit on Jan. 5, remains unresolved. Maj. Avital Leibovich, a military spokeswoman, said that the case was still being examined, and that it was not yet clear if the Samounis were killed by Israeli fire.
Israeli and international human rights groups rejected the Israeli military’s internal investigations as inadequate. Human Rights Watch called Wednesday’s statement by the military “an insult to the civilians in Gaza who needlessly died.” The army leadership, the group said, is “apparently not interested, willing, or able to monitor itself.”
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