Israeli killings in Gaza strikes questioned

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An Israeli human rights group raised serious questions on Wednesday about Israeli government policy that it says led to the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians during last summer’s war in the Gaza Strip.

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Flag_of_Israel.

The rights group, B’Tselem, charged in a new report that the decision by government and military to launch air strikes on homes and civilian infrastructure was illegal under international law and norms.

The Israeli government did not have a response to the report but promised to issue one.

The report investigated a number of specific incidents in which 606 Palestinians were killed. According to the report, the majority of those killed in those incidents “took no part in the fighting: over 70 per cent were either under 18, over 60 or women.”

B’Tselem raised three main concerns with the Israeli policy. Firstly, it opposed the military’s definition of a “military objective” that could be targeted, saying it was too broad.

Secondly, the definition of acceptable “collateral damage” was extended beyond the legally proscribed proportionality of an attack, according to the charges.

Also, the group noted that warnings to civilians were either absent, insufficient or ineffective.

“The testimonies by residents of the homes and eyewitness accounts gathered by B’Tselem’s researchers paint a horrific picture,” according to the rights group, which added that in some circumstances many members of a single family were killed.

B’Tselem noted that fighting against Hamas and other militant groups in the densely populated Gaza Strip is challenging for Israel and recognized that Israeli civilians came under rocket fire.

The report, however, said the Israeli government must abide by the international laws of war.

More than 2,300 people were killed during the 50-day war in 2014, most of them Palestinian civilians, according to data from the Health Ministry in Gaza. Among the dead were 67 Israeli soldiers and five civilians in Israel.
GNA

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