Hamas’ Revelation Undermines Key Conclusion of Goldstone Report

“They say the people suffered from this war, but is Hamas not part of the people? On the first day of the war Israel targeted police stations and 250 martyrs were killed, from Hamas and other factions,” he told the paper.

“In addition to them, between 200 and 300 fighters from the Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas’s armed wing) and another 150 security forces were martyred.”

(AFP, Nov. 1, 2010)

Hamad’s figures closely match the Israeli estimate of 709 combatant fatalities and indicate that combatants comprised around half of the Palestinian fatalities in the time period of Dec. 27, 2008 through Jan. 18, 2009, far more than the 17 percent claimed by Palestinian groups. The increased ratio of combatants to non-combatants is inconsistent with Goldstone’s most serious charge that Israeli forces systematically targeted civilians.

The Significance of Hamad’s Admission to the Goldstone Report

Statistics about Palestinians who lost their lives during the military operations vary. Based on extensive field research, non-governmental organizations place the overall number of persons killed between 1,387 and 1,417. The Gaza authorities report 1,444 fatalities. The Government of Israel provides a figure of 1,166. The data provided by non-governmental sources on the percentage of civilians among those killed are generally consistent and raise very serious concerns about the way Israel conducted the military operations in Gaza.

A section of the report is dedicated to a more expansive discussion of the casualty figures. Paragaphs 355 and 356 state:

PCHR divides the overall 1,417 victims into 926 civilians, 255 police and 236 combatants. It reports that 313 of the dead were children and 116 women.

Al Mezan reports that overall 1,409 persons were killed during the military operations, of whom 237 were combatants (including 13 under-age combatants) and 1,172 non-combatants, including 342 children, 111 women and 136 members of the police. Thus, according to PCHR and Al Mezan, fewer than 17 per cent of the Palestinians killed during the military operations were combatants.

Paragraph 359 then discusses Israeli claims,

The Israeli armed forces claim that 1,166 Palestinians were killed during the military operations “according to the data gathered by the Research Department of the Israel Defense Intelligence”. They allege that “709 of them are identified as Hamas terror operatives”, 295 are”uninvolved Palestinians”, while the remaining 162 are “men that have not yet been attributed to any organization”. Of the 295 “uninvolved Palestinians”, 89 were children under the age of 16 and 49 women. According to these figures, at least 60 per cent, and possibly as many as three out of four, of those killed were combatants. The Mission notes, however, that the Israeli Government has not published a list of victims or other data supporting its assertions, nor has it,to the Mission’s knowledge, explained the divergence between its statistics and those published by three Palestinian sources, except insofar as the classification of policemen as combatants is concerned.

However, after assessing the competing claims in paragraph 361, the report’s authors come down on the side of the Palestinian figures:

The Mission notes that the statistics from non-governmental sources are generally consistent. Statistics alleging that fewer than one out of five persons killed in an armed conflict was a combatant, such as those provided by PCHR and Al Mezan as a result of months of field research, raise very serious concerns about the way Israel conducted the military operations in Gaza. The counterclaims published by the Government of Israel fall far short of international law standards.

The importance of this judgement becomes clear later in the report when the indictment against Israel is summed up.

1885: The Mission recognizes that the principal focus in the aftermath of military
operations will often be on the people who have been killed more than 1,400 in just three
weeks…

1886. In this respect, the Mission recognizes that not all deaths constitute violations of
international humanitarian law. The principle of proportionality acknowledges that, under
certain strict conditions, actions resulting in the loss of civilian life may not be unlawful.
What makes the application and assessment of proportionality difficult in respect of many
of the events investigated by the Mission is that deeds by the Israeli armed forces and words of military and political leaders prior to and during the operations indicate that, as a whole, they were premised on a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed not at the enemy but at the “supporting infrastructure.” In practice, this appears to have meant the civilian population.

1890. The Mission recognizes that some of those killed were combatants directly engaged in hostilities against Israel, but many were not. The outcome and the modalities of the operations indicate, in the Mission’s view, that they were only partially aimed at killing leaders and members of Hamas, al-Qassam Brigades and other armed groups. They were also to a large degree aimed at destroying or incapacitating civilian property and the means of subsistence of the civilian population.

issued a statement that the village was a “legitimate military target” and that it had identified Serb forces dug into positions there. Nato said it deeply regretted any accidental civilian casualties that were caused by the attack.

Media Uninterested

The report called Israel’s military assault on Gaza ”a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population…”

But the report did not take a position on the number of Palestinian casualties, noting that they ranged from the Israeli government figure of 1,166 to the Hamas number of 1,444, without saying how many were civilians.

In Gaza, hundreds of civilians died. They died from disproportionate attacks on legitimate military targets and from attacks on hospitals and other civilian struc tures. They died from precision weapons like missiles from aerial drones as well as from heavy artillery. Repeatedly, the Israel Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and civilians, as the laws of war strictly require.

Israel is correct that identifying combatants in a heavily populated area is difficult, and that Hamas fighters at times mixed and mingled with civilians. But that reality did not lift Israel’s obligation to take all feasible measures to minimize harm to civilians.

Hamas supporters claim that many more Israelis died in the three weeks of the war than Israel’s official count of only 13 dead.

Likewise they believe the official Hamas announcement that Israel killed only 48 fighters among over 1,300 dead in Gaza.

But that raises another question: if so few Hamas fighters died, were they really out there fighting?

No Surprise

There were indications early on that the proportion of combatants and non-combatants was intentionally manipulated. As early as Jan. 29, 2009, CAMERA published a critical analysis of PCHR figures pointing out that more than two out of every three fatalities were young males between 15 and 40 years old, an age profile consistent with what one would find among combatants. Several analyses searched Hamas-linked internet Web sites and found numerous examples of individuals labeled as non-combatants by PCHR who were later commemorated as members of Hamas and associated militias. The media did not take much interest in this information, choosing to rely primarily upon the figures provided by Palestinian and associated groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem despite a documented history of distorting casualty statistics. 

The status of the 250 security personnel, most of whom were killed in the initial Israeli airstrikes on Dec. 27, 2008, has been a particular source of controversy. Israel and its supporters claim that the police personnel were part of the Hamas military structure and therefore legitimate targets. Non-governmental activist groups like Amnesty International, B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch contested this assertion. The Goldstone Report gives both sides of the argument, but comes down on the side that most of the policemen were not members of the Hamas militia and were therefore not a legitimate target.

In paragraph 1923 it states:

The Mission also concludes that Israel, by deliberately attacking police stations and
killing large numbers of policemen (99 in the incidents investigated by the Mission) during
the first minutes of the military operations, failed to respect the principle of proportionality
between the military advantage anticipated by killing some policemen who might have
been members of Palestinian armed groups and the loss of civilian life (the majority of
policemen and members of the public present in the police stations or nearby during the
attack). Therefore, these were disproportionate attacks in violation of customary
international law. The Mission finds a violation of the right to life (ICCPR, article 6) of the
policemen killed in these attacks who were not members of Palestinian armed groups

This judgement has been contradicted by another Hamas representative named Abu Khaled who, in an interview published by The Christian Science Monitor on Nov. 1, 2010, confirmed that “two thirds of Hamas policemen are police by day and Al Qassam [military wing of Hamas] by night”.

The Reasons Behind Hamad’s Admission

Hamas initially admitted to only 48 fatalities. This low figure was remniscent of a similar tactic used by Hezbollah in 2006, when it reported similarly low losses during its summer conflict with Israel. Only later, after the media din died down and the human rights groups had moved on, did Hezbollah officials admit, with little publicity, to larger losses. Why after intentionally downplaying its own losses for nearly two years, did Hamas decide to reveal a much larger casualty figure? Domestic political considerations in Gaza lie at the heart of this decision.

A report by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center discusses the motivation behind Hamad’s admission. Initially, playing to the international audience, it was important for Hamas to reinforce the media image of Israel’s military action as indiscriminate and disproportionate by emphasizing the high number of civilians and low number of Hamas combatants among the casualties. This also has the benefit of enhancing the image of the group in the Arab world. Hezbollah was widely lauded for its purported success in fighting Israel in 2006.

Conclusion

Click on the link provided here to read the Goldstone Report.

Figures from Btselem – an Israeli human rights group critical of Israeli policy

773 did not take part in hostilities.

 

330 took part in hostilities

Human Rights Watch: Israel / Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)

From HRW’s web site under the heading of February 2009

“The 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah resulted in 1,125 Lebanese deaths, nearly 4,400 wounded, and an estimated 1 million displaced, the vast majority civilians.

“The fighting in Gaza from December 27, when Israel began its military operation, until Israel and Hamas unilaterally declared ceasefires on January 18, left some 1,300 Palestinians dead and more than 5,000 wounded, 40 percent of them children and women. In addition, the casualties included an undetermined number of male civilians not taking part in hostilities. Over the same period, Palestinian rocket fire killed three Israeli civilians and wounded more than 80. Ten Israeli soldiers were killed.

“Civilians have far-and-away paid the greatest price in this conflict,” Stork said. “An independent investigation is a necessary step for ensuring the justice and accountability that they deserve.”

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Amnesty International

: “Israel/Gaza operation “Cast Lead”: 22 Days of Death and Destruction – July 2009

“Killing of Palestinian Civilians by Israeli Forces